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The purpose of this paper is to describe and assess the sustainability of an emergent West African business quarter in Manchester, UK. Comparisons are drawn with developments among other ethnic groups. The research is placed in the context of international literature on ethnic entrepreneurship.

The research is primarily qualitative, using semi‐structured interviews and conversational life histories with a sample of West African retail businesses and a comparative group of other local businesses. Some use is made of quantitative information from census and other public data sources.

New West African enterprises appear, over the last few years, to have stabilised the declining retail district of Moston Lane in north Manchester. These new businesses are however confined to few sectors: food stores, hair and beauty salons, cafes, Internet cafes and clothing shops. These developments may parallel the success of longer established retail quarters in Manchester and elsewhere. However, most of the businesses may not survive long, having provided a temporary living, and some entrepreneurial experience, for their owners.

Limited sample size and short time frame make results exploratory rather than definitive. The research provides however a base for future investigations.

The businesses studied provide economic opportunities for some immigrants with limited labour market opportunities.

Immigrants are helped to maintain the integrity of their culture through the purchase of appropriate goods and services.

This paper provides the first consideration of a specifically African retail quarter in Britain, adding an additional ethnicity to the roster of identifiable geographic business locations.

Using ethnicity as our point of focus, the authors consider the dynamics of the demand for bank loans, and the willingness of banks to supply them, as the UK economy entered the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 with a particular focus on potential behavioural differences on the demand-side and discrimination on the supply-side. In doing so we directly address crisis induced financial concerns and how they played out in the context of ethnicity.

Using the most recent ten quarterly waves of the UK SME Finance Monitor survey the authors consider whether ethnicity of the business owner impacts on the decision to apply for bank loans in the first instance. The authors then question whether ethnicity influences the banks decision to meet or reject the request for a bank loan.

The authors’ pre-COVID-19 results show that there were no ethnic differences in loan application and success rates. During COVID-19, both white and ethnic business loan application rates rose significantly, but the scale of this increase was greater for ethnic businesses. The presence of government 100% guaranteed lending also increased general loan success rates, but again the scale of this improvement was greater for ethnic businesses.

The authors show very clearly that differences in the willingness of banks to supply loans to SMEs relate very explicitly to firm specific characteristics and ethnicity either plays no additional role or actually leads to improved loan outcomes. The data is for the UK and for a very unique COVID time which may mean that wider generalisability is unwise.

Ethnic business owners should not worry about lending discrimination or be discouraged from applying for loans.

The authors identify at worst no lending discrimination and at best positive ethnic discrimination.

This is one of the largest COVID-19 period studies into the financing of ethnic businesses.

Recounts the history of the Chinese Diaspora in Australia, which dates back to the Gold Rush of the 1850s. In the past three decades, following the end of the white Australia policy, many ethnic Chinese immigrants have immigrated to Australia. Although there are only 300,000 people of Chinese ancestry living in Australia, Chinese immigration is a critical chapter of Australia’s immigration experience. Chinese entrepreneurs have played a major role in the history of the Chinese in Australia. Explores the experience of Chinese entrepreneurs in Australia from the earliest days till the present and reviews historical accounts of Chinese entrepreneurs in Australia, before presenting the results of recent research. Argues that it is necessary to investigate how ethnicity, gender and class have intersected to shape changing patterns of Chinese entrepreneurship in the Australian Chinese Diaspora. Suggests also that the dynamics of Chinese immigration and Chinese entrepreneurship in Australia have been shaped by the changing dynamics of globalisation, the state and the racialisation of Chinese immigrants in the Australian labour market and society as a whole.

The study aims to examine the causes of the divergent patterns of contemporary transnational engagement with China among new Chinese immigrants and the effect of transnational entrepreneurship on migrants’ integration into their host societies.

It is based on a multi-sited ethnographic study that contains interviews, participant observations, and analysis of relevant event coverage and commentaries by the media, which were conducted between 2008 and 2013 in Singapore, the United States, and China.

The study finds that different migration histories, structural circumstances in both sending and receiving societies, and locations in the transnational social field give rise to divergent patterns of economic transnationalism, and that the rise of China has opened up new avenues for transnational entrepreneurship, which has not only benefited hometown development in China but also created economic opportunities for Chinese immigrants, leading to desirable mobility outcomes. In particular, transnational entrepreneurship has promoted deeper localization rather than deterritorialization and contributed to strengthening the economic base of the existing ethnic enclave, which in turn offers an effective alternative path for migrants’ integration in their host societies.

The study is exploratory in nature. As with all ethnographic studies, its generalizability is limited.

The study suggests that, when transnational entrepreneurship is linked to the existing ethnic social structure in which a particular identity is formed, the effect on the group becomes highly significant. The comparative approach of the study can help unveil different dynamics, processes, and consequences of transnationalism and complex factors behind variations on diasporic development and immigrant integration.

Looking at entrepreneurship beyond nation-state boundaries and beyond the economic gains of individual migrants.

