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This paper aims to understand how immigrant entrepreneurs use digital opportunities to overcome the liability of newness and foreignness and how an immigrant's ethnicity can be digitally performed as an asset in business.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach using social media content. The data consist of over 3,500 posts, images and screenshots from Facebook, Instagram and the webpages of seven successful Vietnamese restaurants in Sweden. Grounded content analysis was conducted using NVivo.

The findings suggest that digitalising ethnic artifacts can mediate and facilitate three digital performances that together can turn ethnicity from a liability to an asset: (i) preserving performance through digital ethnicising, (ii) embracing performance through digital generativitising and (iii) appropriating performance through digital fusionising. The results support the introduction of a conceptual framework depicting the interwoven duality of horizontal and vertical boundary blurring, in which the former takes place between the offline and online spaces of immigrant businesses, and the latter occurs between the home and host country attachment of the immigrant businesses.

This study responds to calls for understanding how immigrant entrepreneurs can overcome the liability of foreignness. It offers a fresh look at ethnicity, which has been seen in a negative light in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship. This study illuminates that ethnicity can be used as a resource in immigrant entrepreneurship, specifically through the use of digital artifacts and digital platforms.

This study utilizes Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus to investigate the networking strategies of Asian and Black knowledge workers in the London Insurance Market. It also examines the factors contributing to the success or failure of these strategies. The trading activities of the London Insurance Market are underpinned by interdependent relations among its participants. It provides an appropriate context for examining the networking strategies adopted by Asian and Black workers to accelerate their careers.

This research employed a qualitative methodology, gathering data from 24 participants through semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected using purposive, convenience, and snowball sampling methods. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data and develop aggregated concepts from the identified themes and subthemes.

The London Insurance Market accords great importance to networking. Interpersonal connections significantly influenced career progression, often overshadowing educational attainments. Asian and Black workers faced systemic nepotism and limited access to influential networks in this field. Participants strategically used their interactions to overcome these challenges and advance their careers. Many believed that their careers had a better chance of progressing through informal networks than through formal channels such as Human Resources. Some participants declined to engage in the commonly accepted networking practices, choosing alternative ways to further their careers.

Findings underscore the need for implementing specific organizational policies to address systemic biases and nepotism, particularly in front-office recruitment. Such policies could include prioritizing merit-based hiring practices and developing targeted initiatives to reduce the underrepresentation of minority ethnic workers in front-office positions. By adopting these measures, organizations can create more equitable career advancement opportunities and leverage the full potential of their diverse workforce.

This study contributes to the existing literature on minority ethnic workers' careers, networking theory and workplace diversity. It provides insights into the networking strategies of Asian and Black workers within the London Insurance Market, revealing that these strategies are dependent on contextual factors. The study also highlights the pervasive practice of nepotism deeply ingrained in the habitus of the London Insurance Market and which acts as a barrier for gaining access to influential networks.

By combining manifold approaches from migrant entrepreneurship and family business studies, the purpose of the paper is to shed some light upon the contextual features of motivation, resources, generational pathways of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs in Berlin – through the lens of a mixed and multiple embeddedness approach.

An explorative research design, based on an eclectic theoretical framework and on purposive sampling, combines qualitative in-depth interviews/content analysis and on-site observation resulting in an almost ethnographic assessment of selected case studies of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs (concerning age (min. 20 years), size (15+ employees) and currently at a stage of succession).

The results show that despite specific strategies vary – four circumstances hold true for all cases: (1) firm trajectories were characterized by little strategic planning and mostly trail-and error processes in the past and business survival is highly dependent on owner families; (2) owner families heavily relied on personal, family and collective resources, not benefiting from promotion programmes or micro-funding measures for SMEs; (3) owner families have actively developed their (mixed) embeddings during the growth of their migrant business beyond the single ethnic group at various spatial scales; (4) succession adds another layer of context – what we call here multiple embeddedness – with ambivalent effects: emerging potentials and conflicts between the preceding and succeeding generation.

Results have shown that is it necessary to set up both: customized funding opportunities for migrant start-ups in general and succession consulting for migrant family entrepreneurs in particular. Given the magnitude of family migrant entrepreneurs and the accelerating migration patterns in most Western European countries, there is urgent need for such measures.

Family entrepreneurship has been often discussed without a migration perspective, neither taking a systematic look at pertinent motivation, resources, and future trajectories nor context. Migrant entrepreneurship studies barely take the family or family-specific issues (e.g. succession) into account, and mainly deal with the integration or economic aspects. Our mixed and multiple embeddedness approach allows for a holistic view on transgenerational migrant family entrepreneurship by integrating both socio-spatial (actor, family, network, micro, meso, macro) and multi-generational contexts (preceding, succeeding).

Recent calls in international management (IM) research ask scholars to conduct more context-sensitive research, however; little attention has been paid to the methodological particularities that inform such context sensitivity. This paper aims to addresses this shortcoming by exploring how emic concepts implicate IM research processes during qualitative field studies.

We carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Brazilian subsidiaries of three German multinational enterprises. We relied on the researchers’ experiences and data from a larger research project including 63 semi-structured interviews, 7 focus groups, documents and field notes. Adopting a culturally sensitive and self-reflexive lens, we reflect on the researchers’ experiences in the Brazilian sociocultural context from an interpretive paradigm.

Our findings reveal how seven identified emic concepts affect four prototypical phases of the research process: securing access, collecting data, analyzing data and presenting findings. We discuss how these seven emic concepts influenced the research process and impacted research outcomes, as experienced by the researchers.

Findings are limited by our self-reflexive capabilities as foreign researchers, the limited explanatory power of emic categories, our paradigmatic positioning and the research context.

We contribute to research practice by providing eight suggestions for conducting international fieldwork and proposing avenues for future research.

This research contributes to the epistemological and methodological debate on context-sensitive research by arguing that intercultural sensitivity needs to be managed as an integral dimension for any form of international fieldwork. Findings contribute to interpretive approaches showing how emic concepts affect research practices, with implications for critical management perspectives.

By exploiting the exogeneity of the unexpected 2015 European refugee crisis, the paper’s purpose is to analyze the causal impact of the crisis on resident immigrants’ life satisfaction. Due to the ongoing anti-immigrant sentiments, we argue that the refugee crisis and the build-up to it affect how resident immigrants are looked upon in a negative light; this in turn could consequently be reflected in their life satisfaction. We anchor the natives’ hostility toward the refugees and immigrants on the group-threat theory.

Using two waves of the European Values Study, we exploit the exogenous source of variations generated by the crisis and employ a difference-in-differences estimation framework to identify the causal impact.

Our findings indicate negative impact of the refugee crisis on resident immigrants’ life satisfaction. We find negative impact of the refugee crisis on the life satisfactions of resident immigrants with low education levels. Our results also suggest that resident immigrants in Western European countries experience lower life satisfaction after the crisis.

The literature so far mostly revolves around the impact of the crisis on natives’ objective well-being. We find it surprising that the literature has not fully utilized the rare opportunity afforded by the refugee crisis to analyze its impact on resident immigrants’ subjective well-being.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2024-0093

This article explores the overlooked experiences of Chinese students in Australia from the White Australia Policy era to the post-war period. It argues that the emerging post-war transitional generation faced racial discrimination and geopolitical challenges, leading to the establishment of student societies and collaborations with religious groups and NGOs. Through writing and publishing in the 1950s and 1960s, they challenged rigid ethnic identities, shaping their ethnic identities, national belonging, language practices, and community involvement amidst historical contexts. Their narratives vividly depict a generational awakening, highlighting complex processes of integration and acculturation into a new societal landscape.

This paper employs historical discourse analysis using Chinese student magazines and bilingual archives to explore language and identity evolution among Chinese students in 1950s’ and 1960s’ Australia. It contextualizes ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity transformations and examines how language politics and diaspora writings shaped integration strategies. The study highlights education and language politics' transformative roles in redefining cultural belonging and fostering community cohesion within the diaspora amid shifting socio-political contexts.

The findings of this study reveal that the concept of the “transitional generation” highlights integration as a dynamic process involving ongoing dialogue, identity negotiation through language, and the redefinition of cultural boundaries. Through analysis of three student-centered magazines – Murhun, Asiana and East Wind – it becomes evident how Chinese students in Australia navigated ethnic, cultural and linguistic identities. Murhun used bilingual content to strengthen solidarity and political engagement among Chinese readers, while Asiana employed English to connect Asian students with Australian society and globally. East Wind facilitated a diverse expression of identity, challenging singular notions of “Chineseness” and promoting cultural integration. These insights reflect a transformative period where Chinese students reshaped their historical position, fostering autonomy and challenging stereotypes like “Yellow Perils”.

This paper examines the often-overlooked experiences of post-war Chinese students in Australia, emphasizing their profound influence on immigration history and shifting public perceptions of Asian immigrants. It introduces the concept of the “transitional generation” to address research gaps and highlight the nuanced complexities of integration, respecting the diverse experiences and identities within this dynamic student community. Emphasizing dynamic negotiation and shared experiences, the study underscores how Australia’s diverse Asian communities have transformative potential. Integration extends beyond adaptation, fostering inclusive spaces for identity negotiation, thriving NGOs and enriching Australia’s social fabric with resilience, diversity and cultural vibrancy.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) offers a level playing field to all ethnic entrepreneurs (EE’s) operating from within it. The purpose of this qualitative research case study is to explore the reasons underpinning the relatively greater success that Indian-origin EE’s in the UAE have been enjoying for sustained periods – and across diverse industries – relative to their counterparts belonging to several other nations.

Qualitative research case study that draws from data gathered through 30 interviews of participants identified through expert sampling.

Whereas the UAE treats all its ethnic entrepreneurs (EE’s) alike and provides them with a level platform to operate from, the EE’s from India have consistently been outperforming those from all other nations, particularly within the context of the UAE’s large businesses spanning diverse industries. Three features seem to explain their success: their high tolerance for ambiguity; thriftiness; and intercultural competence.

