Widening the focus on informal entrepreneurship through the lens of intersectionality

Abstract

The article explores the struggle of those involve with the entrepreneurial activities in the informal economy, within the challenging socioeconomic environments. It investigates the extent to which intersectionality t hrough structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and interpersonal power associated with poor, marginalised groups influence their entrepreneurial actions and rights collectively. Studies either view entrepreneurs through an informality lens, as marginalised populations engaged in low-quality activities, or through a formality lens, as engaged in relatively higher quality entrepreneurial activities more as a necessity choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these explanations through intersectionality power in relation to waste pickers entrepreneurs in the informal sector in Colombia.

Intersectionality and Minority Entrepreneurship: At the Crossroad of Vulnerability and Power

“…Described by McCall (2005McCall ( , p. 1171 as "the most important theoretical contribution that women's studies, in conjunction with related fields, have made so far", intersectionality as an analytical lens has entered the discussion on entrepreneurship relatively recently (Dy & Agwunobi, 2019;Granados & Rosli, 2018). Previously, focus on entrepreneurs' identities has not been very popular unlike forms of capital or personal traits of businesspersons.…”

“…Intersectionality framework has been applied in multiple case studies on minority entrepreneurship. Countries covered by research include Poland (Andrejuk, 2018), the USA (Banerjee, 2019;Harvey, 2005;Valdez, 2016;Vallejo & Canizales, 2016;Wingfield & Taylor, 2016), the UK (Barrett & Vershinina, 2017;Fielden & Davidson, 2012;James et al, 2021;Lassalle & Shaw, 2021;Martinez Dy, 2015;Martinez Dy et al, 2017), Canada (Chiang et al, 2013), Australia (Chiang et al, 2013), the Netherlands (Essers & Benschop, 2007, 2009Pijpers & Maas, 2014;Tao et al, 2020), Colombia (Granados &Rosli, 2018), andTaiwan (Wing-Fai, 2016). Following the original focus of the framework, intersection of gender with class (e.g.…”

“…Andrejuk, 2018) proved to be one of the most popular focuses of intersectionality investigation. However, new categories of difference such as age (Aydin et al, 2019), religion (Essers & Benschop, 2009), informality (Granados & Rosli, 2018), sexuality (Pijpers & Maas, 2014), location of business operation (Martinez Dy, 2015), and generation of immigrants (Tao et al, 2020) proved to affect business experiences of minorities as well. Finally, all studies applied qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews (e.g.…”

“…Essers & Benschop, 2009), overview of existing studies (e.g. Croce, 2020), and analysis of longitudinal data consisting of archival sources on events (Granados & Rosli, 2018). Noticing the absence of quantitative methods in intersectionality research, Dy andAgwunobi (2019, p. 1735) proposed to apply sequential mix-methods approach "to obtain more accurate and nuanced pictures of the phenomena under investigation".…”