The interplay between identity construction and opportunity structures: Narratives of Turkish migrant women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the identity construction processes of migrant women entrepreneurs and the opportunity structures in their wider sociocultural and politico-institutional environments. Drawing on 10 life-story interviews with one-and-a-half- and second-generation Turkish women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, this study draws upon an intersectional approach. Considering the recent socio-political tensions in the Netherlands regarding the presence of Turkish people, studying the relationship between opportunity structures and identity construction of Turkish women entrepreneurs is important and timely. The findings demonstrate the manner in which opportunity structures influence the creation and enactment of an entrepreneurial identity that intersects with gender, ethnicity and class. Analysing how these migrant women interpret and frame opportunity structures in their entrepreneurial contexts, this article reveals how processes of politicisation, class-consciousness and transnational and cosmopolitan positioning influence these women’s entrepreneurial identities and experiences.

Trailing Wives and Constrained Agency Among Women Migrant Entrepreneurs: An Intersectional Perspective

“…In this context, calls to consider a wider diversity of attributes has led to a wealth of research on different ethnic minority groups' experiences of entrepreneurship (Ram et al, 2013;Yamamura & Lassalle, 2019). Such studies have considered the impact of the intersectionality arising from dimensions of gender, religion and ethnicity (Al-Dajani et al, 2019;Barrett & Vershinina, 2017;Ozasir Kacar & Essers, 2019;Valdez, 2016).…”

Fading and transformation: how a woman entrepreneur's multiple identities interact throughout her life

“…At the same time, narrative analysis is considered worthwhile when investigating the process of identity work (Ahl, 2006; Chasserio et al , 2014; Díaz García and Welter, 2013; Lewis, 2015; Hytti et al , 2017; Karhunen et al , 2017; Ozasir Kacar and Essers, 2019). Namely, narratives describe personal experiences and life events and give voice to individual perceptions and interpretations of such experiences and events (Polkinghorne, 1991; Reissman, 2001), representing the means through which an identity is expressed and takes shape (Hamilton, 2014; Polkinghorne, 1991).…”

Opportunity Structures from an Intersectional Perspective

“…Significantly, the main theories of opportunity structures (the interactionist and the mixed embeddedness theories) underemphasise the interaction of opportunity structures with the social diversity categories of gender, ethnicity and class (Tseng 2004;Jones et al 2014;Carter et al 2015). In the literature, there are only a handful of studies discussing opportunity structures combined with the intersectionality approach (Humbert and Essers 2012;Valdez 2016;Villares-Varela et al 2017;Ozasir-Kacar and Essers 2019). Most studies on opportunity structures tend to neglect gender and ethnicity because of the comparatively smaller number of migrant women enterprises in urban societies (Lewis 2006) or argue that having an ethnicity perspective in studying opportunity structures would not suffice to account for differences between countries (Kloosterman and Rath 2003).…”