Globalization has affected nearly all aspects of life as people gain mobility to cross national borders and live in different countries. Along with the other developed countries, Sweden has become a popular destination for immigration contributing to the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship. Naturally, these type of entrepreneurs are exceedingly susceptible to various factors that impact business development. This thesis will investigate the obstacles that immigrant entrepreneurs face in the pursuit to establish and operate a successful business. Additionally, an examination into the incentivising schemes that are available to benefit and encourage immigrants to implement entrepreneurial activity. Besides, the thesis aims to identify how the business supporting organizations may facilitate illumination of the most significant constraints for implementation of entrepreneurial activity among immigrants. The research is conducted by using qualitative method based on four cases and unstructured interviews of representatives of business organizations. The results were analysed by comparing the cases between each other and extrapolation with the theoretical framework. The outcome of this thesis suggest that the primary driving forces for immigrant entrepreneurship in Sweden referred to discovery and exploration of business opportunity as well as to the factors that necessitate the immigrants to establish a new business venture. However, it is suggested that the necessity alone cannot be the decisive factor if the prospective entrepreneur fails to explore business opportunity. The primary constraints for immigrant entrepreneurship involve the internal and external barriers that may refer to the social and human capital as well as the access to the resources necessary for the implementation of entrepreneurial activity. Finally, it has been found that the entrepreneur supporting organization can significantly facilitate the entrepreneurship among immigrants through granting an excess to unique information, advice and support of the foreign-born entrepreneurs that may partially illuminate the most crucial barriers.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship as a phenomenon is not new, most studies within the field of immigrant entrepreneurship have focused on immigrants moving from emerging economies to developed economies. Little research attention has been devoted to immigrant entrepreneurship with focus on immigrants from developed countries moving to other developed countries. There have neither been any comparative studies between the motives among DEIE and EEIE. To address this issue, this study analyzes the similarities and differences between IE’s from emerging/developed economies in terms of motives for engaging in self-employment, as well as challenges they face throughout the process. To answer these questions, a qualitative study was conducted with two IE groups originating from developed- and emerging economies, to analyze the IE’s motives for engaging in self-employment, and challenges they faced. The results of this study showed that there are more similarities than differences between the two IE groups in terms of push/pull motives. One distinct difference however, is that DEIE do not engage in entrepreneurial activities out of necessity, while EEIE in contrast show tendencies of both necessity and opportunity motives. This study also shows evidence which supports the home-country hypothesis, where self-employment tradition from the home-country influences the immigrants’ decision to continue the ‘tradition’ in the COR. The differences among the two IE groups is that the DEIE are more likely to originate from countries with a tradition of self-employment- subsequently being more probable to be influenced by the home-country to engage in self-employment activities as it is almost a ‘normal’ for them. There seems to be no distinction between the two groups in terms of how social networks are utilized but rather similarities, in terms of its importance in: marketing their businesses, financing the business, opportunity identification, validating the business idea, and opportunity identification. This study has also shown that there are more similarities than differences in terms of challenges faced by the two immigrant entrepreneur groups. The main challenges faced by both IE groups are: bureaucratic complexity; the language barrier, which hindered them from employment; and disregarded qualifications from the COO, which consequently hindered them from qualified employments. Furthermore, this study contributes to the overall understanding of the IE phenomenon, and has added further understanding of IE from developed economies.

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Existing studies on the relationship between culture, gender and entrepreneurial identity of immigrant entrepreneurs have tended to focus exclusively on women. I set out to understand how Chinese immigrant men and women entrepreneurs construct their entrepreneurial identities based on cultural and gendered experiences. I asked: How do Chinese immigrant men and women entrepreneurs construct entrepreneurial identities based on their cultural and gender experiences? How are these experiences related to entrepreneurial endeavours and views of entrepreneurial success? Through a qualitative study of 20 in-depth interviews with 10 men and 10 women, I explored similarities and differences within and between the two groups. The findings show that both men and women narrated entrepreneurial identities as coming from nothing, reflecting the notion of “zero mindset” proposed in the literature. My study contributes by connecting coming-from-nothing to entrepreneurial endeavours and perceptions of success. I also show that there is a spectrum of cultural identities ranging from identifying strongly as Chinese to identifying as Chinese Canadian, and that positioning on this spectrum can influence business endeavours. The study also contributes by presenting a direct comparison between men and women immigrant entrepreneurs from the same home and host countries. It does so by showing that: women associated with the idea of “learning entrepreneurship”, whereas men associated with the concept of innately “being entrepreneur”; women tended to prioritize the gender role of mother and wife over the entrepreneurial role and to define success as stability in the business and balance between work and family, more so than men did.

