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Individuals who launch entrepreneurial apparel design, development, and production businesses often experience start-up difficulties associated with resource availability and constraints, as well as incomplete knowledge and perceptions of opportunities in the apparel industry. We examine the concept of embeddedness as a mechanism for accessing resources and for addressing information gaps. This empirical research uses Giddens’ theory of structuration to investigate the conception of entrepreneurship, involved in regional apparel design, development, and production, as an embedded socio-economic process. Application of structuration enables exploration of the link between entrepreneurship (as agent) and the context (as structure); thus, allowing study of how social structures affect or encourage entrepreneurial activity. Qualitative methodology was employed as the objectives were to explore and understand the relationships acquired rather than to measure. Drawing evidence from a longitudinal study of three regional supporting structures and their impact on three entrepreneurial apparel design, development, and production businesses, This research presents an initial investigation into embeddedness over time.
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International Migration Experience and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Mexico
This study investigates the effect of international migration experience on entrepreneurship in sending areas. To identify prosperous businesses that create jobs and encourage economic development, this study isolates businesses other than street-vending enterprises with non-family employees. Retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project (N = 11,789 persons & 146,372 person-years) was used to estimate the annual probability of becoming an entrepreneur across 170 Mexican communities between 1975-2017. This study found that (1) any prior migration experience increases the probability of entrepreneurial entry relative to non-migrants; (2) accumulated months of migration experience are positively associated with the probability of entrepreneurial entry; (3) undocumented status is associated with a lower probability of entrepreneurial entry. The positive effect of accumulated migration experience on entrepreneurship suggests that international migrants can accumulate human and financial resources that are essential to early stage entrepreneurship. Thus, entrepreneurship represents an important pathway through which international migration can encourage economic development in less developed regions. At the same time, the results suggest that that immigration policies in receiving countries can undercut migrants’ capacities to mobilize resources and contribute to economic development upon return. These findings suggest that target migration creates a win-win by addressing labor shortages in receiving countries, while transferring resources to sending areas that enable economic mobility and development.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1808888
- PAR ID:
- 10176980
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- World Development
- ISSN:
- 0305-750X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Recent estimates suggest that nearly half of all international migrants return to their communities of origin within five years of emigration. Motivated by high levels of return migration, scholars are increasingly investigating the ways in which return migrants mobilise resources they acquire abroad, such as human and financial capital, to achieve economic mobility upon return. Yet, resource mobilisation and labour market reintegration unfold in heterogeneous community contexts. To understand the labour market reintegration of return migrants in various local contexts, we draw on an eight-year study that included interviews with 153 Mexican returnees to examine how labour market reintegration and resource mobilisation vary across three types of communities: urban, urban-adjacent, and rural. U.S.-Mexico migration is the largest binational return flow in the world, providing a unique opportunity to explore variations in the reintegration experiences of returnees. We find that labour market reintegration and resource mobilisation are contextually embedded processes that respond to the social, economic, and spatial features of migrants’ origin communities. Following our analysis, we extend three testable hypotheses that can guide future research on international migration and return.more » « less
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