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Transnational migrant entrepreneurship is an increasingly important and multi-faceted process. Because of the ‘double transition’ of Albanian migrants, in terms of migration (spatial transition) and in terms of transition from socialism to capitalism and more specifically the absence of entrepreneurship experience in their homeland during the communist regime, we might think of Albanians as being in a weak position for mastering entrepreneurship. But, paradoxically, the evidence tends to prove the opposite. Albanians have succeeded in identifying various entrepreneurial opportunities, and are nowadays increasingly engaging in a wider range of entrepreneurial activities. The overall aim of this chapter thus is to analyse the causes and consequences of transnational entrepreneurship among Albanian migrants doing business with Albania and Albanian returnees pursuing business activities with their former destination countries. For this purpose, the author draws on face-to-face interviews with 50 Albanian migrant entrepreneurs engaged in cross-border economic activities in Albania, Italy and Greece, supplemented by further interviews with key informants, as well as government policy documents. The analysis in this chapter offers important insights into the two main types of entrepreneur, which are ‘necessity’ and ‘opportunity’ entrepreneurs; the emergence of academic entrepreneurship among Albanian transnational entrepreneurs; and the contribution of transnational migrant entrepreneurs in terms of added value at the individual and community levels, as well as potentially impacting on the country’s economic and social development.

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 purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transnational entrepreneurs in growing born global firms, with a focus on the growth process facilitated by collaborative entry mode.

The author chose the solar photovoltaic industry as the empirical setting. This industry is a particularly good context for the study because many firms in this industry sell knowledge-intensive products internationally from their inception. The primary data consist of 32 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, industry association representatives, research institute scholars, and professional service firms.

The study highlights the importance of transnational entrepreneurs who develop born global firms to maturity by using their technological knowledge, international connections, and bicultural advantages to navigate and leverage institutional complexity. Collaborative entry mode with distributors enables born global firms’ high growth rapidly, whereas transnational entrepreneurs play a central role in building and expanding international network. Initial public offering in overseas stock exchange accelerates the high growth trajectory of born global firm by signalling its maturity.

The author took a process perspective by examining the growth and maturity of born global firms by collaborative partnership; the author’s focus on the role of transnational entrepreneurs highlighted entrepreneurs’ sensitivity to institutional complexity along the growth trajectory.

The author recommends both incumbent and entrepreneurial firms in developed economies collaborate with transnational entrepreneurs in various business areas. Industry firms may be able to cooperate on product and marketing development, and professional service firms can offer services to expand born global firms further, because transnational entrepreneurs follow the global “rules of the game”.

The author shed important light on the role of transnational entrepreneurs throughout the growth of born global firms via collaborative entry mode. Furthermore, the author develops a multilevel framework for analysing the combined influence of transnational entrepreneur and institutional complexity on the growth of born global firm.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants of transnational business ties (i.e. ties with the country of origin) and to investigate their impact on the economic performance of immigrant firms.

Based on the representative survey conducted among 259 foreign-born immigrant entrepreneurs in Marche region (Central Italy), the study investigates the determinants of having transnational ties with countries of origin. Then it compares the effect of transnational ties and the effect of alternative domestic ethnic business ties on the performance of immigrant firms.

This study demonstrates that having transnational ties is more likely for individuals with former entrepreneurial experience in the home countries and with higher education acquired in Italy. The performance of immigrant firms in the 2014–2016 period (measured by the level of revenues) is positively related to transnational ties – this effect is very strong and significant. On the other hand, reliance on the domestic ethnic ties (i.e. ties with co-ethnic population in Italy) is one of the key factors that inhibits further growth of immigrant enterprises.

This study advances the understanding of how immigrant entrepreneurs create transnational business ties with their home countries. Additionally, this research contributes to the existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurship, by explaining the role of heterogeneous business ties: transnational connections, domestic ties with co-ethnic partners and ties with individuals from native population (in this case: Italy) for the entrepreneurial performance. Consequently, it offers recommendations for policy-makers willing to encourage entrepreneurial activities of immigrants in host countries and to their counterparts in home countries, who are planning to use the advantage diaspora entrepreneurial potential for the benefit of their economies.

