The backstage of Pakistani businesses in Barcelona: unravelling strategies from the ground

^†This study belongs to my Ph.D. on Pakistani businesses and my Master's thesis, which received an award at the 17th Tender for Young Sociologists organised by the Institute of Catalan Studies (May 2013).

ABSTRACT

The emergence of ethnic economies owned by migrant communities is changing the urban landscape of many cities around the world. In Barcelona, the Pakistani community has developed an ethnic economy based on small businesses in different trade sectors which are spreading all over the city, taking advantage of vacancies and exploring new markets. This article contributes to ascertaining the scope and internal functioning of businesses owned by Pakistani immigrants, taking the neighbourhood of Raval in Barcelona as a case study. The research concludes that the high concentration and rapid development of Pakistani enterprises in this area are explained by the interplay of contextual and ethnic strategies which are connected to a favourable structure of opportunities in the current context of economic crisis and the sharing of ethnic resources through the networks of the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic economy
• immigration
• Pakistan
• Spain
• economic crisis
• mixed embeddedness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on the contributor

Berta Güell is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology focused on issues of ethnic entrepreneurship at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She also works as a researcher at the European Social Research Unit of the University of Barcelona since 2008, being responsible for the implementation of European research projects in social sciences, mainly related to migration studies.

ORCID

Berta Güell http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4263-6763

Notes

^† This study belongs to my Ph.D. on Pakistani businesses and my Master's thesis, which received an award at the 17th Tender for Young Sociologists organised by the Institute of Catalan Studies (May 2013).

1. This has been widely explored in the theory of ethnic enclaves initiated by Portes and his collaborators (Portes and Wilson 1980; Portes and Bach 1985; Portes and Manning 1986; Portes and Stepick 1985), where residential concentration within the enclave reinforces commercial activity in the same area.

2. Today, this model should be reviewed according to the current context, especially as regards unemployment, job chances and the local trade normative of other cities like Barcelona (Güell 2012, forthcoming).

3. This study focuses on the interaction between social (and ethnic) strategies and contextual strategies.

4. These data belong to the municipal register (padrón continuo), which also includes undocumented migrants, and is based on nationality (not country of birth).

5. It must be noted that the data from the municipal register regarding level of education may be biased, as they do not take into account education that migrants may receive in the destination country.

6. In this study, we have considered as self-employed those who are registered and active as self-employed people within the national social security system (Alta laboral in the Régimen Especial de Trabajadores Autónomos). Source: ‘Anuario de Estadísticas del Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social 2013'. In contrast to the National Institute of Statistics (padrón), the Ministry of Employment works only with data referring to legal migrants.

7. However, informal activities may have been registered too, due to the lack of data on the legal situation of businesses and in many cases, the difficulty of differentiating between formal and informal economic activities.

8. Sargatal (2001) reviews the concept of ‘gentrification’ and its application to the neighbourhood of Raval.

9. This is a campaign to refute rumours linked to the migration phenomenon (including ethnic businesses – like the existence of mafias or the reception of special grants) through statistical and empirical evidence. However, in the case of Pakistanis, the specialisation in economic activities without much competition with local entrepreneurs facilitates to a certain extent the acceptance of their commercial performance.

10. For example, First Congress of Trade and Immigrants organised by the employers’ association PIMEC (2012).