The mixed embeddedness of transnational migrant entrepreneurs: Moroccans in Amsterdam and Milan

ABSTRACT

This article addresses transnational migrant entrepreneurship – migrant entrepreneurs establishing businesses that span across borders. The article contributes to this field by applying the mixed embeddedness approach and revisiting it from a transnational perspective. The article uses an overall qualitative approach and analyses the case of Moroccan transnational entrepreneurs in Milan and Amsterdam (N = 35). This illustrates that, on the one hand, institutional embeddedness in different contexts (country of residence, country of origin, and other countries) influences respondents’ business patterns through the opportunities and the constraints created by the political-institutional and economic features of these contexts. On the other hand, transnational entrepreneurs take advantage of their (often, previously-acquired) heterogeneous contacts (social embeddedness) and skills (e.g. linguistic knowledge, previous work experience) to conduct their business.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant entrepreneurs
• mixed embeddedness
• Moroccan migrants
• transnationalism
• transnational entrepreneurs

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Alberta Andreotti, Eduardo Barberis and José Luis Molina for their constructive comments on the first draft of this article. I am grateful to Shahamak Rezaei and Ricard Zapata-Barrero for their valuable remarks during the IEMed Interdisciplinary Research Seminar.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Giacomo Solano http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2339-8181

Notes

1 All Dutch figures include both first- and second-generation migrants. Italian statistics consider only people born outside Italy.

2 Figures provided by the Italian National Statistics Institute (ISTAT); reference year: 2017.

3 Figures provided by the Dutch Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS); reference year: 2017.

4 Figures provided by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan; reference year: 2017.

5 Figures provided by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan; reference year: 2017.

6 Figures provided by the Chamber of Commerce of Amsterdam; reference year: 2009. No more recently updated data is available.

7 I also interviewed 35 entrepreneurs running a domestic business, i.e. focusing on the domestic market of their country of residence. However, in line with the research question, I focus on the transnational part of the sample in this article.

8 This emerged particularly during the preparatory work done by the author before the fieldwork (see Solano 2016a).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education and a mobility scholarship from the European Commission (Erasmus Placement/Erasmus+ Traineeship). Furthermore, Fondazione Roberto Franceschi Onlus and Fondazione Isacchi Samaja (Young Professional Grant – 2013 edition) provided the financial support for the fieldwork on which this article is based.