Historicizing the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship: The case of the ethnic Chinese in Bangkok

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

“…She saw an opportunity to mobilize an entrepreneurial practice, which was now complementing her formal work employment (Williams 2011) and providing a business to develop through access to migrant networks, not tied together solely by ethnicity (Crowley and Hickman 2008;Koning and Verver 2013;Ram et al 2016), but through shared Russian language use and associated cultural values . Similarly, Antoliy (INT: 10), a joiner, highlighted how being a member of the Russian-speaking community in his city had provided him with more business opportunities than solely engaging with fellow Moldovans (I have several guys from Russia, Ukraine and Latvia working with me.…”

“…For this article, it is important to clarify the distinction between country of origin, newly formed host country and the relationships between the two. First, ethnic entrepreneurs are active in their ethnic enclaves in their host societies and often rely on their co-ethnic customers (Koning and Verver 2013). Second, transnational entrepreneurs, defined as 'social actors who generate networks, ideas, information and practices for the purpose of seeking business opportunities or maintaining businesses within dual social fields' (Drori et al 2009), benefit from being present simultaneously within dual business environments, the host and home societies.…”

“…The literature on migrant entrepreneurship has focused on the individual characteristics of entrepreneurs in terms of their social class, culture, ethnicity (Barrett and Vershinina 2017;Chaganti and Greene 2002;Koning and Verver 2013) and on the various forms of capital they utilize to enable or constrain their entrepreneurial practice. Alternative explanations are based on more 'structuralist' readings of societal arrangements (Portes 1994), which involve migrant entrepreneurs relying on the social capital of their ethnic group (Drori et al 2009) in the absence of any other relevant economic options.…”

Being an entrepreneur: emergence and structuring of two immigrant entrepreneur groups

“…The latter concept, in fact, implies that there is a "regular pattern" of interaction, with shared customs and practices in a given immigrant group situated in a specific context. As many scholars have stated, the question of ethnicity is thus not a given of immigrant entrepreneurship, but is a matter of research (Chaganti and Greene 2002;Koning and Verver 2012). For the purpose of this article, the ethnic dimension of the investigated entrepreneurs should be operationalized in relation to: i) the product, i.e., whether it is ethnic or nonethnic on the basis of the extent to which it is correlated to the entrepreneurs' background; ii) the market, which may be open or consist of an ethnic clientele; iii) the origin of employees and suppliers (e.g., Rusinovic 2008).…”

The Importance of Cross-Cultural Capabilities for Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Australia

“…However, the mixed-embeddedness perspective does not explain the development of immigrant entrepreneurship within a group over time, which fails to suggest the differences between first-generation and second-generation (Koning & Verver, 2013), and this social capital perspective may also not be appropriate to investigate immigrant entrepreneurs' human capital.…”