Female Ethnicity: Understanding Muslim Immigrant Businesswomen in The Netherlands

Abstract

Building on theories of intersectionality, in this article we develop the concept of female ethnicity in order to understand the meanings of femininity for Muslim immigrant businesswomen in the context of entrepreneurship. Through the notion of female ethnicity we analyse four life stories and illustrate the tensions these women encounter because of the interlaced working of gender and ethnicity as social categories of exclusion. In addition, we highlight the strategies that they develop in order to cope with these tensions. These analyses, we argue, contribute to conceptualizations of entrepreneurship that do justice to complex and contradictory processes of identity constructions.

Agency and coping strategies for ethnic and gendered minorities at work

“…Secondary analysis related to how ethnic and religious values influence different ways of coping and how they are played out in places of work? Previous research on Muslim business women have drawn attention to the relationships between gender and religion and feelings of rejection, discrimination and disengagement (Essers and Tedmanson 2014;Essers et al 2010). Previous research has unequivocally pointed to the racial and religious divides between Muslim women and workplace situations mostly reinforced by institutional structure, culture and agency (Acker 2006;Syed and Pio 2010;Hoggard et al 2010;Pope 2012).…”

“…A number of research studies indicate a direct relationship between religion, gender and work, particularly related to Muslim migrant women. For instance, Essers and Tedmanson (2014) adopted a postcolonial feminist perspective to study the narratives of Muslim businesswomen in the Dutch context finding that gender and religion are a significant disadvantage to these women (see also Essers, Benschop and Doorewaard 2010). According to Ghorbani and Tung, (2007), working women in the West continue to talk of 'invisible' barriers that impede career advancement with women having to 'try' harder.…”

Immigrant entrepreneurship contextualised

“…Narratives are frequently used with interpretative methodologies to explore how individuals comprehend their everyday life situations because telling their stories enables individuals to draw on memory and current experience and to bridge the past and the present (Cullum, 2003;Cohen and Rapport, 1995;Andrews et al, 2013). A growing body of qualitative entrepreneurship research reveals the rich understanding that may be reached through interpretative approaches (McKeever et al, 2015;Essers et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2014;Miera, 2008).…”

“…Although mixed embeddness has advanced the theorising of immigrant entrepreneurship in important ways, it has not sufficiently grasped agency in terms of individual interests and aspirations, as argued by Brettell and Alstatt, 2007;Essers et al, 2010;Khosravi, 1999). Moreover, it has not developed a sufficiently adequate understanding of gendered-and family-related aspects of entrepreneurial processes and activities (Collins and Low 2010).…”

“…Immigrant entrepreneurship has been developed as a field of study over a long period of time (Aldrich and Waldinger, 1990;Portes and Jensen, 1989;Kloosterman and Rath, 2001;Jones et al, 2010;Dana and Morris, 2007), and has in recent years also been widely discussed in Journal of Enterprising Communities (Knight, 2015;Stephens, 2013;Evans, 2012;Kyoung-Ho, 2014;Turkina and Thai, 2013;Crockett, 2013). However, we still know little about female immigrant entrepreneurs as argued by Pettersson and Hedberg (2013), Collins and Low (2010) and Essers et al (2010), and even less about rural immigrant entrepreneurship, a few exceptions apart (Kalantaridis, 2010;Zarrugh, 2007;Steinberg et al, 2010;Stone and Stubbs, 2007). This paper attempts to address the rural and gender gaps in our understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship as a contextualised process.…”