Le Programme National de Rénovation Urbaine (PNRU), initié au titre de la loi Borloo du 1er août 2003, a été explicitement conçu pour s’attaquer à des questions urbaines et sociales lourdes : obsolescence du parc de logements des organismes HLM, concentration de populations paupérisées dans des espaces qualifiés d’espaces de relégation, discriminations liées à la nationalité ou à l’origine géographique. Calibrée pour répondre aux problématiques des quartiers difficiles des grandes villes, sa diffusion à l’ensemble des territoires prioritaires et en direction de villes petites et moyennes témoigne du succès de la formule et, suis generis, d’une appétence particulière de ces dernières pour le changement, pour l’action et la communication autour de ces « maxi-projets urbains », parfois hors d’échelle.En inscrivant notre réflexion dans une relecture des théories de la transaction, nous avons interrogé les récits et les discours des acteurs décisionnaires engagés dans les opérations de rénovation urbaine d’envergure des villes moyennes à l’échelle de la région Bretagne. En somme, quand, comment et sur quoi se fonde l’engagement de la puissance publique dans le choix de la démolition et comment comprendre l’adhésion massive des villes moyennes à ce dispositif ? Il s’agit donc de s’intéresser, d’une part, aux conceptions de l’espace portées par ces opérations et, d’autre part, d’interroger les logiques de l’action sur lesquelles elles reposent. / The National Urban Renewal Programme (NERP), launched by the Borloo law passed on 1 August 2003, was explicitly designed as an answer to strong social and urban issues: housing obsolescence of the HLM, concentration of population in space which are considered as impoverished areas, relegation and discrimination according to nationality or geographical origin. Calibrated to address problems of the difficult areas of large cities, its diffusion to all priority areas and towards small and medium-sized towns reflects the success of the formula, and, by the way, a special appetite for action and communication about these "maxi urban projects" sometimes oversized.Mobilising a proofreading of transaction theories, we have analysed the stories and speeches of local actors and policy maker involved in large-scale operations of urban renewal in mid-sized cities across Brittany. In sum, we ask when, how and on what basis repose the commitment of the public authorities in the choice of demolition and how to understand the massive support of medium-sized cities in this device? This includes developing interest, on the one hand, about the concepts of space including in these operations and, secondly, to evalue and ask the logic of the action of the programme.

Background & Problem discussion: Recently, there has been an increased interest in topics such as immigrant entrepreneurship. Considering that most of the research until now is done in America with American examples, it would be beneficial if such results are verified or refuted in other countries as well, such as Sweden (Brundin, Bögenhold and Sundin, 2001). Overall, businesses ran by immigrant entrepreneurs are creating job opportunities and encouraging Europe’s economy, even though exposed to limited immigration policies and unpleasant public opinion (Halkias et al., 2007). Immigrant entrepreneurs are not a new phenomenon in Sweden and according to Hammarstedt (2004) immigrant self-employment compared to native small-businesses has increased throughout the years, and therefore an important role in the integration of immigrants was made possible by the self-employment sector as a source of employment. Rather than that, most of the research done in this topic by many researchers has been focused in factors triggering immigrant entrepreneurs to start a business, but less researchers were focused in understanding the challenges they face and strategies they adopt in order to survive. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to identify challenges that immigrant entrepreneurs face while starting and running their businesses and analyze how they are interrelated and how do immigrant entrepreneurs cope with them in the setting of a medium-sized town in Sweden. Jönköping as a medium sized town in Sweden is our context. Theoretical framework: The literature used in this study covers studies conducted in different context such as: American, European and Swedish. The conducted studies involve case studies in different context done with immigrant entrepreneurs are mainly about the challenges they face and the strategies they adopt as solutions to those challenges. Such theory helped us identify common challenges among immigrant entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, considering that the existing literature does not explicitly discuss the role of the context (metropolitan, large city, medium-sized town, small (rural town), local community etc), we have to inquire especially into that and use our own data to build a supplementary theory. Method: The method used in this study is a qualitative approach but also with some minor elements of a quantitative approach (the use of the questionnaire during the interviews asked from the respondents to rank the challenges and therefore helped to find out the most significant challenge among them). Considering that generally our study followed a qualitative approach, we have conducted ‘face-to-face’ interviews. There were eight semi-structured interviews. All of the interviews were tape recorded. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that challenges faced by our respondents were: start-up finance, finance for growth, access to markets, lack of language skills, lack of marketing/sales skills, lack of management skills, access to technology, lack of education, lack of visitors to Jönköping, maintaining customers, Swede’s negative views on immigrant businesses, awareness of food among customers, and competition. However, the four most significant challenges among them were: access to markets, start-up finance, lack of language skills and finance for growth. Besides that the findings show that the strategies that are adopted by immigrant entrepreneurs that we interviewed include the following: use of personal savings, use of personal networks, bank loan, enter low market barriers, scanning the market beforehand, asking help from their customers about language barriers or taking a language course before starting, among others. The findings showed that the context is important to a great extent but besides context, in order for the immigrant venture to occur it matters to a great extent, who the individual entrepreneur is and what business idea he/she develops. In addition, they are key factors contributing not only to the immigrant venture occurrence, but also to the success of the business.

<p><strong>Background & Problem discussion: </strong>Recently, there has been an increased interest in topics such as immigrant entrepreneurship. Considering that most of the research until now is done in America with American examples, it would be beneficial if such results are verified or refuted in other countries as well, such as Sweden (Brundin, Bögenhold and Sundin, 2001). Overall, businesses ran by immigrant entrepreneurs are creating job opportunities and encouraging Europe’s economy, even though exposed to limited immigration policies and unpleasant public opinion (Halkias et al., 2007). Immigrant entrepreneurs are not a new phenomenon in Sweden and according to Hammarstedt (2004) immigrant self-employment compared to native small-businesses has increased throughout the years, and therefore an important role in the integration of immigrants was made possible by the self-employment sector as a source of employment.</p><p>Rather than that, most of the research done in this topic by many researchers has been focused in factors triggering immigrant entrepreneurs to start a business, but less researchers were focused in understanding the challenges they face and strategies they adopt in order to survive.</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this thesis is to <em>identify</em> challenges that immigrant entrepreneurs face while starting and running their businesses and <em>analyze</em> how they are interrelated and how do immigrant entrepreneurs <em>cope</em> with them in the setting of a medium-sized town in Sweden. Jönköping as a medium sized town in Sweden is our context.</p><p><strong>Theoretical framework: </strong>The literature used in this study covers studies conducted in different context such as: American, European and Swedish. The conducted studies involve case studies in different context done with immigrant entrepreneurs are mainly about the challenges they face and the strategies they adopt as solutions to those challenges. Such theory helped us identify common challenges among immigrant entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, considering that the existing literature does not explicitly discuss the role of the context (metropolitan, large city, medium-sized town, small (rural town), local community etc), we have to inquire especially into that and use our own data to build a supplementary theory.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>The method used in this study is a qualitative approach but also with some minor elements of a quantitative approach (the use of the questionnaire during the interviews asked from the respondents to rank the challenges and therefore helped to find out the most significant challenge among them). Considering that generally our study followed a qualitative approach, we have conducted ‘face-to-face’ interviews. There were eight semi-structured interviews. All of the interviews were tape recorded.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The findings of this study showed that challenges faced by our respondents were: start-up finance, finance for growth, access to markets, lack of language skills, lack of marketing/sales skills, lack of management skills, access to technology, lack of education, lack of visitors to Jönköping, maintaining customers, Swede’s negative views on immigrant businesses, awareness of food among customers, and competition. However, the four most significant challenges among them were: access to markets, start-up finance, lack of language skills and finance for growth.</p><p>Besides that the findings show that the strategies that are adopted by immigrant entrepreneurs that we interviewed include the following: use of personal savings, use of personal networks, bank loan, enter low market barriers, scanning the market beforehand, asking help from their customers about language barriers or taking a language course before starting, among others.</p><p>The findings showed that the context is important to a great extent but besides context, in order for the immigrant venture to occur it matters to a great extent, who the individual entrepreneur is and what business idea he/she develops. In addition, they are key factors contributing not only to the immigrant venture occurrence, but also to the success of the business.</p>

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:20:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JoseneyRQD_TESE.pdf: 5771151 bytes, checksum: 3e3b2ae90fad46743506c33e970e4fad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-21 / Esta tese versa sobre as cidades m?dias no atual contexto do desenvolvimento urbano brasileiro e nordestino. Na regi?o Nordeste, o processo de urbaniza??o foi lento, atomizado, geogr?fico e economicamente disperso, o que resultou numa rede urbana truncada, constitu?da principalmente por suas nove capitais regionais e cerca de duas dezenas de cidades de porte m?dio, em sua maioria, interiorizadas. Foi a partir dessa rede urbana nordestina interiorizada que nos propomos a estudar Pau dos Ferros, no Rio Grande do Norte e o papel que ela desempenha na rede urbana nordestina e potiguar. Compreender os determinantes da produ??o do espa?o urbano-regional de Pau dos Ferros que o caracterizam como cidade m?dia, com fins a refletir sobre o seu papel no desenvolvimento regional foi o objetivo geral desta pesquisa. Nossa hip?tese ? que, a despeito de um contingente populacional pequeno, Pau dos Ferros vem desempenhando na rede urbana do Nordeste e do Rio Grande do Norte as fun??es de cidade m?dia, particularmente, na oferta dos servi?os de educa??o superior e sa?de, al?m da oferta de empregos, notadamente no com?rcio e nos servi?os p?blicos, o que nos permitiu trat?-la ? priori, a partir do conceito de cidade (inter) m?dia. Para esta investiga??o, partimos da proposta de estudo e do pensamento de autores como Faria (1978), Benko (1999) e Brand?o (2007), os quais prop?em o estudo do urbano a partir de situa??es concretas que permitam compreender os fenomenos em sua m?ltiplas causalidades. Dessa forma, o fio condutor desta an?lise foi o modo como vem se reconfigurando as cidades m?dias e como essa reconfigura??o tem afetado de diferentes formas as rela??es entre as cidades e entre as cidades e as regi?es. Os resultados das an?lises apontaram que os investimentos p?blicos em sa?de e educa??o t?m contribu?do para a atra??o de investimentos privados em suas respectivas ?reas, e tamb?m em outras, o que tem ajudado a dinamizar a economia da cidade, inclusive modificado parcialmente sua estrutura ocupacional. Pau dos Ferros se destacou como um polo comercial e de servi?os na rede urbana potiguar, formando um outlier no Alto Oeste, organizando uma bacia de empregos na sua ?rea de influ?ncia que constatamos ser composta por 55 munic?pios do RN, CE e PB. Ao se consolidar como polo regional na oferta dos servi?os de sa?de e de educa??o superior, ampliou-se o fluxo de pessoas que realizam movimento pendular para trabalho e estudo. Em s?ntese, constatou-se que, a despeito do pequeno contingente populacional, a configura??o urbano-regional de Pau dos Ferros, tanto em termos de sua din?mica urbana, como de sua abrang?ncia regional, fazem dela uma cidade m?dia na rede urbana nordestina interiorizada