This research illuminates the gendered nature of immigration and business ownership in the Atlantic Canadian context. A feminist analysis of semi-structured interviews with 15 immigrant women entrepreneurs in Halifax, Nova Scotia, shows that immigrant women face many barriers to meaningful employment, but entrepreneurship in the food sector can facilitate substantive citizenship. The research explains why and how stores, restaurants, and farmers’ market stalls exist. The processes through which participants come to open their businesses and settle in Canada align with twentieth century anthropological understandings of rites of passage as developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. Liminality – a key element of every rite of passage – is found to be a time in which participants feel lost betweentheir old and new lives, so conclusions in this research advance policy and programming recommendations aimed at reducing the length of time immigrants’ feel like outsiders in Halifax and the business realm.

This article is about immigrant entrepreneurs and their way through business life in an unfamiliar business world. Focusing on the region of Växjö, Sweden the article presents different attitudes of immigrant entrepreneurs and shows common problems and barriers. The article investigates how immigrant entrepreneurs’ deal with their daily life and what they struggled with in the past. What kind of barriers do immigrants face when they leave their home country? The overall aim is to research what support is needed in order to help regional immigrant entrepreneurs with their business. Therefore this article highlights barriers which immigrant entrepreneurs struggle with. As the regional support programs influence the path of business life the article presents their perspective as well. These supporters have a lot of experience in dealing with immigrant entrepreneurs which can be used to investigate improvements. As the most outstanding result, this article presents the importance of overall integration in the host country. The way through business life for immigrant entrepreneurs is characterized by an effectual logic but the support to entrepreneurs is often based on a causation-logic. Therefore the support givers should consider focusing on the individual entrepreneurs and the surroundings that influence the integration.

Entrepreneurship is in full-swing across the globe and it is widely regarded as a sustainable solution to long-unresolved economic issues like unemployment and poverty. Immigration is also a growing reality and the immigrating individuals can contribute to the new societies either by settling for a job or launching a business as an entrepreneur and in turn creating more jobs. However, social constraints are a key hurdle in the way of immigrant entrepreneurs. This paper aims to not only understand the social constraints faced by immigrant entrepreneurs but also provide a set of guidelines on how to overcome these social constraints. A qualitative research study focused on immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden was designed around this purpose and was conducted in two cities of Sweden. Entrepreneurs in the study were from diverse nationalities of origin and business sectors. Key social constraints identified through the study are cultural differences, differences in business practices, and language – all acting as a wall for foreign entrepreneurs. Networking – both business and social – is regarded as the main solution to overcome these barriers and the weight for this lies equally on state, entrepreneurship industry, and the immigrant entrepreneurs. Immigrant entrepreneurs can overcome the social constraints by also researching their business area in detail as well as marketing themselves and their businesses especially by establishing a strong and trustable social media profile. Government needs to recognize the diversity of immigrant entrepreneurship communities and create tailor-made social interaction programs for different nationalities, educational backgrounds, and business sectors. It can also project positive image of successful immigrant entrepreneurs not only to inspire other immigrant entrepreneurs but also to increase trust regarding immigrant entrepreneurs among native population. Another important step by government could be early orientation for immigrant entrepreneurs to Swedish business market. Entrepreneurship advisory industry needs to understand immigrant entrepreneurs better and organize more multi-cultural events to lower the barriers between native and immigrant communities.

