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Context is often treated as a separate externality, most frequently as the where of entrepreneurship. Yet, context is a complex, multi-faceted notion that is not static. This paper examines a 'deprived' UK community to identify how (dis)connections between context and enterprise are produced within accounts of a particular locality. We used a discursive psychological approach to discourse analysis to examine how the community depicted itself as a context for enterprise. Our analysis identified three discursive repertoires mobilised by a range of voices in the community, which combined to portray an unenterprising community and create a conceptual deadlock for enterprise.We suggest it is too deterministic to assume context is fixed and controls the potential for entrepreneurial development. Instead, we should consider the social practices, including talk, that help construct the contexts in which entrepreneurship is expected to occur.

The article examines young people’s attitudes towards enterprise, comparing prosperous and deprived neighbourhoods and two UK cities. Corpus linguistics analysis identified multi-layered attitudes and variations in how place prosperity and city affect attitudes. High interest in enterprise was associated with weaker place attachment and reduced social embeddedness. Young adults from prosperous neighbourhoods delegitimised other’s enterprises; the ‘deprived’ sub-corpus included more fluid notions of enterprise legitimacy. Liverpool accounts contained stronger discursive threads around self-determination; Bradford accounts included greater problematising of entrepreneurship versus employment. An original Multipartite Model of Attitudes to Enterprise is presented consisting of four layers: attitudes to enterprise generally, attitudes legitimising particular forms of enterprise, attitudes to enterprise related to place and attitudes to enterprise related to self. The conclusion explains why policies and research need to be fine-grained and avoid uni-dimensional conceptualisations of attitudes to enterprise, or deterministic arguments relating entrepreneurship to specific types of places or backgrounds.

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