The conceptual framework of Multicultural Hybridism is adopted to reflect the emerging themes of transnationalism and superdiversity in the context of ethnic minority migrant entrepreneurs breaking out of their ethnic enclaves into mainstream economy. It is constructed as an extension of Mixed Embeddedness theory (Kloosterman, 2006), given that ‘Multicultural Hybrid’ (Arrighetti, Daniela Bolzani, & Lasagni, 2014) firms display stronger resilience with a higher survival rate than enclaved businesses (Kloosterman, Rusinovic, & Yeboah, 2016). With further integration of incremental diversification typology (Lassalle & Scott, 2018), the current study adopts Multicultural Hybridism as a lens to explore the opportunity recognition capabilities of transnational, migrant entrepreneurs who are facilitated by the hybridity of opportunity recognition (Lassalle, 2018) from linking host-country and home-country cultures. The hybridity of opportunity recognition focuses on access to markets and resources between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. Through the theoretical lens of Multicultural Hybridism, interviews with 16 Birmingham-based Chinese migrant entrepreneurs have been analysed to shape a dynamic understanding of the multifaceted concept of breakout in a superdiverse and transnational context. The multilayered interpretation of breakout provides an enhanced understanding of the diversity of hybridism between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. This is seen from the perspectives of firm growth and social integration in the current locations and future spaces of transnational migrant entrepreneurs. It goes beyond the narrow imagination of breakout as an economic assimilation process, avoiding the singular conceptualisation of the host-country mainstream market as the only breakout destination for transnational ethnic entrepreneurs.

The often‐dynamic presence of South Asians in particular economic activities has prompted ambivalent responses from policymakers. For some, there is encouragement to “break out” from ethnic niche businesses like lower‐order retailing and catering. Another ploy is to promote a strategy of “‘ethnic advantage” by exploiting “cultural” features of a particular community. Examples include the marketing of what can be termed “ethnic enclaves” like “Chinatown” in Manchester and “Little Italy” in Boston (USA). This paper reports on an initiative to exploit the tourist potential of South Asian cuisine by developing a “Balti Quarter” in Birmingham. The results highlight a number of key issues involved in operationalising this increasingly popular strategy. First, the unitarist conceptualisation of the notion of an ethnic enclave obscures the harshly competitive environment that small ethnic minority firms like those in the “Balti Quarter” have to operate in. Second, the often ad hoc way in which such inner city areas are regulated (through planning guidelines) can intensify the competitive pressures facing many firms in the area. Finally, the “external” focus of the initiative runs the risk of masking chronic issues within the firm (e.g. poor working environments) which policymakers should be equally concerned with.

Analyses the factors influencing South Asian entrepreneurial expansion in Great Britain and the validity of conventional wisdom which attributes its success to cultural factors. It suggests that entrepreneurial growth depends positively on educational attainment, personal savings invested at start‐up, hard work in the initial stages, and the delegation of responsibilities to non‐family members. Further analysis indicates that later entrants into business gained relevant prior work experience and focused on serving non‐Asian customers, which may have contributed towards their success. The pursuit of constant product and technological improvement and employee training have also influenced growth. There is strong evidence that entrepreneurs with larger‐sized businesses have developed international linkages and focused on one key business area.

Because entrepreneurs operate in a world of uncertainty, the ability to analyse a situation, extract the important and ignore the superfluous, compare potential outcomes, and extrapolate from other experiences to the current one is vital. Researchers have identified several skills an entrepreneur requires to operate their business and the purpose of this paper is to examine if the training and support necessary for entrepreneurship to occur within ethnic communities exists in Ireland.

This study was carried out among established ethnic entrepreneurs and representatives from support agencies in Ireland. A quantitative research methods approach was adopted using online surveys. Responses from 36 ethnic entrepreneurs and eight support organisations were received.

Targeted programmes offered by service providers included programmes in foreign languages; providing literature in foreign languages; and specially designed seminars for ethnic entrepreneurs. Of the established ethnic entrepreneurs, the majority indicated that, although they have deficiencies in their skillset they did not avail of programmes because they were unaware of them.

Irish service providers need to provide additional services to ethnic entrepreneurs to be on par with their EU counterparts. Irish service providers need to provide general and targeted training programmes through minority languages. If Ireland wants to continue being known as the “land of a hundred thousand welcomes” and be able to support the much-anticipated asylum seekers who may choose entrepreneurship as a career option, it needs to consider the adoption of the recommendations of this study and provide better tailored services for the ethnic entrepreneur.

This paper contributes to our understanding of the intersection between entrepreneurship and family businesses by examining the business aspirations of immigrant entrepreneurs from five different ethnic minority communities in the UK. It explores differences in the entrepreneurs' antecedents that might explain differences in their aspirations and examines the interaction between aspirations and business behaviour and outcomes. It finds that despite the importance of the family in their businesses, ethnic minority entrepreneurs have diverse aspirations. It is possible to distinguish between those with business‐first, family‐first, money‐first and lifestyle‐first aspirations. Their educational and family background affects entrepreneurs' aspirations, as does their stage on the family life cycle. Differences in aspirations are related to the nature of business, the way in which it is managed, the recruitment of professional managers and entrepreneurial performance. Our findings highlight the diversity in aspirations among family business owners and the complexity of the interaction between ethnicity, culture, class and entrepreneurship.