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Immigrants' entrepreneurial motivation in Europe: liabilities and assets

Antonia Mercedes García-Cabrera (Department of Business Administration, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain)
Ana Maria Lucía-Casademunt (Department of Business Administration, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain)
Laura Padilla-Angulo (Department of Economics, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Dos Hermanas, Spain)

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

ISSN: 1355-2554

Article publication date: 19 August 2020

Issue publication date: 11 November 2020

964

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines how the institutional distance between immigrants' country of residence and country of origin, as well as the regulative and normative aspects of institutions in immigrants' country of residence, social context variables and individual psycho-behavioural factors, condition immigrants' entrepreneurial motivation (i.e. mainly by necessity, by a combination of necessity and opportunity, or mainly by opportunity), which is in contrast to the previous literature on immigrant entrepreneurship that mainly focuses on micro-level factors.

Design/methodology/approach

By using hierarchical linear regression models to test our hypotheses, the authors analyse 468 first-generation immigrant entrepreneurs settled in 31 European countries using data from the European Working Conditions Survey (6th EWCS; Eurofound, 2015 database) combined with other datasets to derive the macro-level variables (i.e. the Doing Business Project; Hofstede et al., 2010).

Findings

The authors find that distance in the normative aspects of institutions harms entrepreneurial opportunity motivation. At the same time, however, opportunity motivation is likely to benefit from both the normative aspects of institutions that reduce locals' opportunity motivation and the distance in the regulative aspects of institutions.

Originality/value

This article analyses immigrant entrepreneurship in Europe, which has been under-examined in the extant literature, and takes into account the micro-, meso- and macro-level factors affecting the entrepreneurial motivation of immigrants in Europe. This analysis responds to the need already highlighted by previous research to include not only micro-level factors but also meso- and macro-level factors in the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurship (Aliaga-Isla and Rialp, 2013).

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Paco Liñán for his contribution in an earlier version of this article. Financial support from Spain’s National Economic, Industry and Competitiveness Department (Project: ECO2016-80518-R) is gratefully acknowledged by Antonia M. García-Cabrera and Ana M. Lucia-Casademunt.

Citation

García-Cabrera, A.M., Lucía-Casademunt, A.M. and Padilla-Angulo, L. (2020), "Immigrants' entrepreneurial motivation in Europe: liabilities and assets", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 26 No. 8, pp. 1707-1737. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-01-2020-0042

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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