Forging Their Own Path to the Labor Market: Hispanic Women Business Owners in North Carolina

Abstract

Hispanic women are an understudied entrepreneurial population with considerable potential for economic impact. Our study uses fieldwork and semistructured interviews with entrepreneurs and community informants to understand the experiences of Latina business owners in North Carolina. We focus specifically on their entry into the formal economy as majority owners of for-profit ventures. Social location of owners is discussed to appreciate how the intersectional position of Hispanic women in the market economy shapes their entrepreneurial trajectories. Building on prior research on the “embedded market” and “gendered capital,” our study confirms that entrepreneurial succession and employment opportunities and constraints are strong motivators for Hispanic women to start businesses. However, we also identify a new catalyst for business entry that we call “social ventures and passions,” a finding that challenges the conventional assumption that immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurs open businesses primarily as an economic survival strategy or as an appeal to cultural norms (i.e., ethnic labor market approaches).

Who Becomes a Business Owner in High-inequality Regimes? The Conditioning Effect of Economic Inequality on the Impact of Individual Educational and Financial Endowment on Entrepreneurship

“…First, entrepreneurs are embedded in a context that can provide advantages or disadvantages for new venture creation and growth (Cameron and Cabaniss 2018; Dahl and Sorenson 2009). For instance, in order for entrepreneurs to prosper and for new ventures to emerge, there needs to be a large enough market to sustain the demand for the goods and services that are produced, which necessitates the presence of a strong middle class with sufficient wealth to consume beyond their immediate needs (Easterly 2001; Foellmi and Josef 2006; Matsuyama 2002).…”

“…Furthermore, research has convincingly demonstrated that educational and financial endowments equip people with the skills and networks necessary to mobilize resources for entrepreneurial development (Aldrich and Yang 2014; Kim et al 2006). The extent to which an individual’s education and income may facilitate mobilization of resources depends on the availability of resources in the entrepreneur’s environment (Cameron and Cabaniss 2018; Sorensen 1996). In this respect, by limiting the extent of market opportunities, economic inequality is likely to hinder the degree to which an individual’s educational and financial endowment can facilitate the mobilization of resources for entrepreneurship development.…”

“…The entrepreneurship process occurs in a context, and the social stratification system of that context should shape an individual’s entrepreneurial experience (Cameron and Cabaniss 2018). Students of stratification have long argued that people’s location in the social stratification system influences the extent to which they can participate in the capitalist production process, the nature of their involvement, and the return that they can gain from their contribution to the capitalist production (Ollivier 2004).…”

“…Furthermore, considering that people tend to experience the entrepreneurial process differently based on their position in the socioeconomic strata (Cameron and Cabaniss 2018; Patrice 2016), one may expect the way that economic inequality affects entrepreneurial motivation to vary by education and income levels of individuals. More specifically, in societies characterized by high economic inequality, lower education and income individuals should be more likely to undertake entrepreneurial activities due to lack of economic opportunities compared with higher education and income individuals.…”

Self-Employment or Selfless Employment? Exploration of Factors that Motivate, Facilitate, and Constrain Latina Entrepreneurship from a Family Embeddedness Perspective

“…There is a limited but growing literature providing insights into entrepreneurship among Hispanic women. Research shows Hispanic women are motivated to start businesses by multiple considerations often operating simultaneously, including family business experience (i.e., "entrepreneurial capital"), desire for autonomy, career constraints, limited employment options, desire for extra flexible income, self-fulfillment, and commitment to social causes (Cameron & Cabaniss, 2018;Cho et al, 2019;Valdez, 2016). Much of the Hispanic women entrepreneurship literature uses secondary data to quantitatively describe and explain differences in their outcomes based on human capital variables.…”