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This paper aims to examine the migrant dilemma about operating extensively in migrant enclaves vs integration in host communities.

The paper is a critical literature review contrasting views and perspectives of the role of migrant enclaves in migrant integration and contribution in new societies. Research in the area of ethnic enclaves has been polarised: on the one hand, the optimists argue the critical benefits of migrant and ethnic community networks, thus downplaying potential drawbacks of such networks and the disadvantage externally imposed on migrants; on the other hand, the pessimists overemphasise the disadvantages of ethnic enclaves, portraying them as ghettos of alienation.

Based on the social solidarity integration model and immigrant-host and social interaction theory, the paper posits that migrant community networks could intentionally or unintentionally engender cultural alienation, worsening an already precarious educational, cultural and economic exclusion. Thus, migrants could remain in lower societal roles and experience limited upward social mobility if they operate exclusively within migrant and ethnic networks. However, ethnic enclaves, at the same time, offer the initial psychological nurturing on which future successful socialisation work with migrant communities can be built.

From a research angle, the theorisation of migrant enclave requires a new approach, which identifies dynamism and contextualisation as central to the debate.

From a policy perspective, the research suggests the rethinking of the role of community support systems (and the wider enclave debate). The organisational implications the research suggests a shift of the organisational paradigm in the way migrant organisations manage themselves and support members in the enclave.

This paper’s contribution is to take a duality approach to studying the ethnic enclave and posits that this will engender effective social policy that helps reduce economic inequality.

In China, rural-to-urban migrant workers who are from the same place of origin tend to concentrate in the same workplace. If the concentration is sufficiently dense, it means that these migrant workers build up a social network which could be defined as native place enclave (NPE). In this paper, the authors discussed whether there are behavioral differences between enclave workers and non-enclave workers when they have conflicts with their employers.

The authors put two questions to empirical tests. First, do enclave workers experience less sense of deprivation than non-enclave workers? Second, compared to non-enclave workers, are enclave workers more willing to participate in collective action against their employers? Using data from a survey of migrant workers in Pearl River Delta and Yangzi River Delta in 2010, the authors made a comparison between enclave workers and non-enclave workers with respect to sense of deprivation and willingness-to-participate by using a propensity score matching method.

The authors found that the relationship between NPE and sense of deprivation was negative, so was the relationship between NPE and willingness-to-participate. Meanwhile, the two relationships were stronger than what had been found after the propensity score matching method was used.

The results implied that employers can reduce labor conflicts by using NPE to mitigate migrant workers’ sense of deprivation and by lowering the risk of their collective actions. In this way, NPE may contribute to the upkeep of workplace order and even social order.

There have been hot debates on how NPE would affect migrant workers’ collective action. Resource mobilization theory pointed out that NPE was positively related to workers’ collective action while production politics theory held an opposite view. Our findings provided empirical evidences for the debates.

The extant gastronomy literature has rarely examined a connection between authentic gastronomic experiences and destinations. Specifically, ethnic enclaves, which are unique gastronomic and cultural destinations providing ethnic cuisine and cultural experiences to visitors, have been under-researched. Thus, this study aims to address this knowledge gap.

Using a 2 (history: long vs short) × 2 (location: Central Business District vs rural; main street vs alleyway) × 2 size/ownership type (big vs small; chain vs independent) between-subjects design, two experiments were conducted using a sample of 557 British consumers to test the effect of history, location and size of ethnic enclaves and ethnic restaurants on consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences in a UK context.

In Study 1, ethnic enclave’s size affected consumers’ authentic cultural experiences. In Study 2, restaurants’ history and ownership type positively influenced consumers’ authentic gastronomic experiences. Both studies consistently reported the positive relationship between authentic experiences and behavioural intentions.

For ethnic enclaves, the management team may consider expanding the size of ethnic enclaves to increase consumers’ authentic cultural experience. For those ethnic restaurants within the ethnic enclave, any independent or old ethnic restaurants should actively promote both characteristics in their marketing materials to create a feeling of offering authentic gastronomic experiences to customers.

