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The purpose of this paper is to examine governmental support to immigrant entrepreneurs and its impact on their businesses. The study seeks to explore the needs of immigrant entrepreneurs as to government support schemes, and the impact of government policy upon mobilization of resources and growth of immigrant businesses.

Combining convenient and snowball sample, 218 former Soviet Union immigrant entrepreneurs from all over Israel and all business spheres were surveyed via a questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted by quantitative statistical methods.

Entrepreneurs who encountered more problems at business start‐up are more likely to receive government support. Receiving support facilitates mobilizing resources and compensates for fewer opportunities of initially weak businesses.

Further research might focus upon comparing the impact of policy on immigrant entrepreneurs between countries. Utilization of the findings by policy makers may improve the impact of policy and help to focus the allocation of resources more efficiently.

The paper provides valuable insight for academics and practitioners who are interested to foster immigrant entrepreneurship as mechanism of economic integration.

Given that international research is now consistently showing higher rates of entrepreneurial activity from immigrants above native people, research regarding our understanding of how immigrant entrepreneurs view business opportunity formation remains underdeveloped. Based upon a review of the literature, this chapter examines how ethnicity relates to business opportunity formation through constant interactions. It also introduces the Visual Mixed Embeddedness Framework as an empirical lens for understanding the differences in the business opportunity formation process models between immigrant and native entrepreneurs. By explaining how factors and traits from both home and host countries impact upon the immigrant entrepreneurial business activity process, the framework clearly identifies how the concept of ethnicity influences immigrant entrepreneurial opportunity formation activities in different ways. The framework contributes to existing knowledge by offering a novel method for examining the influence on business opportunity formation of ethnicity, the role of home and host countries and variations between immigrant and native entrepreneurs.

In recent years, we have witnessed a surge in academic interest towards migrants and their entrepreneurial endeavours. This has resulted in valuable insights about immigrant, transnational, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship. By reviewing 158 articles published in the fields of migrant entrepreneurship, transnational entrepreneurship, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship over the last decade, the author maps the migrant entrepreneurship field according to the level of analysis and suggests potential avenues for the development of the field. Blurred boundaries between different streams of literature can potentially lead to duplication of efforts and harm cumulativity of knowledge. Therefore, the author summarises the key findings at each level of analysis, identifies the gaps and most pressing research questions. The author concluded that the field would benefit from (1) more specific definitions and assessment of whether observed findings stem from immigrant-, transnational-, ethnic- or diaspora-related factors; (2) appreciating the multilevel nature of the phenomenon; and (3) clarifying the boundary conditions. This review contributes to the accumulation of knowledge in two ways. First, it synthesises the findings in the fields of transnational, immigrant, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship under the framework of migrant entrepreneurship. Second, it suggests potential research directions across three levels of analysis and in-between those levels.

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.

This paper aims to review the immigrant entrepreneurship literature to locate how researchers consider embeddedness to home and host countries beyond the “embedded” or “not” dichotomy.

The paper conducts a systematic literature review. The authors found 106 articles in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using a structured search and selection protocol.

Few articles perceive embeddedness openly as a gradual phenomenon. However, articles in the review use different approaches for considering relative levels of embeddedness, such as depth of social ties. In addition, some articles take a dual perspective or make multi-contextual comparisons to acknowledge immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness levels. These articles emphasise embeddedness as a gradual phenomenon to understand the complexity of immigrant entrepreneurs’ contextualisation better. Based on the review, the paper develops a model, considering embeddedness as an emergent result of the immigrants’ engagement with spaces, networks, markets and institutions of a given home or host context. It also accounts for the dynamic interaction between contextual factors as embeddedness levels change.

The paper has located all relevant papers in the used databases. However, the systematic review protocol naturally limits its scope. Nevertheless, the developed model based on the review helps researchers develop a more comprehensive understanding of embeddedness and possibly ask novel questions.

This paper can help policymakers improve their policies for the progressive social integration of immigrants, as it helps consider different embeddedness levels.

Researchers mainly consider individuals’ embeddedness as either “embedded” or “not.” However, we can also understand embeddedness at various levels, e.g. partial, increasing/decreasing and gradual. Significant changes occur in the embeddedness of individuals during immigration. Additionally, contextual relations intertwine immigrants’ entrepreneurial activity over time. The paper reviews embeddedness in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature, searching beyond the dichotomic use of embeddedness. Then, it develops a theoretical understanding of embeddedness levels.

This paper aims to investigate migration reasons, traits and entrepreneurial motivation of African immigrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town, South Africa, as there is limited research on immigrant entrepreneurship in South Africa.

The empirical research was conducted under mixed methods paradigm where primary data were gathered from a sample of 93 participants using the convenience sampling technique. Data were gathered through a survey of 72 semi-structured personal interviews and 21 self-administered questionnaires and analysed using SPSS version 21.

The empirical research unveiled that immigrant entrepreneurs migrate into South Africa for different reasons: political instability and economic reasons were the chief reasons for migration. Immigrants engage into necessity entrepreneurship as a need to survive in the host country and to confront discrimination in the job market. Therefore, immigrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town are pushed, rather than pulled, towards entrepreneurship.

This paper also suggests further research that will evaluate education levels of immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa, as there is a controversy about the education levels of immigrant entrepreneurs.

South Africans need to understand that African foreign entrepreneurs are job creators rather than job takers and to be aware of the skills brought into the country by these entrepreneurs. Accordingly, the current study contributes to peaceful cohabitation between South Africans and African foreign entrepreneurs.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of migration reasons, traits and entrepreneurial motivation of African immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa and also provides an entrepreneurial migration progression.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct an inductive case study to understand how the opportunity creation process leads to integration.

