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.

The focus of this thesis is to emphasise the lived experience of being a migrant, and of living in a multicultural society, and to acknowledge the multi-dimensionality of these experiences. The author conducted interviews with people from ethno-specific community groups in the Sydney suburb of Auburn. These interviews explored the physical, emotional and spiritual aspect of coming to terms with a changing sense of what is home and what is foreign. The tenor of the thesis is strongly optimistic and explores the social ecology of multiculturalism in Australia in the late 1990's, using Auburn, with its strong immigrant population and large Turkish community, as a case study. The contributions by the people of Auburn are woven through the thesis as voices in their own right, rather than as quotations for a line of argument. Social ecology, as a project, works to open up dimensions of awareness and to acknowledge complexity by addressing the physical and sensory levels of individual experience as well as the broader political and social contexts which frame people's lives. The thesis acknowledges that the success of contemporary Australian multiculturalism has something to do with the broad based policies that implement this social phenomenon. More importantly, multiculturalism succeeds because it has become the culture scape in which the soul of the community wanders. This thesis acknowledges that there is something intellectually difficult about the word soul, but there is an ecological value in James Hillman's idea of the soul as not an elevated idea but rather one 'down in the earth'; soul in this sense is about place, finding and taking root in a new place. / Doctor of Philosophy(PhD)

With increasing migration over the last few decades, over 20% of Sweden’s inhabitant are now foreign-born (Krzyżanowski, 2018). A policy shift stemming from the 2015 European migrant crisis (Hagelund, 2020) led to a decentring of integration management from national immigration policy to the local level (Scholten and Penninx, 2016). Subsequently, community level actors have become increasingly active developing their own integration philosophies and implementing these locally. Health and well-being activities curated by the non-governmental organisation Hej Främling seek to improve local inclusion for migrants and newly arrived persons to Sweden. Using these activities as a launching point, this study draws upon perceptions from 17 migrants participating in Hej Främling to examine their feelings of inclusion and sense of belonging across space and place and activities. Results show activity participation both within Hej Främling and across Swedish society more broadly has a positive influence on migrants’ sense of inclusion, in particular through the facilitation of shared spaces of experience, where migrants from diverse backgrounds can come together over a shared interest and build upon their social networks. Concept-mapping was used as a conceptual framework to illuminate the core components of inclusion, how they interlink and contribute to further conceptualisation. This study identifies four key insights for local inclusion: 1) the value of shared experiences in creating inclusion 2) the perceived socio-cultural barriers to inclusion 3) activity space as environments for intercultural encounters and 4) the facilitative role of community organisations in creating inclusion and promoting integration.