This study identified important ethnic enclave-related factors and ethnic restaurant-related factors forming consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong.

In-depth interviews and case studies are employed in relation to Thai restaurant and grocery shop owners and employees in Hong Kong.

This study is an attempt to explain the clustering of Thai ethnic small businesses in Kowloon City through a discourse on the ethnic enclave economy. The Thai migrant enclave in Hong Kong is explored with dimensions of segregation, namely evenness, exposure, clustering, concentration and centralization (Massey and Denton’s, 1988). This study suggests that these Thai enclave businesses have two differentials compared to the findings of Zhou (1992) in Chinatown restaurants in New York.

The findings provide evidences for social workers, migrant associations and policy makers in developing ideas of ethnic business enabling. There should be wide range of supporting and welfare policies for the empowerment of migrants and minority ethnic groups. An immigrant enclave should no longer be regarded as a ghetto for many business chances can be found there.

Two ethnic economy development differentials are developed. First, ethnicity similarity between the minority group and the majority ethnic enables ethnic business accessing earlier to an interethnic clientele from wider society. Second, internal factors of the ethnic enclave and external factors of the wider society have constrained the diversification of ethnic business.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of immigrant and ethnic enclaves on the success of entrepreneurial ventures as measured by firm profits and viability.

Data on entrepreneurs and their new firms were provided by the Kauffman Foundation and covered the years 2004-2008. These firm-level data were linked to Census 2000 Summary Files at the ZIP Code level and were used to empirically investigate the effect of enclaves.

The paper found a statistically significant negative effect of immigrant representation in an area on firm profitability. This effect operated on native, rather than immigrant, firm owners, which suggested that native-owned firms locating in immigrant enclaves may experience difficulty assimilating the benefits that enclaves offer.

Cultural connections within local communities play a key role in the success of new businesses. Potential firms should recognize the importance of these connections when making firm location decisions. Likewise, the findings suggest that connections within local communities should be considered when designing aid programs.

The authors used a unique measure of enclave representation to incorporate both immigrant, as well as ethnic, representation in the local area. The authors examined the effect of immigration on both immigrant- and native-owned firms in order to provide a broader scope and a more complete understanding of the effects of immigration on entrepreneurial ventures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the career experiences of Turkish Cypriot women solicitors in Britain, by examining their choices of employment or self‐employment.

The study adopts a critical realist approach considering the macro‐contextual and micro‐agentic aspects of Turkish Cypriot women's career development. Applying “the instrumental case study” approach, it explores the career experiences of four Turkish Cypriot women solicitors. Case study material was collected through semi‐structured interviews.

The paper argues that one cannot talk of ethnic enclaves in positive or negative terms, without considering layered individual experience. Their life and career trajectory is marked by their ethnicity and migration that is characterised by dual processes of break with tradition and later return to tradition during which identities are tested and usually reaffirmed where Turkish Cypriots may rediscover their Turkish Cypriotness.

The study reveals that macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐effects are responsible for the polarisation of opportunities in the ethnic enclaves.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate aspiring immigrant opportunity (AIO) entrepreneurs' start-up location decisions.

The authors used conjoint analysis to explore 1,264 location decisions nested within 79 highly educated, first-generation AIO entrepreneurs.

The authors found that although government support positively influences business location decisions, network support decreases the perceived benefits of government support for AIO entrepreneurs. Furthermore, locations with high costs of doing business are unattractive to AIO entrepreneurs, but financial capital access through ethnic and nonethnic sources in these locations enhances the appeal of high-cost locations.

The generalizability of the findings to AIO entrepreneurs should be considered with caution. Future research should longitudinally examine immigrant opportunity entrepreneurs' location decisions and their implications for their start-up and community-level performance outcomes. The authors also encourage replication of the study.