It examines four cases of immigrant entrepreneurs of Cameroonian, Lebanese, Mexican and Assyrian origins who founded their businesses in Sweden. The study relies on process-oriented theory building and develops an inductive model of integration as an opportunity creation process.

The suggested model shows immigrants’ acculturation into the host society via three successive phases: breaking-ice, breaking-in and breaking-out. In the breaking-ice phase, immigrants trigger entrepreneurial ideas to overcome the disadvantages that they face as immigrants in the host country. In the breaking-in phase, immigrants articulate their entrepreneurial ideas by bonding with the ethnic community. In the breaking-out phase, the immigrants reorient their entrepreneurial ideas by desegregating them locally. The paper concludes by elaborating theoretical and practical implications of the research.

Immigrants act when they are socially excluded and discriminated in the labor market by developing business ideas and becoming entrepreneurs. By practicing the new language and accommodating native customers’ preferences, immigrants reorient their entrepreneurial ideas. The immigrants tailor their ideas to suit their new customers by strengthening their sense of belonging to the local community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese immigrant businesses in Australia were able to shift from low return start-up businesses and move to more competitive business models targeting mainstream clientele. The research aims to identify the factors enabling a break-out strategy for these entrepreneurs and whether a horizontal or vertical break-out was achieved.

A qualitative research method with in-depth interviews is employed. Interviews were conducted with 55 Chinese immigrant business owners in Sydney and Canberra.

The analysis found that a break-out strategy depended on a range of business activities, including innovation, marketing, networking and personnel strategies. Importantly, the current research found that these resources have varying degrees of importance in the different stages of the transition to the new business model. Accumulating sufficient financial capital was a fundamental enabler for a break-out strategy, followed by the capacity to learn and benefit from the experience of social networks.

The current research highlights the importance of financial capital and capacity to benefit from social networks as fundamental factors in enabling a break-out strategy. The benefit of the qualitative approach in obtaining rich data needs to be offset by potential limitations on generalisability. Future research could incorporate comparison between different size businesses as well as analysing factors underpinning a failure to successfully implement a break-out.

The findings indicate that business support groups and policymakers could review access to financial capital for entrepreneurs seeking break-outs, consider improving opportunities for developing capacity to utilise heterogeneous social networks, and consider pathways for improving skills acquisition amongst immigrant entrepreneurs.

This paper contributes to the research literature on break-out strategies used by immigrant entrepreneurs by analysing, in detail, the transition steps undertaken by ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in the shift to more competitive business models.

Given the importance of immigration and immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies, the authors take an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective to study the home-country benefits possessed by immigrant entrepreneurs and how home-country entrepreneurial ecosystem factors affect immigrant entrepreneurial motivations, activities and outcomes.

This conceptual research paper follows McGaghie, Bordage and Shea's (2001) four-step new theory creation process, which suggests that new theories can be created through facts extraction from the extant literature.

The authors propose that although immigrant entrepreneurs are unable to take full benefit of the host-country entrepreneurial ecosystem due to blocked mobility, they do have capabilities to access and use their home-country entrepreneurial resources and opportunities. The authors further propose that home-country entrepreneurial capital can be systemically analyzed through the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The results imply that immigrant entrepreneurship as a social and economic phenomenon can be studied more holistically from both host- and home-country perspectives compared to the traditional research boundary of the host-country only.

The research focuses on the identification of home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship through the lens of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Testable propositions provide directions for future empirical research on the field of immigrant entrepreneurship from a home-country perspective. The research concludes that a holistic immigrant entrepreneurship study should consider dual (host- and home-country) entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Immigrant entrepreneurs benefit from both host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems. This paper suggests co-effects of dual entrepreneurial ecosystems lead to a high rate of entrepreneurship and business success within some immigrant groups. Policymakers can increase economic activities by developing and deploying programs to encourage immigrants to embed in host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Based on the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, this paper brings a novel perspective to examining home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship. It theoretically conceptualizes that immigrants have higher entrepreneurship rates than native-born populations because they have access to extra home-country entrepreneurial capital.

Taking the entrepreneur’s perspective and a broad view of business advisory services, the purpose of this paper is to examine to what degree the need of business advisory services among Swedish start-ups, first-generation immigrants compared to non-immigrants, is fulfilled.

The sample data consist of a unique and comprehensive firm-level database and contain telephone interviews with 2,800 Swedish start-up entrepreneurs. The study examines 20 different kinds of business advice services, in terms of both need and use. Statistical methods such as Mann-Whitney test and regression analysis are used while controlling for entrepreneurial characteristics.

The findings suggest that immigrants’ compared to non-immigrants’ need for business advisory service was not fulfilled. Of the 20 different business advices, ten were fulfilled and ten were not fulfilled. Both strategic advice and operational advice were fulfilled as well as unfulfilled. Apart from ethnicity, other variables did influence the need of business advisory services.

The author was not able to make comparisons between different immigrant groups.

This study offers an explorative approach that contributes on how business advisory services are differentially tailored between start-ups by immigrants and those by non-immigrants. It illustrates to what extent public- and/or private-funded organizations contribute to fulfilment of the needs of immigrant and non-immigrant start-ups.

Few studies take the entrepreneur’s perspective and from such a perspective examine the fulfilment of needs of advice regarding both private and public organizations role in the area. Both the need and the use of business advisory services are studied as well as the kind of business advice that is needed.