Thwarted or facilitated?: The entrepreneurial aspirations and capabilities of new migrants in the UK
Thwarted or facilitated?: The entrepreneurial aspirations and capabilities of new migrants in the UK
This article draws on biographical interviews with migrants to assess their aspirations and capabilities to become entrepreneurs. By augmenting mixed embeddedness emphasis on contextual factors with Sen’s capabilities framework, we contribute to extant sociological debates on the interaction of structure and agency, the conceptualisation of aspirations, the non-pecuniary aspects of entrepreneurship and the role of institutions in neoliberal Britain. We argue that structural barriers drive the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs while at the same time limit their capabilities to do so. Entrepreneurial agency must be seen as relative autonomy, effective in strategic decision making but limited to the weak financial position in which migrant entrepreneurs operate.
UK, agency, aspirations, capabilities, entrepreneurship, migration, refugees, structure
1140-1158
Villares-Varela, Maria
5e63e77d-525f-4196-8be8-e8c7db56eae1
Ram, Monder
6d3570c9-9501-413b-9864-8920723580b8
Jones, Trevor
f1a66956-a543-4392-a212-7de88853ce84
December 2022
Villares-Varela, Maria
5e63e77d-525f-4196-8be8-e8c7db56eae1
Ram, Monder
6d3570c9-9501-413b-9864-8920723580b8
Jones, Trevor
f1a66956-a543-4392-a212-7de88853ce84
Villares-Varela, Maria, Ram, Monder and Jones, Trevor
(2022)
Thwarted or facilitated?: The entrepreneurial aspirations and capabilities of new migrants in the UK.
Sociology, 56 (6), .
(doi:10.1177/00380385221083865).
Abstract
This article draws on biographical interviews with migrants to assess their aspirations and capabilities to become entrepreneurs. By augmenting mixed embeddedness emphasis on contextual factors with Sen’s capabilities framework, we contribute to extant sociological debates on the interaction of structure and agency, the conceptualisation of aspirations, the non-pecuniary aspects of entrepreneurship and the role of institutions in neoliberal Britain. We argue that structural barriers drive the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs while at the same time limit their capabilities to do so. Entrepreneurial agency must be seen as relative autonomy, effective in strategic decision making but limited to the weak financial position in which migrant entrepreneurs operate.
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Thwarted or facilitated_deanonymised_February 2022
- Accepted Manuscript
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00380385221083865
- Version of Record
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 4 February 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 12 May 2022
Published date: December 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: the project ‘The aspirations and capabilities of migrant and refugee entrepreneurs’ (2015–2017) was co-funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Impact Acceleration Account (University of Birmingham), and the social enterprise Ashley Community & Housing (ACH) Ltd.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
Keywords:
UK, agency, aspirations, capabilities, entrepreneurship, migration, refugees, structure
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 454661
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/454661
ISSN: 0038-0385
PURE UUID: 3d2c0035-be1e-4727-8256-02450c36c93b
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Date deposited: 18 Feb 2022 17:35
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:45
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Author:
Monder Ram
Author:
Trevor Jones
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