Matter of survival or prosperity : A comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurs from emerging economies and developed economies.

Sammanfattning: Although immigrant entrepreneurship as a phenomenon is not new, most studies within the field of immigrant entrepreneurship have focused on immigrants moving from emerging economies to developed economies. Little research attention has been devoted to immigrant entrepreneurship with focus on immigrants from developed countries moving to other developed countries. There have neither been any comparative studies between the motives among DEIE and EEIE. To address this issue, this study analyzes the similarities and differences between IE’s from emerging/developed economies in terms of motives for engaging in self-employment, as well as challenges they face throughout the process. To answer these questions, a qualitative study was conducted with two IE groups originating from developed- and emerging economies, to analyze the IE’s motives for engaging in self-employment, and challenges they faced. The results of this study showed that there are more similarities than differences between the two IE groups in terms of push/pull motives. One distinct difference however, is that DEIE do not engage in entrepreneurial activities out of necessity, while EEIE in contrast show tendencies of both necessity and opportunity motives. This study also shows evidence which supports the home-country hypothesis, where self-employment tradition from the home-country influences the immigrants’ decision to continue the ‘tradition’ in the COR. The differences among the two IE groups is that the DEIE are more likely to originate from countries with a tradition of self-employment- subsequently being more probable to be influenced by the home-country to engage in self-employment activities as it is almost a ‘normal’ for them. There seems to be no distinction between the two groups in terms of how social networks are utilized but rather similarities, in terms of its importance in: marketing their businesses, financing the business, opportunity identification, validating the business idea, and opportunity identification. This study has also shown that there are more similarities than differences in terms of challenges faced by the two immigrant entrepreneur groups. The main challenges faced by both IE groups are: bureaucratic complexity; the language barrier, which hindered them from employment; and disregarded qualifications from the COO, which consequently hindered them from qualified employments. Furthermore, this study contributes to the overall understanding of the IE phenomenon, and has added further understanding of IE from developed economies.