This investigation aims to explore the motivating factors behind the decision to engage in informal self-employment within ethnic economies. Through a series of semistructured qualitative interviews with Latin American immigrant women participating in informal self-employment in Stockholm, this study focuses on the ways in which agency and structure can influence economic decisions. Using the theory of mixedembeddedness, the results show that participating in informal self-employment can be understood as both a product of capitalizing on available social and ethnic resources, as well as the outcome of limited opportunities in traditional labour markets. While social and ethnic networks facilitate informal exchanges and provide an environment in which alternative employment opportunities become available, the decision to start an informal enterprise correlates with a lack of other opportunities, due to factors such as discrimination, a lack of language skills, limited access to start-up capital and a complex institutional context for small-scale entrepreneurs.

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.

Abstract This thesis is both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of tax-compliance by taxi-operators and drivers. The exploratory case-study adopts a critical sociological perspective in assessing the limits of both the currently dominant academic literature and the industry-specific legislation on tax conformity, including the most recent strategies and explicit tax-compliance measures from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) with regard to Australian cab-drivers. The core premise of this thesis is that the social and economic activities (both legal and illicit) of cab-drivers are embedded within unique networks of social relations. The study utilises focus-group interviews to explore cabbies’ views on taxation, their perceptions of fairness and trust, and to elucidate how individual taxi-workers justify circumvention of Australian tax laws and regulatory measures in their actual work-practices. This exploration is achieved by analysing the verbal accounts and conversations among cab-drivers that involve their guilt-free justifications for non-compliance. The analysis presents further insights into their “vocabulary of motives” and “aligning actions” vis-à-vis non-compliant tax behaviour. The respondents’ views and perceptions about trust, and distributive and procedural justice, are compared and contrasted against the tax-regulator’s views and the ATO’s current enforcement measures. This study is semi-grounded and qualitative in approach, and is a first contribution to a field of inquiry that appears to be dominated by quantitatively-oriented criminological and social-psychological approaches. In contrast, the case-study presents a sociologically-inspired inquiry, by emphasising that cab-drivers are subjected to a multitude of structural arrangements and social control mechanisms, which influence their attitudes and actions with regard to non-compliance. Moreover, current regulatory initiatives towards diminishing non-compliance in the taxi-industry tend to neglect the concept of “mixed-embeddedness” and the inter-relatedness between tax rules, concomitant enforcement practices, and the nation’s broader legislative framework. The state’s regulation of tax-compliance behaviour of taxi-drivers cannot strictly be detached from other laws and regulatory measures in areas such as taxi-cab licensing, occupational health & safety (OH&S) or industrial & workplace relations, which affect every taxi-operator and contracted driver, albeit in different ways. A social-action approach that grasps more comprehensively the rich contexts and complexities involved in the informal behaviours of cabbies may be regarded as an additional and powerful information tool in the governance of modern taxation systems. The study will demonstrate how serious tensions and contradictory forces arise when tax regulators attempt to enforce a National Compliance Model which is, of itself, inherently mal-integrated and underpinned typically by a bureaucratic ‘one-size-fits-all’ enforcement approach in regard to local networks of taxi-drivers. It will be argued that legislative changes to the (legal) employment status of Australian taxi-drivers may produce a far more expedient and cost-effective way for curtailing the enduring and deeply imbued tax non-compliant modus operandi within this particular sector of Australia’s transport-services industry.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / At the beginning of the XXI century, more specifically in the last decade, the state of Sergipe, north-eastern region of Brazil, became destination for groups of foreign immigrants who started their businesses in the state, among these entrepreneurial immigrants, a group of Italians active in area of real estate development and construction. A case study based on the analytical approach of mixed embeddedness was conducted on this group with a theoretical focus on post-industrial theories. In the mentioned model, the individual (entrepreneur) and his/ her relations don´t have total centrality as object of analysis, but also the “structure of opportunities” in which they are inserted and also the political-institutional framework in force in a given time and place are considered for analyses. In the analysis of this process are also implied the exploration of forms of capital and the resources mobilized by those entrepreneurs. The study evidenced that in the experience and performance of the Italians in Sergipe, the fragility experienced by them in terms of social capital and, to some extent, human capital, was shown to be ameliorated by high economic capital and, to some extent, also by ethnic capital. It was demonstrated that an adequate understanding of the business dynamics of this group requires an evaluation of how they manage to mobilize said forms of capital within the specific political, social and economic framework of Sergipe region in the period. / Neste início de século XXI, mais especificamente na última década, o estado de Sergipe, na região nordeste do Brasil, passou a ser destino de grupos de imigrantes empreendedores estrangeiros que abriram negócios no estado. Entre esses imigrantes empreendedores, um grupo de italianos atuantes na área de incorporação imobiliária e construção civil. Na abordagem de tal grupo, foi conduzido um estudo de caso, sob a perspectiva analítica do mixed embeddedness, priorizando o enfoque teórico nas teorias pós-industriais, em vistas de explicação do referido movimento migratório. No referido modelo, o indivíduo (empreendedor) e suas relações deixam de ter total centralidade enquanto objeto de análise, para se considerar também a importância da estrutura de oportunidades na qual se insere e ainda o quadro político-institucional vigente em dado tempo e local. Na análise do caso, são implicados ainda a exploração das formas de capital e dos recursos mobilizados por tais empreendedores. O estudo indicou que na experiência e desempenho dos italianos em Sergipe, a fragilidade vivenciada em termos de capital social no que tange ao local de destino e, de algum modo, do capital humano, mostrou ser amenizado por meio do alto capital econômico e, em certa medida, também do capital étnico do qual são detentores. Constatou-se que uma adequada compreensão da dinâmica dos negócios desse grupo, requer uma avaliação de como conseguem mobilizar as referidas formas de capital dentro do específico quadro político, social e econômico da região de Sergipe no período. / São Cristóvão, SE

Text in English / The aim of this research is to assess the impact social capital has had on Somali businesses. It argues against the perception that Somali business expertise is derived solely from the principles of economics. It argues that social capital plays a pivotal role in shaping the Somali spirit of entrepreneurship. The role of social capital in the creation of Somali human and financial capital is examined. This thesis, being a qualitative study, used semi-structured, unstructured interviews and direct observation as data collection methods. / Sociology / M.A. (Sociology)