Transnational migrant entrepreneurs: understanding their dependencies, fragilities, and alternatives

ABSTRACT

Recent research highlights that the activities of migrant entrepreneurs increasingly extend beyond national borders, thus making them relevant actors of globalization. Nevertheless, the socio-spatial conditions that frame their cross-border activities are still poorly understood. The aim of this article is twofold: first, we apply the lens of ‘globalization from below’ to study small-scale transnational migrant entrepreneurs (TMEs), thereby providing new insights into less visible globalization processes; second, we show that TMEs are not simply free economic agents but depend on connections in local and transnational spaces. Inspired by the literature on dependencies and feminist approaches, we develop a typology to address the following research question: Under which conditions is relying on others beneficial for transnational migrant entrepreneurship, and under which conditions does it lead to precariousness? Building on 86 semi-structured interviews in Colombia, Spain, and Switzerland, we uncover the diverse nature of dependencies and reveal the unequal opportunities TMEs face.

KEYWORDS:

• Globalization from below
• dependencies
• transnational entrepreneurship
• migration
• social inequality

Acknowledgement

We thank, in particular, our research participants for generously sharing their experiences with us. We also thank wholeheartedly the anonymous reviewers and our colleague Natasha Webster for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All names were changed to protect the anonymity of our interviewees.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was written as part of a larger project on ‘Migrant Entrepreneurship: Mapping Cross-Border Mobilities and Exploring the Role of Spatial Mobility Capital’, led by Yvonne Riaño and Etienne Piguet at the Geography Institute of the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland). It is supported by the ‘nccr – on the move’, National Centre of Competence in Research ‘The Migration-Mobility Nexus’ (https://nccr-onthemove.ch/), which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [grant 51NF40- 182897]. The APC was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung).

Notes on contributors

Laure Sandoz

Laure Sandoz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography of the University of Neuchâtel and nccr – on the move. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology in 2018 from the University of Basel for her work on the role of intermediaries in shaping the mobility of highly skilled professionals in Switzerland. Her research interests include entrepreneurship and highly skilled migration, the interplay between mobility and social inequality, the influence of economic actors on migration processes, and the transformation of labour relations.

Christina Mittmasser

Christina Mittmasser is a doctoral student at the Institute of Geography of the University of Neuchâtel and nccr – on the move. Her PhD project is entitled “Migrant Entrepreneurship in Switzerland. Opportunities and Constraints within Transnational Mobilities”. She previously studied Sociology and European Ethnology at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz (Austria). With her master’s thesis work Christina addressed the question of statelessness as well as the multiplicity of meanings of the concept of citizenship.

Yvonne Riaño

Yvonne Riaño is Professor of Urban Geography at the Institute of Geography of the University of Neuchâtel and Project Leader at the nccr – on the move. Her research contributes to understanding self-organization in Latin American barrios; how geographical imaginations influence migration decisions; how gender and country of origin shape the labour market participation of highly skilled migrants and non-migrants; how migrants develop transnational social spaces; how migration policies influence the transnational mobilities of international students; and participatory methods.

Lorena Izaguirre

Lorena Izaguirre currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel and nccr – on the move. She holds a PhD from the Catholic University of Louvain. Her dissertation explored the mobility practices of Peruvian migrants in São Paulo. Her work sheds light on the relationship between spatial and social mobility and analyzes how class, ethnicity, and gender are intertwined in migrants’ pathways. Over the past years, she has specialized in migration studies, particularly in South America, drawing on fieldwork experiences in Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil.