Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine migrants working as inter‐cultural mediators at the interface of the formal and informal economies in southern Italy so as to question the conventional representation of knowledge workers.

Ethnographic evidence collected between September 2004 and July 2005 is presented of the knowledge work of these precarious non‐European Union migrants in Naples, Italy.

This paper displays the need to consider alternative forms of knowledge work and knowledge worker that are central to the globalizing economy. Migration and difference and their resulting social realities are seen as central features of contemporary economic change. Depicting the creative, flexible, problem‐solving aspects of intercultural mediators who work with undocumented and documented migrants in the Naples area, this paper shows how these African migrant mediators make use of their full repertoire of formally trained knowledge and more centrally their social, tacit, experiential and embodied knowledge intimately linked with their Africanness and self‐awareness of their precarious migrant status to gain the trust of other Africans. In fact, their flexibility in the face of changing circumstances and their manipulation, reading and negotiation of cultural codes depending on circumstances reveals a flexible, enterprising style suited to the challenges of the knowledge economy.

It displays how current conceptualisations of the knowledge economy and knowledge worker in contemporary advanced economies need considerable revision to include other types of migrant normally excluded from discussions.

This is one of the first attempts to display the relationship between knowledge workers, immigrants and the informal economy.

This paper aims to consider the use of rumour by Bangladeshi migrant entrepreneurs in Naples, Italy to comment on informal economic practices and migrant moral hierarchies present in that city.

It is based on ethnographic fieldwork among migrants conducted by the author in the Naples region in 2004 and 2005. Rumour has been interpreted by some scholars as a way to promote community cohesion and by others to promote the self‐interest of those circulating it.

In this paper, rumour is seen as a communicative device that offers information or news for evaluation and is a central means of distributing information in all economies. Here, migrants use the information circulating in rumours to interpret their migratory chances in Italy in general and, more specifically, entrepreneurial conditions available to those engaged in informal economic activities in the Neapolitan economy. These rumours travel beyond a circumscribed racialised group to have purchase in wider social fields. In this case, as subjective representations of economic behaviour, these rumours offer models for entrepreneurial activities to be admired, mimicked, condemned, or avoided.

This ethnographic material suggests that greater attention should be paid to how subjective understandings spur social action as reflected here through the use of rumours as a kind of knowledge to be assessed and interpreted to form the basis of decisions about economic behaviour among Bangladeshi migrants in Naples.

This article provides a formal framework for the analysis of the impact of international migration in the presence of remittances. The discussion differentiates between temporary and permanent migration and between the effects of remittances that raise investment and those that raise consumption spending in the source country. Changes in prices, income distribution and national welfare are examined.

This paper aims to examine the myriad linkages between cross‐border migration and international business activity through a conceptual framework of international arbitrage.

While labour is internationally the least integrated of the various markets (capital, product, labour) the increasing co‐movement of both tasks and workers has created opportunities for the arbitrage and exploitation of differences between national labour markets. Because national labour markets typically display the two characteristics of separation and price discrepancy it is possible to utilise the principle of arbitrage and within this framework examine cost, intellectual, knowledge and employment arbitrage.

The discussion suggests that international business offers valuable insights into migration processes and effects which have been dominated by the research approaches of other disciplines. It is found that migrants can help reduce transaction costs for bilateral trade, contribute to nostalgic trade, encourage outsourcing and foreign direct investment through referrals and performance signalling, assist country of origin development through remittances and return migration and provide valuable knowledge to their employers in the country of residence.

The paper is a conceptual one which offers no new empirical results but does provide a context for the interpretation of the more specialised studies that appear in this special issue. There is a need for research on this topic to be firmly grounded in the contemporary context of an increasingly integrated global economy. It also suggests a number of specific areas where further work would be useful.

The key contribution of the paper is in developing a comprehensive conceptual framework – that of labour market arbitrage – which enables a clearer understanding of the complex impacts of international migration on international business activity. It also distinguishes between direct and indirect effects.

As the impact of COVID-19 on businesses was impossible to predict, so is the future of migrant entrepreneurs – some of whom, before the outbreak, had to deal with immigrant status associated challenges. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to focus on African migrant entrepreneurs in China, much less studied ethnic migrants who have always lived on the margins of Chinese society, to examine their entrepreneurial resilience under COVID-19 in China.

The study used a qualitative design using a survey and semi-structured follow-up interviews as the primary data collection instrument. The questions in the questionnaire guide were adapted from the Center for Global Development survey instrument designed to gauge the resilience of SMEs under COVID-19.

Although most business operations in China are impacted, African migrant businesses were very hit due to existing social challenges coupled with their informality (i.e. operating at a low level of organization), lack of contingency plans and lack of stimulus support. COVID-19 is thus not only a force majeure that threatens the growth expectation of African owned-business but also presents a threat to their very existence in an already challenging society for Africans.

Although the study has achieved its intended purpose, the sample was relatively small due to the low return rate of questionnaires and the difficulties in reaching out to target respondents due to the restrictive measures on movements during the data collection period.

This paper draws attention to the entrepreneurship-related challenges faced by ethnic migrants in China during a crisis. The social challenges of Africans living in China became a global topical issue during the COVID-19 outbreak in China. However, little is known about their entrepreneurship endeavors and the associated difficulties. This paper helps our understanding of African businesses’ resilience in China during uncertain times, such as the one created by COVID-19.