This paper contributes to the development of an enhanced understanding of the breakout strategies of immigrant entrepreneurs within a transnational context. It develops a dynamic notion of breakout by placing it within a wider understanding of immigrant entrepreneurial strategy characterised by multifocal embeddedness within transnational space.

This study adopted a qualitative research methodological approach. In-depth interviews were completed with 30 first- and second-generation UK-based Nigerian entrepreneurs and key informants, to provide data on business growth strategies of individual immigrant entrepreneurs in the context of opportunity structures across host, home and third countries.

Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs adopted distinctive entrepreneurial strategies related to the complex and diverse transnational context within which they were embedded. Findings demonstrated how the realisation of diversification and differentiation strategies was particularly influenced by locational and spatial strategies, the specific contextual embeddedness of the entrepreneur and generational differences across entrepreneurs.

Conceptualising immigrant entrepreneurship from a standpoint of transnational, multifocal embeddedness produces a complex and multi-layered understanding of business breakout as a dynamic process. Drawing together the unifocal, bifocal and multifocal dimensions of embeddedness with findings on the breakout strategies being pursued by immigrant entrepreneurs, an original typology is presented which identifies different approaches to breakout across varied contexts. This has significant policy and practice implications for the content, targeting and access of business support and wider social issues, relating to the identities, social mobility and integration of immigrant entrepreneurs.

Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs (RWMEs) are amongst the largest EU migrant communities in the UK and make significant socioeconomic contributions to both their host and origin nations, but academic research and policy discussions have ignored them. Intersectionality raises complex contextual issues that require comprehensive examination and inclusive policies and programmes. This study is aimed at exploring how Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs experience their transnational intersectional journeys of belonging, as they create, negotiate and enact their intersectional identities of the country of origin, gender and being entrepreneurs in the UK and Romania.

This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) draws on draws upon Crenshaw's (1991) intersectional and Social Identity theories (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) to investigate how nine interviewed RWMEs have experienced their transnational journeys of acculturative belonging in the UK and Romania.

The study findings show how RWMEs undo and negotiate their intersecting identities to adhere to socio-cultural standards in both their host and native nations. In the UK, they feel empowered as women entrepreneurs, but in patriarchal Romania, their entrepreneurial identity is revoked, contradicting the prescribed socio-cultural roles.

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

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.

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.

This paper aims to investigate UK based, family‐owned, Asian firms' motives for internationalising.

This paper reports on eight interviews with the key decision‐makers in UK based, Asian, family‐owned firms.

Differences were found between two groups of firms: first, “internationally oriented Asian entrepreneurs” were those whose manufacturing operations were based in the UK but whose businesses were involved in overseas sales; second, “transnational entrepreneurs” were those who operated in two socially embedded environments and leveraged their family's resources in their country of origin in order to serve overseas markets.

The contribution of this paper is that it offers socio‐cultural insights into issues that motivated these firms to internationalise and especially those that outsourced operations to the Indian sub‐continent.

Diversity is becoming the context through which researchers can account for different aspects of increasingly complexifying conditions of both entrepreneurship and migration. Taking a superdiversity perspective, this chapter uncovers and conceptualises what is diversifying particularly in migrant entrepreneurship. The authors identify four different dimensions of diversity and diversification affecting the activities of migrant entrepreneurs. First, with diversifying flows of migration, the characteristics of the entrepreneurs themselves as individual (usually transnational) migrants are diversifying. Second, with changing migration contexts, resources deriving from migration experiences are diversifying, exemplified by the different forms of transnational capitals used in entrepreneurship. Third, through migrant-led processes of diversification in the larger society, the main markets are diversifying, providing further opportunities to migrant entrepreneurs. Last but not least, the entrepreneurial strategies of migrant entrepreneurs are accordingly also diversifying, whereby finding different breaking-out strategies beyond the classical notion of only serving ethnic niche markets arise.

These diversities are embedded in the context of the overall superdiversifying society in which migrant entrepreneurs emerge and struggle to establish. By disentangling the different dimensions of diversity, this chapter contextualises debates on entrepreneurship and migration, including those in the present edited book, into the larger debate on the societal turn to superdiversity. It further discusses the notions and practices of differences embodied in migrant entrepreneurship, beyond the notion of the ethnic niche and the disadvantaged striving for market integration.