Immigrant entrepreneurs are known to be heterogeneous in terms of available resources and entrepreneurial outcomes. However, this heterogeneity, as well as immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness in social networks and the institutional context of high-income welfare states such as Sweden, remains understudied. Sweden represents an interesting case as a popular immigration destination which liberalized its migration policy for entrepreneurs and changed other regulations, encouraging immigrant entrepreneurship after 2008. Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to the mixed embeddedness approach to immigrant entrepreneurship by considering three stages of the entrepreneurial process – entry, performance, and potential exit – in a changing institutional environment. Methodologically, the dissertation operationalizes the mixed embeddedness approach by studying these three stages – entry (propensity to start a business), performance (entrepreneurial incomes), and potential exit (duration in business) – among different categories of immigrants. Explanatory factors are drawn from three levels of analysis: institutional change (macro), social, ethnic and family networks (meso), and the individual’s human capital (micro). A range of statistical tools is used for empirical analyses: Difference-in-difference methods in combination with Coarsened Exact Matching and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition are used to investigate the influence of institutional change on entrepreneurial entry and performance. Survival models based on Cox regression are applied to investigate the influence of social and family ties on the likelihood of entrepreneurial exit. A combination of clustering and association analysis allows heterogeneity to be approached via the categorization of immigrant entrepreneurs. Empirically, based on rich data from Swedish registers, the dissertation reveals that the propensity to start businesses in expanding ICT industries among labour immigrants was increased, and performance in terms of income among new immigrant entrepreneurs was improved after institutional change, compared to earlier. It also stresses that family networks mitigate a lack of other resources for refugee entrepreneurs, allowing them to stay in business longer. Two main categories of new immigrant entrepreneurs were distinguished in the overall heterogeneous population. The dissertation consists of four papers and an introductory chapter. Invandrarföretagare uppvisar stor heterogenitet när det gäller tillgängliga resurser och framgång i sitt företagande. Denna heterogenitet, liksom invandrarföretagens inbäddning i sociala nätverk och i den svenska välfärdsstatens institutionella kontext, är emellertid understuderad. Sverige utgör ett intressant fall eftersom det är ett land med relativt stor invandring som efter 2008 liberaliserade migrationspolitiken för företagare och på olika sätt uppmuntrade invandrares företagande. Teoretiskt bidrar avhandlingen till mixed embeddedness-perspektivet genom att analysera tre stadier i entreprenörsprocessen: uppstart, utveckling och eventuell avveckling, i förhållande till institutionell förändring. Mixed embeddedness operationaliseras i avhandlingen genom att olika kategorier invandrare studeras vid olika steg i entreprenörsprocessen; uppstart (benägenhet att starta ett företag), utveckling (företagarinkomster) samt eventuell avveckling (varaktighet i företaget) och genom att förklarande faktorer studeras på tre analysnivåer: institutionell förändring (makro), sociala, etniska och familjenätverk (meso) samt individens humankapital (mikro). En rad statistiska verktyg används för de empiriska analyserna; Difference-in-difference-metoder i kombination med Coarsened Exact Matching och Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition används för att undersöka hur institutionella förändringar påverkar uppstart och utveckling. Överlevnadsmodeller baserade på Cox-regression tillämpas för att undersöka hur sociala nätverk och familjeband påverkar sannolikheten för avveckling. Med en kombination av klusteranalys och associationsanalys undersöks mönster i heterogeniteten bland invandrarföretagarna genom kategorisering. Empiriskt, baserat på detaljerade data från svenska register, visar avhandlingen att benägenheten att starta verksamhet inom IKT-branschen ökade bland arbetskraftsinvandrare, samt att inkomsterna bland nya invandrarföretagare förbättrades efter en period av institutionell förändring. Avhandlingen visar även att familjenätverk motverkar bristen på andra resurser för företagare med flyktingbakgrund, vilket gör att de kan stanna i verksamheten längre. Två huvudkategorier går att urskilja i den heterogena gruppen av företagare. Avhandlingen är en sammanläggning av fyra artiklar och en inledande kappa.

This Special Issue aims to provide an extensive mapping of policies in the promotion of ethnic entrepreneurship in a number of countries. It is motivated by the desire of national and municipal Governments to create an environment conducive to setting up and developing SMEs in general and immigrant businesses in particular. Furthermore it also highlights how the third sector has also had a crucial role in the reinforcement of immigrant entrepreneurship, and provides indications of how best to address this issue at a Governmental level in the future.

