Andra generationens unga företagare med utländsk bakgrund : En förståelse av det egna företagandet utifrån social position

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is about young second-generation immigrants who choose to become entrepreneurs. In a qualitative interview study, 22 young individuals’ choices and trajectories as entrepreneurs were examined. The aim of the dissertation was to understand how these young entrepreneurs, based on their social position, motivated their choices and trajectories into working life as business owners. The results of the study show how the young entrepreneurs act based on their social position, in which both structural and intergenerational factors have significance for their choices. Furthermore, variations are clarified in the individuals’ motives and trajectories as young entrepreneurs, which can be understood against the backdrop of various social positions. Three patterns have crystallised from the young entrepreneurs’ stories: the “follower” – the early entrepreneur with a strong tradition of business in their family, the “climber” – the later and strategic young entrepreneur who also has a strong tradition of business, and finally the “stopover” – who does not have a tradition of business in their family. But the most prominent pattern is the “early and horizontal business trajectory”. This trajectory does not represent the typical highly educated springboard examples, which are normally highlighted in previous research. Instead it represents a “new category” which includes young people who come from less highly educated business environments, and who largely follow in the footsteps of their parents and relatives and continues to work in typical trade- and service branches. For this category, it is more likely the individuals’ lack of education, rather than strong education, that drives them to become entrepreneurs. The young people in this category leave school early and start their own businesses. Central to this is how the young people continue to work in the increasingly uncertain and informal labour market, in which relatively strenuous living patterns are passed on through generations, and where the young people partially fall outside the public welfare systems.