In search of ethnic entrepreneurship in the city

Abstract

The rapidly rising inflow of foreign migrants confronts policy-makers with many socio-economic problems.The negative externalities of uncontrolled immigration are well known and often hard to cope with.In recent years we have seen many policy initiatives based on self-reliance principles for ethnic groups.Against this background ethnic entrepreneurship has become a popular strategy, as it stimulates and encourages migrants to look after themselves with a limited support of the government.Such a policy becomes an increasingly important endeavour in many large cities.Besides the conventional educational support and training programmes, such a strategy would need to implement policy strategies aiming at self-employment.An emphasis on ethnic entrepreneurship seeks to exploit the economic potential and opportunities instead of focusing on the problems minorities encounter when entering the labour market.In ethnic entrepreneurship, this potential can be utilised in a creative way, especially if well-organised projects and initiatives are set up.In this paper, various assistance programmes and urban policies in several European cities aiming at favouring ethnic entrepreneurship will be systematically compared with the aim to draw lessons for effective labour market policies.The methodological approach will employ a systematic information base concerning selfemployment strategies in the cities under investigation.A newly developed comparative statistical method for categorical information, viz.rough set analysis, will be used in order to identify critical success factors.The results suggest that utilisation of social networks is most helpful to enhance self-employment among ethnic minorities.Finally, the paper offers some lessons for the establishment of socio-cultural and ethnic networks, for strategies for improving training and education and for improvement of access to facilities and financial resources. Ethnic Entrepreneurship in a Multi-cultural SocietyModern societies are moving away from a stable social and established structure toward a state of fluidity in which mobility of people (commuters, migrants) tends to become a visual landmark.The action radius of spatial mobility is steadily increasing from the local or regional scale to national and global levels (Sassen 1991;Scott 1990).The current globalisation trend, which has only recently started, will mean an even more diffuse pattern of community life, in which complex network configurations seem to play a dominant role.It seems also plausible that uniformity in society will increasingly be replaced by diversity, so that future societies will be characterised by a 'multi-colour' composition with a great cultural, social, ethnic and religious variety (cf.Cross 1992; Esping-Andersen 1993;Massey and Denton 1993;Storper 1997).The above mentioned dynamics manifests itself in particular in cross-border migration (see Nijkamp and Spiess 1994;Gorter et al 1998).It should be recognised however, that international migration as such is not a new phenomenon in many countries.In the past, we have witnessed huge trans-border migration flows as a result of natural disasters, wars, famine and poor socio-economic conditions.Most of these movements were of a forced nature and caused mainly a temporary disturbance.With the beginning of the colonial period also the phenomenon of economic migration between countries started, sometimes forcefully supported by slavery (see e.g., Sowell, 1975).Also the subsequent period of the Industrial Revolution meant a further stimulus to international linkages and movements.The end of the colonial period did not imply a return to a stable society with a uniform community life.The mobility trend, once commenced, did not come to a standstill, but became more pervasive.This is clearly illustrated by the phenomenon of guest workers in Europe, which did not mean a temporary population flow aiming to restore serious imbalances on the labour market in host countries, but heralded a period of increasingly stronger international ties between all countries of our world (Pugliese 1993).The structural rapid rise in international passenger aviation movements symbolises the drive to international mobility.Clearly, uncontrolled and unexpected inflows of foreign people caused a series of disturbances on local housing and labour markets.The phenomena are well known: ghetto formation in cities, rising criminality rates, extremely high unemployment, a lost generation, sharpening local conflicts, and destruction of traditional community life in cities (cf.