Despite significant interest in immigrant entrepreneurship, we still know relatively little about how ventures created by immigrant entrepreneurs differ from non-immigrant entrepreneurs. Prior research has tended to focus on immigrant entrepreneurs and derived insights without necessarily comparing them with non-immigrants. or use samples of the two that are not adequately matched. Because non-immigrant entrepreneurs are much larger in number and differently distributed across industries than immigrant entrepreneurs, we have underdeveloped notions about how the two types of entrepreneurs vary in their characteristics and achieve important venture outcomes. The purpose of this dissertation is to help address these problems in the literature, by going deeper into the theoretical mechanisms by which immigrant entrepreneurs choose to start entrepreneurial ventures and achieve innovative outcomes. In this dissertation, I examine several different issues relating to immigrant entrepreneurship. I consider how immigrant and non-immigrant entrepreneurs differ in terms of the innovativeness of the ventures they create, and why these differences exist. To do so, I highlight the role of liability of foreignness experienced by entrepreneurial firms. Liability of foreignness is a concept drawn from the international business literature that highlights how lack of knowledge, resources and legitimacy reduce the success of foreign firms in operating in a local environment. I suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs overcome liability of foreignness through greater reliance on knowledge drawn from their home environments, greater absorptive capacity in recombining new knowledge from the host country, and reliance on cultural norms that help them to overcome knowledge deficiencies. By investigating how immigrant entrepreneurs differ in their knowledge management and learning strategies compared to non-immigrant entrepreneurs, this dissertation advances our understanding of a new but key area of inquiry in the entrepreneurship field. The first essay of the dissertation examines differences in the innovation outcomes of new ventures started by immigrant and non-immigrant entrepreneurs. While immigrants are known to start entrepreneurial ventures at a higher proportional rate than their numbers in the population, particularly in high-tech sectors, little is known about how their ventures might differ in the innovations they produce relative to those of non-immigrants. I argue that, due to immigrant entrepreneurs’ ability to source knowledge not from just one but multiple institutional contexts, they develop a more extensive knowledge base with greater absorptive capacity. This higher absorptive capacity allows immigrant entrepreneurs to not only identify, make sense of and utilize a broader range of knowledge, but also come up with more knowledge recombinations, enhancing their innovation output relative to non-immigrant entrepreneurs. In addition, I suggest that the nature of knowledge and experiences gained in contexts outside of the United States can further enhance absorptive capacity, and in turn, the innovation outcomes of immigrants’ ventures. To test these arguments, I hand-collected a large sample of entrepreneurial ventures started by immigrant and non-immigrant entrepreneurs in the software industry. From this sample, I developed a sample in which immigrants’ ventures are matched in key characteristics to those of non-immigrants’ ventures. I find general support for my arguments relating immigrant entrepreneurs’ higher absorptive capacity with more innovative ventures. The second essay examines how ventures started by immigrant entrepreneurs might differ from those by non-immigrant entrepreneurs in the benefits they extract from strategic alliances. Given the expectation that immigrant entrepreneurs suffer from liability of foreignness, I suggest that they will have less ability to form strategic alliances compared to non-immigrant entrepreneurs, leading them to rely more on their own knowledge than on alliance partners. Among immigrant entrepreneurs, those with high entrepreneurial experience will rely less on alliance partners than those with low entrepreneurial experience. In addition, alliances relating to marketing rather than R&D are expected to offer more useful institutional and market-related knowledge to immigrant entrepreneurs that they typically lack. Partnerships with public rather than private firms are likewise expected to be more beneficial for immigrant entrepreneurs due to their ability to afford legitimacy and financial resources that they are unable to easily access elsewhere. Using a similarly matched sample of immigrant and non-immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. software industry as that used in the first essay, I find support for all of these arguments. The third essay examines the relative likelihood of entrepreneurial ventures created by immigrants and non-immigrants to fail (i.e., have lower survival rates). Given their liability of foreignness, ventures created by immigrant entrepreneurs may tend to fail more often than those by non-immigrant entrepreneurs. However, I suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs may be motivated to enact a stronger learning orientation to overcome their liability of foreignness. Such a learning orientation may facilitate their search and use of new knowledge, reducing the likelihood of venture failure. In this regard, I examine the role of national culture in affecting the learning orientation of immigrant entrepreneurs. I consider three dimensions of national culture that are likely to influence learning orientation: uncertainty avoidance, collectivism/individualism, and power distance. In particular, I suggest that entrepreneurs from higher uncertainty avoidance, more collectivist and higher power distance cultures will enact a stronger and more widespread search for knowledge and engage in more effective learning that reduces the likelihood of failure. I find partial support for my arguments. In all, the studies in this dissertation demonstrate considerable support for the notion that immigrant entrepreneurs develop more innovative ventures that tend to survive longer than those of non-immigrant entrepreneurs. By demonstrating these relationships in a single industry and using a matched sample of immigrant and non-immigrant ventures, these studies overcome deficiencies of prior studies that are unable to adequately pinpoint how immigrants might differ from non-immigrants in the types of ventures that they create.

