RE-CENTRING MIGRANT ENTERPRISE GEOGRAPHIES: TRANSLOCAL GHANAIAN AND POLISH ENTERPRISE WITHIN AND THROUGH LONDON
Abstract
In the wake of financial crisis the UK Coalition government has emphasised an
‘enterprise for all’ agenda for economic growth that, paradoxically, marginalises
migrant entrepreneurs within an ‘immigrant reduction’ agenda. While migrant
entrepreneurs may be written off as ‘failing’ within economic theory and policy, my
research shows instead that the value of migrant enterprise is far from marginal.
Focusing on Ghanaian and Polish migrant enterprise within and through London, I recentre
our understanding away from the spatially partial (trans)national frameworks
used in previous studies, towards a spatially holistic translocal conceptualisation of
migrant enterprise. I re-conceptualise the value of migrant enterprise as a continuum
of economic and social value, created for multiple stakeholders who consume and
simultaneously construct this value relationally across space. Further, I unpack
migrant enterprise practices in relation to migrant entrepreneurs’ translocal capital
mobilisations and personal mobilities that stretch across localities in the Global North
and South. I argue that this translocal framework also provides a more useful basis for
facilitating migrant enterprise in practice. I highlight key gaps in support provision
between publicly-funded institutions that fail to engage with the specific yet
heterogeneous needs of migrant entrepreneurs, combined with self-funded support
provisions that are inaccessible to the most capital-poor migrant entrepreneurs. To
address these gaps, I make the case for further development of and investment in
community-based enterprise support as an appropriate and realistic approach for
enabling migrant entrepreneurs to create value across space. My research also
expands the intellectual trading zone within Geography by constructing a ‘hybrid’
Economic-Development Geography of translocal migrant enterprise. I argue that the
continued expansion of this ‘hybrid’ inter-sub-disciplinary approach is crucial to
Geographers’ capacity to theorise our increasingly globalised world and effect
positive change within it.
Authors
Phillips, JoshuaCollections
- Theses [4490]