Immigrant entrepreneurs in a changing institutional context : a mixed embeddedness approach

Sammanfattning: Immigrant entrepreneurs are known to be heterogeneous in terms of available resources and entrepreneurial outcomes. However, this heterogeneity, as well as immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness in social networks and the institutional context of high-income welfare states such as Sweden, remains understudied. Sweden represents an interesting case as a popular immigration destination which liberalized its migration policy for entrepreneurs and changed other regulations, encouraging immigrant entrepreneurship after 2008.Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to the mixed embeddedness approach to immigrant entrepreneurship by considering three stages of the entrepreneurial process – entry, performance, and potential exit – in a changing institutional environment.Methodologically, the dissertation operationalizes the mixed embeddedness approach by studying these three stages – entry (propensity to start a business), performance (entrepreneurial incomes), and potential exit (duration in business) – among different categories of immigrants. Explanatory factors are drawn from three levels of analysis: institutional change (macro), social, ethnic and family networks (meso), and the individual’s human capital (micro). A range of statistical tools is used for empirical analyses: Difference-in-difference methods in combination with Coarsened Exact Matching and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition are used to investigate the influence of institutional change on entrepreneurial entry and performance. Survival models based on Cox regression are applied to investigate the influence of social and family ties on the likelihood of entrepreneurial exit. A combination of clustering and association analysis allows heterogeneity to be approached via the categorization of immigrant entrepreneurs.Empirically, based on rich data from Swedish registers, the dissertation reveals that the propensity to start businesses in expanding ICT industries among labour immigrants was increased, and performance in terms of income among new immigrant entrepreneurs was improved after institutional change, compared to earlier. It also stresses that family networks mitigate a lack of other resources for refugee entrepreneurs, allowing them to stay in business longer. Two main categories of new immigrant entrepreneurs were distinguished in the overall heterogeneous population.The dissertation consists of four papers and an introductory chapter.