Two key limitations were faced: firstly, the negligible research literature on ethnic entrepreneurship in the UAE, and related official statistics such as details (by ethnicity/nationality) of EE-owned businesses, and secondly, the industry-wise break down of such businesses and their performance, as available in other developed nations hosting EE’s. Resultantly, alternate sources of data have been used to complete this research.

Given the UAE’s national-level institutionalised efforts to promote entrepreneurship amongst its citizens and wider populace, there are many implications that this study holds for existing and future entrepreneurs.

While on the one hand, the UAE and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council region have been witnessing frenetic ethnic entrepreneurial activity in the past decade, the research literature on the regions’ ethnic entrepreneurship is extremely patchy. This case study serves to significantly bridge this gap, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work, that extensively explores the entrepreneurial trajectory of Indian EE’s in the UAE, and the factors driving their success.

This paper critiques institutional whiteness and racial categorisation in UK higher education. This is done through the representation of the complex narratives of “mixed race” women navigating their PhD experiences in predominantly white institutions, when their identities have proximity to whiteness.

This study introduces five vignettes of “mixed race” women, gathered from a wider study of 27 PhDs and early career researchers in UK higher education. The paper employs Yuval-Davis’ framework of belonging and bell hooks' approach to chosen versus forced marginality to create a conceptual framework based on fluid agency and empowerment, recognising belonging as an ongoing process.

The findings reveal how “mixed race” women can occupy a liminal space between belonging to and rejecting racial categorisation, as they attempted to situate their self-identifications within the boundaries of institutional whiteness.

The study only utilises a small sample size of five counter-stories from a larger study on PhD career trajectories, limiting its empirical claims. It also only engages with “mixed race” women who have proximity to whiteness, encouraging research on different “mixed race” intersections.

This paper encourages more discussion around “mixed race” experiences of UK higher education and critical engagement with higher education’s reliance on statistical data to understand racialised communities.

This paper contributes new empirical insights into how whiteness is experienced when “mixed race” women negotiate their relation to it in UK higher education. It also provides theoretical advancements into understanding of institutional whiteness and critically engages with racial categorisation.

This paper responds to several calls for a cross-national comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurship throughout the longstanding discourse of this phenomenon. This study aims to comparatively analyze the nature of immigrant enclave entrepreneurship among one immigrant community across three different jurisdictional contexts (UK, Denmark and Norway) based on comparative ethnographic methods of inquiry.

The data was collected in person from April 2022 to June 2023 by the researchers to identify the similarities and differences of migrant entrepreneurial activities in three immigrant enclaves (Manchester, Oslo and Copenhagen). Comparative ethnographic narrative analysis methods and template analysis approaches were combined to analyze interviews, observations and secondary published data.

This study examines spatiality, sectoral occupation and market orientation for comparative analysis. Through detailed analysis, it uncovers the spatiality and nuances in market demands and sectoral similarities across diverse regulatory environments. Notably, it identifies traditional migrant sectoral occupations shared across regions and its relevance to immigrant enclaves.

This scholarly contribution explores immigrant entrepreneurship in various national contexts, emphasising their engagement in neglected and low-value sectors within immigrant enclaves. The study addresses the influence of the host economy’s conditions on immigrant entrepreneurs, impacting their strategic orientation and the extent of their “embeddedness”. It responds to the theoretical gap in immigrant entrepreneurship literature by conducting a cross-national investigation across countries, extending the comparative dimension to Norway and Denmark. The research employs a unique design focusing on a specific immigrant group and emphasizes spatial contexts, sectoral proliferation and market orientation within immigrant enclaves, offering insights into the mixed embeddedness perspective and the broader environmental forces shaping migrant entrepreneurial activities in the UK and Scandinavia.

Immigrant entrepreneurship, particularly immigrant women entrepreneurship, has recently gained socioeconomic attention. However, this issue does not seem to have found proper recognition yet within academic management studies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a rigorous and comprehensive historical overview of the field, highlighting the key research issues that scholars are following to date and the most intriguing research directions worthy of further development.

To reach its goal, the paper develops a systematic literature review based on the rigorous criteria of 83 papers focused on immigrant women entrepreneurs.

Findings from this study highlight that some relevant arguments related to immigrant women entrepreneurs should deserve more in-depth investigation. As an example, a clear understanding of those factors positively affecting immigrant women firms’ performance is currently missing and it may help to gain knowledge that is able to effectively support such firms. Moreover, there is a strong need to go beyond the tolerance and proclamations toward the relevance of immigrant women entrepreneurs to really understand and manage the differences and ethnic resources that immigrants have and, therefore, overcome their marginalization.

This research enhances a clear understanding of issues related to immigrant women entrepreneurship. The advancement, in terms of knowledge, of such a pivotal topic for today’s economies helps both scholars and policymakers in better targeting education plans as well as in planning ad hoc support and targeted policies, management, entrepreneurship, gender, women entrepreneurs and immigrant entrepreneurship.