Entrepreneurial pursuits in the Caribbean diaspora: networks and their mixed effects

ABSTRACT

Domestic Caribbean entrepreneurs are embedded in their home-society. Diasporic entrepreneurs have a dual embeddedness in home-society and in host-society, with networks spanning both societies, which may give them comparative advantages in innovation, exporting and growth. Enterprising is traditionally a livelihood in the Caribbean, which is carried into the diaspora and sustained by dense ties between host- and home-societies. The empirical contribution is a three-way comparison between the Caribbean diaspora, the domestic Caribbeans and diasporans from other world regions. It uses a representative sample of adults living in, or originating from, the Caribbean. Diasporans are found to often become entrepreneurs by a pull of opportunity, whereas domestics are more likely to experience a push of necessity. Diasporans, more than domestics, are networking in the transnational sphere and in the sphere of business operations. This networking promotes outcomes such as innovation, exporting and growth expectations, in contrast to negative effects from networking in the private sphere. Policies may enhance benefits of diasporic entrepreneurship for Caribbean society.

KEYWORDS:

• Caribbean
• diaspora
• embeddedness
• transnational
• networks

Acknowledgements

Data were collected by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Responsibility for analysis rests with the author. Research was supported by the project DiasporaLink, www.diasporalink.org, funded by the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE), H2020-MSCA-RISE-2014, Project number 645471. Work benefitted from a sojourn as Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University and from discussions in the GEM research workshop at the University of the West Indies, Barbados, in November 2015, and in the 2^nd Business and Management Conference at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, in November 2016. The article also benefited from dialogues with reviewers and guest editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.