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This study investigates the role of transnational mixed-embeddedness when transnational entrepreneurial firms (TEFs) become internationalized. First-generation immigrant entrepreneurs who maintain business arrangements in their home and host countries own TEFs. In many cases, they internationalize from emerging economies to advanced economies. Nevertheless, this study focuses on TEF cases that internationalize from an advanced to an emerging economy, which prior transnational entrepreneurship studies have largely overlooked.

This research uses a qualitative approach based on six TEF case studies from Canada and the UK venturing into China to explore TEFs' internationalization.

The case studies explore the elements that constitute TEFs' cognitive and relational embeddedness—two main types of embeddedness—in home and host countries and how TEFs exploit such embeddedness for their internationalization. The results suggest that high levels of transnational mixed-embeddedness help TEFs reduce resource and institutional distance barriers in home countries, thereby assisting their internationalization. A framework that visualizes the role of transnational mixed-embeddedness in TEFs' internationalization and novel categorizations of transnational mixed-embeddedness is proposed.

Although there has been a growing demand for research on the emergence of internationalized smaller firms, there have been few empirical efforts on TEFs' internationalization. It is still unclear how TEFs internationalize differently than homegrown entrepreneurial firms. This study fills this gap in transnational entrepreneurship literature by examining the influence of transnational mixed-embeddedness on TEFs' internationalization.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how informal migrant entrepreneurs with different legal statuses interpret their mixed-embeddedness in social and economic contexts. Legal status represents a key determinant in shaping accessible social networks and market opportunities that in turn influence entrepreneurial choices.

The paper adopts an interpretative stance to explore how migrant entrepreneurs interpret mixed-embeddedness. It draws on the empirical evidence from a cross-sectional sample of 26 asylum seekers that engaged with enterprising activities in the city of Nottingham in the UK. A recursive hermeneutic process guided the iterative readings of the accounts to develop theoretical insights on how these agents reinvent their relationship with structure.

A novel theoretical framework emerges from the data analysis to present how these particular migrants use understandings of community and notions of capital to make sense of their mixed-embeddedness. The main theoretical contribution of the framework is to illustrate how groups with different legal statuses produce unique interpretations of mixed-embeddedness. This, in turn, reflects onto specific forms of enterprising and innovative entrepreneurial choices. The framework also produces an empirical contribution as it re-centres the analysis of mixed-embeddedness around the migrant entrepreneur from previous meso- and macro-level perspectives that dominated recent research.

The paper expands knowledge on the notion of mixed-embeddedness by providing insights on how informal migrant entrepreneurs make sense of it. This can form the basis for allowing scholars to address empirically how migrant entrepreneurs reconcile their embeddedness in both social and economic contexts. In terms of practical implications, the paper paves the way for policy-makers to re-evaluate the current approach to the right of asylum seekers to pursue entrepreneurial activities.

The notion of mixed-embeddedness is central to research on informal migrant enterprising. Nevertheless, the concept remains fuzzy and difficult to operationalise. The paper offers an opportunity to understand how migrant entrepreneurs make sense of mixed-embeddedness so that future scholars can better explore how mixed-embeddedness reconciles agency and structure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of the mixed embeddedness thesis (Kloosterman, 2010; Rath and Kloosterman, 2002) to businesses with a more transnational mode of operation.

Interviews with the owner managers of a sample 24 Vietnamese businesses in London were undertaken to develop an understanding of how micro (individual resources: social, financial and cultural/human capital, and history of migration), meso (local, regional and national markets) and macro (politico-institutional) factors in the UK and overseas influenced business development.

The findings illustrate how business development is influenced not just by the interaction of the local (UK) opportunity structure and the entrepreneur’s resources, as suggested by the mixed embeddedness thesis, but also by institutional regimes, economies and markets in key countries of the diaspora, and the interaction of these. The extent to which new transnational opportunities can be exploited, however, depends on access to the necessary local and transnational forms of capital.

The empirical evidence presented is used to present a re-working of the mixed embeddedness thesis to provide a framework for understanding the drivers of transnational entrepreneurship.

The paper presents new empirical knowledge of transnational activity amongst the UK Vietnamese business community – a little known refugee community. Conceptually, the paper offers a theoretical development of the mixed embeddedness thesis to enable it to provide an explanation of transnational entrepreneurship amongst new migrant communities.

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).

The purpose of this article is to investigate how social integration, immigrant networks and barriers to ventureing affect the entrepreneurial activities of Brazilians in Canada, indicating how mixed embeddedness takes place in that context.