Entrepreneurial opportunities are frequently noted and addressed in the literature of immigrant entrepreneurship; however, little is known about how these entrepreneurial opportunities come into existence and how immigrant entrepreneurs create such opportunities. The purpose of this thesis is to examine why and how immigrant entrepreneurs create entrepreneurial opportunities through embedding processes in the home country and the host country. Sweden was chosen as the country of residence of immigrant entrepreneurs from Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Mexico. Four cases were selected in this study. Each case illustrates an opportunity creation process in a different industry, between a different home country and Sweden as the host country and by immigrant entrepreneurs with different backgrounds. By using the mixed embeddedness perspective as the theoretical lens in combination with the literature on entrepreneurial opportunity and immigrant entrepreneurship, this thesis develops a model of entrepreneurial opportunity creation as an integration process. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial opportunity creation can be considered as a process of local integration by immigrant entrepreneurs into the host country and a re-integration of these entrepreneurs into the home country. At the beginning of the opportunity creation process, immigrant entrepreneurs feel socially excluded in the host country. Throughout the opportunity creation process, immigrant entrepreneurs interact with different actors in the host country and gradually move from being socially excluded to socially included, which illustrates a local integration process. In this process, immigrant entrepreneurs become localized through different activities that embed them in the local context. The process of entrepreneurial idea and business concept development and the refinement of the business concept in this thesis illustrates an ongoing and non-linear process of: being locally integrated through creating trust in the local people, acculturating and creating a sense of belonging; and being re-integrated to the home country through maintaining and establishing new links to the home country. The study contributes to the mainstream entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship in several ways. First, it contributes to studies on immigrant entrepreneurship by investigating why immigrants embark on a journey to be entrepreneurs and how immigrant entrepreneurs create entrepreneurial opportunities through embedding processes in the home and the host country. The study demonstrates how an entrepreneurial opportunity is created as a social integration process. Second, the study contributes to literature on entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship by incorporating the entrepreneurial opportunity creation process with acculturation strategies. It illustrates how the entrepreneurial opportunity creation process intertwines with the four strategies of acculturation. Third, the study contributes to the mixed embeddedness perspective by adopting the process approach and proposing mixed embedding as a new concept which centers on the interplay between the home and the host country’s influences on immigrants’ business activities; by extending mixed embeddedness from the national level of the home country or the host country to the transnational level between the home country and the host country; and by proposing an alternative way to view an entrepreneurial opportunity as a creation process instead of being discovered. Fourth, the study contributes to the immigrant entrepreneurship literature in Sweden by furthering the understanding of entrepreneurial opportunity creation by immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden. Furthermore, the study suggests some implications for practice. The study proposes some embedding mechanisms which can be implemented in business support programs for immigrant entrepreneurs and in integration programs for immigrants in general. The design of the business support programs can aim to help immigrant entrepreneurs to: create credibility through contacts and experiences that they establish and gain in the local community; create familiarity to the local community through associating business concepts with well-known values; engage in the local life to understand customers’ mindsets, master the local language to understand local customers’ needs; and establish new/strengthen connections to the home country. The design of integration programs can aim to undertake activities that help immigrants increase the interaction between the local people and themselves. This type of interaction could be increased by organizing meetings and activities in which immigrants are introduced to different local sports clubs and hobby clubs. An approach in which the host country’s language is practiced and mastered anywhere and anytime should be adopted in the integration programs.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how culture influences the perception of entrepreneurship, in the context of immigrant entrepreneurs in a non-core region in Sweden. Our theoretical framework consists of previous research about the entrepreneurial process, and cultural differences on national, local and business level. A conceptualization of the entrepreneurial process is combined with a three-layer theoretical framework of culture. Namely a national, a local and a business culture. The source for this empirical research are Balkan immigrants that came to Sweden during the 1990s because of the Balkan war, and are now entrepreneurs in Karlskrona, Sweden. The research method used in this thesis is interpretivistic with an abductive research approach. The empirical data was gathered through in-depth interviews. The empirical results have helped us understand that the perception of the entrepreneurial process distinguishes itself depending on culture. The main findings in our research imply that the Balkan entrepreneurs in Karlskrona, Sweden, feel that they became entrepreneurs because of non-satisfaction within social conditions. And that the Balkan entrepreneurs have adapted more to the Swedish culture in their way of working as entrepreneurs. They believe that adaption is the key to entrepreneurial success when creating value and developing a firm. However, the Balkan entrepreneurs feel that they are still under influence by the Balkan culture as well. This thesis contributes with an insight on how the entrepreneurial process is influenced by culture.

Immigrants participate in entrepreneurial activity more frequently than other groups, largely resulting from restricted access to traditional occupational advancement. Recent studies have reported that immigrant entrepreneurs focus on their abundance of human and social capital to obtain the financial resources necessary to fund their ventures. Lack of financial resources has been identified as a major barrier for immigrant entrepreneurs; however, as this study indicates, both native and immigrant entrepreneurs face similar financial hurdles in locating initial startup funding. Where major differences arise between native and immigrant entrepreneurs is that native entrepreneurs more frequently transition to business forms of debt, a key component to long-term success. Resulting from their lack of embeddedness in their host context, immigrant entrepreneurs are far more likely to rely on social network based resources to fund growth, which removes their businesses from the opportunities business forms that debt provides. Using the Kauffman public data, I investigated the relationship between financing strategies engaged by "immigrant" versus "native" entrepreneurs.