Editorial: Ethno-cultural diversity and contemporary national societies

Shaking the Minority Box: Conceptualizing the Impact of Context and Social Capital on the Entrepreneurial Activity of Minorities

“…However, the rights of Swedish-speakers have been constitutionally enshrined in that Finland is a bilingual country, with Finnish and Swedish as official languages of formally equal status. Apart from that, the vitality and significance of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finnish society has largely rested on its own political, cultural and economic activity in combination with key publicly funded institutions such as a Swedish-language educational system stretching from kindergarten to university (Raento and Husso, 2002).…”

“…Some scholars have taken an interest in indigenous minorities (Dana, 1995;Dana and Anderson, 2007) and religious groups (Weber, 1904(Weber, -1905Sombart, 1911;Dana, 2010) who are minorities, but not recent immigrants, thus partially highlighting the time dimension. Overall, however, we have a limited understanding of entrepreneurship in ethnic communities and diaspora networks that may in many cases go back hundreds of years (Volery, 2007), and we lack studies that analyse the entrepreneurial activities of 'old ethnic minorities' (Raento and Husso, 2002) and compare them with majority populations. Furthermore, contemporary research has often focused on underprivileged ethnic entrepreneurial groups, ignoring financially more prosperous communities.…”