The findings of this study have implications for AIO entrepreneurs who intend to make start-up location decisions. Also, government policymakers can use the findings of this study to better attract AIO entrepreneurs to different locations.

By integrating ethnic enclave theory and location theory, this research contributes to theory and practice about immigrant opportunity entrepreneurs' start-up location decisions which are currently underexplored in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature.

This paper aims to investigate the distinctive economic and social dynamics of ethnic quasi-enclave industrial sub-clusters and to econometrically analyse the main factors affecting the economic performance of Chinese-migrant microentrepreneurs with a specific focus on social capital.

An interpretative framework that encompasses sustainable local human development and mixed embeddedness is applied to a case study of Wenzhounese migrant socioeconomic quasi-enclave leather industrial sub-clusters located adjacent to the industrial district area of Florence, Italy. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, the research study adopted a mixed-method approach encompassing both qualitative and quantitative methods. The econometric analysis was based on data collected via a survey administered to a random sample of enterprises.

Ethnic social capital plays a central role in ethnic entrepreneurship. The results confirm the relevance of social networks in the context analysed and reveal the importance of ethnic and non-ethnic business social capital as one of the main factors affecting enterprise’s economic performance.

The findings propose potential policies to upgrade the ethnic enterprises especially in terms of increasing their formality and inclusion in the Italian social and economic systems of production.

This analysis contributes to existing literature on migrant entrepreneurship and communities, adding new evidence related to ethnic enterprises and the importance of social capital in terms of performance and working conditions of the community of entrepreneurs.

Studies of unicorns and gazelles can offer detailed information about the process of enterprise development but are unrepresentative as examples of entrepreneurial success. In presenting a novel method for outlier analysis, this article combines insights from case studies of unusual organizations with explanatory frameworks that management scholars have applied to broader samples of firms, irrespective of their survival.

The authors illustrate the approach to outlier analysis using a prominent case from economic history: the House of Rothschild, founded during the 18th century, which became the most famous investment bank in Europe. Following the iterative refinement of mechanisms using comparison data on Jewish enclave firms, this analysis sheds light on the sources of dissimilarity in outcomes between Rothschild and the comparison group.

The study results suggest that the House of Rothschild's longevity can be explained via the mechanisms of risk sequencing, intergenerational transfers and spatial brokerage. The authors show that these mechanisms are not idiosyncratic to one enterprise but instead generalize to other family firms.

Outlier analysis encourages a rapprochement between case study and large-N research. The high failure rate of new organizations means that those yielding a large amount of information to researchers tend to be exceptional. By obtaining data on a comparison group of startups founded by similar entrepreneurs, analysts can probe the mechanisms of success identified for unicorns or gazelles.

Against the theoretical backdrop of the embeddedness and the resilience literatures, this paper investigates if and how SMEs' planning for adversity affects firms' performance.

The paper develops hypotheses that investigate the link between the risk management of immigrant-led and native-led SMEs and their performance and draw on novel data from a survey on 900 immigrant- and 2,416 native-led SMEs in 5 European cities to test them.

Immigrant-led SMEs are less likely to implement an adversity plan, especially when they are in an enclave sector. However, adversity planning is important to enhance the growth of immigrant-led businesses, even outside a crisis period, and it reduces the performance gap vis-à-vis native-led businesses. Inversely, the positive association between adversity planning and growth in the sample of native entrepreneurs is mainly driven by entrepreneurs who have experienced a severe crisis in the past.

This paper empirically uses planning for adversity as an anticipation stage of organizational resilience and tests it in the context of immigrant and native-led SMEs. Results support the theoretical reasoning that regularly scanning for threats and seeking information beyond the local community equips immigrant-led SMEs with a broader structural network which translates into new organizational capabilities. Furthermore, results contribute to the process-based view of resilience demonstrating that regularly planning for adversity builds a firm's resilience potential, though the effect is contingent on the nationality of the leaders.