 Sustaining Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Small- and Medium-sized CitiesLucia Lo and Carlos Teixeira Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 2015, vol. 1, issue 2, 146-162 Abstract: Abstract Whereas immigrant entrepreneurs are seen as engines of economic growth and sustainable urban development, small- and medium-sized cities (SMCs) are challenged by their lack of tradition and appropriate infrastructure in settling/integrating immigrants. This article asks if geography matters in theories on immigrant entrepreneurship, and to what extent immigrant entrepreneurs in SMCs are embedded in social relations. A case study conducted in a medium-sized Canadian city finds that immigrant entrepreneurship in SMCs is characterised by a low degree of social embeddedness, and immigrant entrepreneurs are more satisfied with their accomplishment and optimistic about their business future than their non-immigrant counterparts. It raises questions about the general applicability of current theories that ignore the role of geography in affecting the social, economic and institutional contexts of the place where immigrants conduct their economic endeavours, and suggests how SMCs can attract and retain immigrant businesses. Keywords: Immigrant entrepreneurship; embeddedness; small- and medium-sized cities; Canada (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jouent:v:1:y:2015:i:2:p:146-162 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies from Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India |
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