Blurred borders. Entrepreneurial activity of Poles in Germany in the eyes of experts

Abstract

Th e inspiration for this article is the increasing number of businesses being established by Poles in Germany, especially in the eastern part of the country. Th e authors' aim is to research the strategies of Polish entrepreneurs behind the western border and to point out the forms of their participation in the German labor market. We base our narrative on individual interviews with the experts in the fi eld of transnational entrepreneurship, and we discuss the motivations and the competitive advantages of Polish entrepreneurs. We describe their barriers and refl ect on the future of Polish entrepreneurship in Germany. As the context, we employ sociological theories relevant in the fi eld of migrations and entrepreneurship and look at statistical data illustrating the activity of Polish entrepreneurs in the Polish-German cross-border area. We answer questions about their ways of functioning there from the viewpoint of representatives of companies, institutions and organizations supporting them. In the article, we base our fi ndings on the knowledge, opinions and predictions of our experts.

Transnational Entrepreneurship: The Case of Poland

“…According to Census data from 2011, around 15% of all self-employed migrants in Berlin were of Polish origin -way above the German average (Skraba and Nowicka, 2018, p. 27). For this reasons, Polish immigrants in Germany have been the subject of numerous studies, many of which focused on entrepreneurship and transnational entrepreneurship (Miera, 2008;Nawojczyk and Nowicka, 2018;Nawojczyk and Synowiec-Jaje, 2018;Skraba and Nowicka, 2018;Szarucki et al, 2016). Miera (2008) claims that the transnational perspective is essential for understanding strategies pursued by Polish immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany.…”

“…• making use of personal mobility, as well as differences in prices and purchasing power between Germany and Poland to develop cross-border trade, • recruiting transnational workers from Poland, • targeting the Polish community as customers, and • internationalizing business activities of companies established and based in Germany through the creation of branches in Poland. In a more recent project, the research team combined the perspectives of entrepreneurs and of experts in order to analyse entrepreneurial activities of Polish immigrants and transnational migrants (Nawojczyk and Synowiec-Jaje, 2018;Skraba and Nowicka, 2018). Anna Skraba and Magdalena Nowicka claim that migrants may contribute to revitalising neighbourhoods affected by economic stagnation and unemployment, infusing them with new energy, or reanimating selected sectors of the local economy.…”

“…Maria Nawojczyk and lidia Synowiec-Jaje show that transnationalism requires appropriate infrastructure, e.g. a network of organisations providing support to entrepreneurs from a particular country of origin in their native language (Nawojczyk and Synowiec-Jaje, 2018). They claim that certain elements of such infrastructure aimed at Polish immigrant entrepreneurs exist in Germany (especially in Berlin).…”