Data were collected in Toronto, through the application of a survey with 74 Brazilian entrepreneur respondents and 42 semi-structured interviews with selected subjects, thus representing a multi-method approach. The analysis included descriptive statistics from the survey data and a qualitative analysis of the trajectories and life stories of Brazilian immigrants.

Our sample comprises respondents with a high level of education and proficiency in English, coming predominantly from the southeast of Brazil, white, aged from 30 to 49. The majority of businesses are small and related to the service sector. The article contributes to the literature by discussing the elements related to mixed embeddedness, including the need for cultural adaptation and for the creation of networks as a crucial element for business venturing.

The study focuses on entrepreneurs regardless of their businesses sector or formality/informality status. It could be used as an instrument to support Canadian public policies for welcoming Brazilians and for the Brazilian government to prevent the evasion of potential entrepreneurs.

The article contributes to the body of knowledge of immigrant entrepreneurship in Canada and of Brazilian entrepreneurship overseas. The results suggest factors that may be relevant to the expansion of their business, such as social networking, cultural embeddedness and adaptation of the products/services to a wider range of target customers.

Recent years have seen a wave of immigration in western countries. Entrepreneurship can foster refugees’ integration in the labour market. Hence, the authors observe an emergence of incubators with social purpose, addressing the key challenges of refugee entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to look at the particularities and the impact of business incubation on entrepreneurial development and embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in the host country by applying the theoretical lens of mixed embeddedness theory.

This paper is based on a qualitative case study approach exploring one business incubation model for refugee entrepreneurs in Germany. For a multi-stakeholder perspective, the data were collected through a participatory focus group workshop and semi-structured interviews of refugee entrepreneurs and incubator stakeholders (e.g. incubator management, mentors and partners) contributing to the incubation. The data collection extends over the duration of five months of the incubation programme.

The empirical results emphasise the impact of the business incubator on refugee entrepreneur’s development and embeddedness. In this analysis, the authors identify key themes of a particular incubation process addressing the lack of embeddedness and barriers to refugee entrepreneurs in the host country. From the results, the authors elaborate a particular business incubation process framework of refugee entrepreneurs.

The findings enhance the understanding how business incubation contributes to the embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in their new hosting environment. Thus, this research contributes to the existing literature by extending incubation model frameworks towards refugee entrepreneurship and embeddedness perspectives. Furthermore, the study emphasises the role of the incubator in the context of the dimensions of the mixed embeddedness of the refugee entrepreneurs.

Concludes that the impact of the economic context on entrepreneurship among immigrants is group specific. The concepts of embeddedness, which acknowledges that economic action is embedded in the structures of social relations, and mixed embeddedness, which incorporates both roles of co‐ethnic networks and linkages between immigrants and the broader society, could have a major role in explaining these variations. However, these concepts could be criticized as being fuzzy and hard to verify empirically, and as presenting an idealistic image on the favorable role of intra‐ethnic networks. Case studies demonstrate various aspects of the economic milieu that influence immigrant enterprise and provide some evidence for the embeddedness and mixed embeddedness concepts, although not fulfilling the need for a broader and more formal verification of arguments based on these concepts. An imbalance between too intensive intra‐ethnic ties and lack of sufficient instrumental inter‐ethnic networks is revealed in some of the studies.

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 aim is to identify the potential for establishing successful businesses operations or institutions emanating from returnees' mixed embeddedness in post-conflict Cambodia.

This explorative study of the two largest groups of returnees, the Cambodian French and the Cambodian Americans, compares these two categories through a review of literature on Cambodians in the USA and France and primary fieldwork data obtained through open interviews with Cambodian returnees in Cambodia.

Cambodian French and Cambodian American returnees show different entrepreneurial dispositions and hence play different roles in the Cambodian economy. While the all-embracing welfare system in France incapacitated both the self-sufficiency and community building among Cambodian diaspora, the market-driven model of social services in the USA induced the Cambodian diaspora with a commercial orientation. While both categories initiate institutional and business ventures, their contribution to social change in Cambodia is modest. Among the returnee entrepreneurs, the Chinese Cambodians seem to be most successful in their business ventures irrespective of their diasporic background.

The emerging scholarly interest in “immigrant transnationalism” tends to focus in particular on identity issues. Contrastingly, this article focuses on economic aspects of “immigrant transnationalism” in terms of its “mixed embeddedness” in both home and host country economies.

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.