Immigrant Entrepreneurship

Cases from Contemporary Poland

Beata Glinka, Adam Jelonek, Beata Glinka, Adam W. Jelonek, Adam Jelonek, Beata Glinka, Adam W. Jelonek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367422110
• eBook ISBN: 9781000096958
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Immigration is currently one of the most vivid challenges the European Union faces. Ways of introducing new migrants to society and economy pose significant challenges, thus some guidelines for the policy design towards migrations are in need. This book points out patterns of approaches leading to entrepreneurial activities, implemented by the immigrants from the Far East: China, Vietnam, South Korea, India, and Philippines. At these stage comparisons with other countries are both possible and necessary, as many countries all over the world face challenges connected with defining migration policies. From the studies included in the book, readers will gain first-hand knowledge about immigrant entrepreneurship in Poland against the Western European or USA background of similar processes described by researchers in other countries.

The areas covered in the studies include the main reasons for starting new ventures and the sources of opportunities, processes of defining customers and factors influencing the choice between an ethnic and local business, immigrants' approaches to building market position, defining success and development, as well as the issues of cultural, institutional, legal and economic differences. The studies show that significant differences in entrepreneurial activities appear between the first and second generations of immigrants. They also depict how entrepreneurial activities help in assimilation processes, as well as in building ties between the immigrants and host societies. Moreover, the study will deepen the understanding of entrepreneurial activities of immigrants in countries that are traditionally considered to be less attractive targets for migration. Thus, the processes of migration will be not only better understood and described but will also allow to provide some guidelines both for policymakers and future researchers

1 Current trends in global and Polish migrations

Adam W. Jelonek
Jagiellonian University in Kraków

1.1 Introduction

The prominent American anthropologist Arjun Appadurai used the concept of so-called scapes as an area of multidimensional integration of the world when analysing modern globalisation processes. The use of the scapes ending, in his opinion, allows us to point to the fluid, irregular shapes of these landscapes.

Next to mediascapes, financescapes, technoscapes and ideoscapes, fundamental importance belongs to the area of ethnoscapes. Appadurai understands it as an element of human reality, which consists of dynamically moving human groups—the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and other moving groups and individuals. In his opinion, the contemporary image of the world exposed to a constant mixture of cultures, languages, religions and customs brings about a qualitative change in the functioning of contemporary global society. The dynamics of the intermixing results in unprecedented changes in the functioning of political, economic and cultural systems within and between the existing nation states. Changes in ethnoscapes result in a situation in which the existing definitions of space, place and community become more complex. Communities are dispersed, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are broken up by emerging aliens. People lose their belonging to a particular place. They cease to define their identity in relation to their place of birth or current residence, as they have done up to now. Their identity is becoming more and more multidimensional. Therefore, they begin to define themselves by referring to spatially and culturally distant places—such as their abandoned homeland or the country of origin of their parents. Communication with these places is provided by the mass media. Although migrants are a heterogeneous group by nature, they also have a growing sense of community of position and experience. These changes concern not only the individuals themselves who move, but also the communities they leave and those they find themselves in (Appadurai, 1991, pp. 191–210). Appadurai postulates the replacement of concepts such as settlement or community with the term ethnoscape, defined through the prism of migration. He repeatedly draws attention to the process of deterritorialisation in which the traditional links between nation, culture, identity and territory are broken. To a large extent they replace the so-called imaginary homelands created by the media, the film industry or art. John Urry shares this view, arguing that static or sedentary structures defining traditional western societies—such as social classes, permanent residence and stable employment—have been replaced by a new defining characteristic—mobility. (Urry, 2000, 2007). The common belief that we live in the Age of Migration at a time when international migration is accelerating, globalising, feminising and diversifying is shared by many other contemporary researchers (Castles & Miller, 1993, 2009). Everyone is now on the move as Cresswell summed up (Cresswell, 2006).

1.2 Historical dynamics of a global migration

Although the intensification of migration processes and the accompanying complex of technological and cultural developments give the phenomenon, according to Appadurai, a new quality, migration has accompanied humanity from the very beginning. The history of mankind starts with the first great migration of contemporary homo sapiens, who, 70,000 years ago, settled on other continents moving from today’s Africa (Carto, 2009). A series of subsequent primary prehistoric migrations resulted from climate change and the search by nomadic human tribes for more fertile farmland and pastures. Continuous migration has given rise to additional benefits due to the multiplication of contacts with new backgrounds and the exchange of experiences through interactions among migratory tribes. Migration, therefore, became one of the basic experiences of civilisation of contemporary man, broadening his social horizons and influencing the development of culture. As an integral part of the history of mankind, they gradually contributed to the dissemination of scientific and artistic achievements and the exchange of knowledge. Just as today, various civilisational achievements have appeared thanks to the mixing of various population groups, often as a result of dramatic events—natural disasters, epidemics and wars.

Contemporary medical knowledge came to Europe together with settlers from the Middle East. Gunpowder and war strategy arrived thanks to merchants of the Silk Road and mathematics thanks to newcomers from a distant India. Immigrant networks played a key role in the development of world trade and the global market. Without the Spanish Jews, the European economy would not have recovered from stagnation in the Middle Ages. From the 5th century onwards, the Armenians controlled the trade routes between the East and Europe (Cowen, 1997, p. 170). Today, the Chinese diaspora, often described as the Bamboo Network, is contributing to the economic miracle of the Middle Kingdom by reviving its trade relations with the world by providing access to information and generating FDIs (Rauch & Trindade, 2002; Weidenbaum & Hughes, 1996).

Over the centuries, various forms of migration have developed, which have become a model for their contemporary typology. Greek and Roman colonisation was a classic example of voluntary migration. The deportation of African slaves to the New World is an example of forced migration. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the economic crises in the world economy caused massive waves of economic and labour migration to America and Australia (Manning, 2013). Although the distribution of accents is changing nowadays, the causes of migration remain largely unchanged. In most cases, economic factors determine migration. People are looking for better living conditions, although apart from the purely income-related dimension, there is a growing motive for a professional career, opportunities for gaining better education or meeting the needs related to self-fulfilment. Just as they did centuries ago, people continue to flee from armed conflicts, civil wars and natural disasters. Just as at the dawn of history, more and more migration is due to climate change in the world. This is exacerbating migratory flows towards the North due to insufficient food production in the South as a result of global warming (World Bank, 2018).

Although the nature of migration processes remains largely unchanged, we can observe a significant change in its scale. In 1970, only 78 million people or about 2.1% of the global population lived outside their country of origin. In 1990, this number doubled to 150 million (United Nations Population Division, 2012). In 2015, the number of international migrants was estimated at 244 million, i.e. 3.3% of the world’s population (In...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Immigrant entrepreneurship: Cases from contemporary Poland. Introduction
• 1 Current trends in global and Polish migrations
• 2 Research on immigrant entrepreneurship
• 3 Immigrants from the Far East in Poland
• 4 Reasons for starting new ventures
• 5 Strategies of venture development
• 6 On identities
• 7 Different facets of immigrant entrepreneurship: Central and peripheral target countries
• Contributors
• Index