A provocative look at the remarkable contributions of high-skill immigrant entrepreneurs in America Both a revelation and a call-to-action, Immigrant, Inc. explores the uncommon skill and drive of America's new immigrants and their knack for innovation and entrepreneurship. From the techies who created icons of the new economy-Intel, Google, eBay and Sun Microsystems-to the young engineers tinkering with solar power and next-generation car batteries, immigrants have proven themselves to be America's competitive advantage. With a focus on legal immigrants and their odyssey from homeland to start-up, this unique book Explores the psyche, cultural nuances, skills, and business strategies that help immigrants achieve remarkable success Explains how immigrants will create the American jobs of the future-if we let them Whether you are a CEO, a civic leader, or an entrepreneur yourself, Immigrant, Inc. warns of the peril of anti-immigrant attitudes and a hostile immigration process. It also explains how any American can tap their "inner immigrant" to transform their lives and their companies. Written by an immigration lawyer who represents immigrant entrepreneurs and a journalist who specializes in international culture, the authors have a front-row seat to this phenomenon, offering a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the most persistent entrepreneurs of the era.

Immigration is currently one of the most vivid challenges the European Union faces. Ways of introducing new migrants to society and economy pose significant challenges, thus some guidelines for the policy design towards migrations are in need. This book points out patterns of approaches leading to entrepreneurial activities, implemented by the immigrants from the Far East: China, Vietnam, South Korea, India, and Philippines. At these stage comparisons with other countries are both possible and necessary, as many countries all over the world face challenges connected with defining migration policies. From the studies included in the book, readers will gain first-hand knowledge about immigrant entrepreneurship in Poland against the Western European or USA background of similar processes described by researchers in other countries. The areas covered in the studies include the main reasons for starting new ventures and the sources of opportunities, processes of defining customers and factors influencing the choice between an ethnic and local business, immigrants' approaches to building market position, defining success and development, as well as the issues of cultural, institutional, legal and economic differences. The studies show that significant differences in entrepreneurial activities appear between the first and second generations of immigrants. They also depict how entrepreneurial activities help in assimilation processes, as well as in building ties between the immigrants and host societies. Moreover, the study will deepen the understanding of entrepreneurial activities of immigrants in countries that are traditionally considered to be less attractive targets for migration. Thus, the processes of migration will be not only better understood and described but will also allow to provide some guidelines both for policymakers and future researchers

This book draws on evidence from global cities around the world and explores various dimensions of immigrant entrepreneurship and urban development. It provides a substantive contribution to the existing literature in several ways. First of all, it pursues a comparative approach, with case studies from both the global north and global south, so as to broaden the theoretical framework in this area especially as pertinent to emerging economies. Second, it covers multiple scales, from local community place-making, to urban contexts of reception, to transnational networks and connections. Third, it combines approaches and research methods from numerous disciplines, investigating entry dynamics, trends and patterns, business performance, challenges, and the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship in urban areas. Finally, it pays particular attention to current international experiences regarding urban policies on immigrant entrepreneurship. Given its scope, the book will be an enlightening read for anyone interested in immigration, entrepreneurship and urban development issues around the globe. As global cities around the world continue to attract both domestic migrants and international migrants to their bustling metropolises, immigrant entrepreneurship is emerging as an important urban phenomenon that calls for careful examination. From Chinatown in New York, to Silicon Valley in San Francisco, to Little Africa in Guangzhou, immigrant-owned businesses are not only changing the business landscape in their host communities, but also transforming the spatial, economic, social, and cultural dynamics of cities and regions.