This paper aims to explore the role of migrants in the process of place making, through case studies of migrant engagement with municipal planning in five South African municipalities.

This study draws on empirical research carried out over two years, using mixed methods research in each municipal case study. Data come from key stakeholder interviews, participant observation, focus groups and demographic data to understand the perceptions and practices of local government officials and migrants within the community.

This research demonstrated that local government officials are assuming a population that is sedentary and geographically bounded, while migration is actively shaping communities. This mobility provides an opportunity for management practices to become more inclusive and effective.

By examining systems of local governance through the lens of a mobile population, new possibilities emerge about the ways migrant participation can contribute to the definitions of a place.

Various forms of precarious employment create barriers to the integration and inclusion of migrant workers in receiving countries. The purpose of this paper is to review extant research in employment relations and management to identify key factors that contribute to migrant workers' precarious employment and highlight potential avenues for future research.

The authors conducted a narrative literature review drawing on 38 academic journal articles published between 2005 and 2020.

The authors’ review suggests that macro- and meso-level factors contribute to the precarious employment conditions of migrant workers. However, there is a limited articulation of successful practices and potential solutions to reduce migrant work precarity and exclusion. The literature on migrant workers' precarious employment experience is primarily focused on low-skilled sector (e.g. agriculture, hospitality, domestic care) jobs. In addition, few studies have explored the role of worker characteristics, such as gender, class, ethnicity, race and migration status, in shaping the experience of migrant workers in precarious employment.

The results of this research highlight the importance of engaging multilevel actors in addressing migrant employment precarity, including policymakers, employers and employment agencies.

This research contributes to a growing conversation of migrant employment precarity by highlighting the heterogeneity of migrant groups and calling for the use of intersectional lenses to understand migrant workers' experiences of precarious employment.

Within the growing study of transnational entrepreneurial practice, existing conceptualisation of diaspora entrepreneurship has often lacked engagement with the particularities of the diaspora condition. This paper seeks to advance theoretical understanding and empirical study of diaspora entrepreneurship through identifying the processes that generate diaspora entrepreneurship across economic, social and political spheres.

To analyse the relationship between the development of venture activity and diaspora (re)production, in depth, qualitative biographical analysis was undertaken with UK-based diaspora entrepreneurs embedded within the particular contexts of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas. Skilled and active diaspora entrepreneurs were purposively selected from these extreme case contexts to explore their entrepreneurial agency within and across the business, social and political realms.

Results identified key dimensions shaping the development of diaspora entrepreneurship. These comprised the role of diaspora context in shaping opportunity frameworks and the mobilisation of available resources, and how venture activity served to sustain collective diaspora identity and address diaspora interests. These findings are used to produce an analytical model of the generation of diaspora entrepreneurship to serve as a basis for discussing how heterogeneous and hybrid entrepreneurial strategies emerge from and shape the evolving diaspora context.

By placing the reproduction of social collectivity centre-stage, this paper identifies the particularities of diaspora entrepreneurship as a form of transnational entrepreneurship. This recognizes the significance of a contextualised understanding of entrepreneurial diversity within wider processes of diaspora development, which has important implications for policy and practice development in homeland and settlement areas.

Turkish food retail in Germany fulfils social, cultural, and economic functions, but is threatened by shifts in demand and competition. The purpose of this paper is to give a holistic, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented view of the challenges and opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany.

Based on a qualitative study using expert interviews with 18 businesspersons from different parts of the Turkish food supply chain in Germany and a qualitative survey of 349 working Bachelor students of trade, industrial, and logistics management as well as business informatics, this paper takes a value chain approach.

The main opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany lie in increasing its efficiency, using purchasing associations and brand building, targeting well-funded German consumers, offering fluent Turkish-German customer service and shopping experiences, providing appealing shop locations, designs, and layouts, product range adjustments, and promotions.

This paper is based on a small scale qualitative study as access to Turkish food retail experts is limited. The sample was carefully selected to be a fair representation of the Turkish food supply chain. As for the consumers, only students have been surveyed so far, because they were targeted by the experts interviewed. In order to allow wider generalizations, this sample could be extended.

This study complements and enhances the very limited research on Turkish food retail in Germany. For the first time, the call for a holistic, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented examination of the challenges and opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany is answered from a value chain perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the key issues related to migrant workers, work, public policy and HRM while introducing the five articles included in the special issue.

The paper reports on the issue which is made up of articles that present research based on surveys, interviews and longitudinal census data.

It is evident that high‐performing economies attract migrants from lower‐performing economies. However, with influxes of migrant labour there are a number of challenges that need to be met at the organisational and policy levels.

The indications are that some economies are beginning to slow and this means that migrant flows will also slow or reverse. The implications for migrant‐dependent sectors and countries are not clear, although all five papers indicate areas for further research.

Each article includes practical implications depending on the sector, skill and country being examined. Practical implications include the role of day labour centres as HR mediators between organisations and employees, the need for culturally sensitive and tailored training programs to assist professional migrants and the need for policies geared towards the assimilation of migrants and return migrants in order to assist their integration into the labour market.

The five articles presented here represent a wide range of approaches, skill levels and sectors within the five counties examined: the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and Finland. Some, such as the US paper which includes the first national survey of day labour worker centres, present findings from a highly under‐represented area.