Forms of capital, mixed embeddedness and Somali enterprise

Monder Ram, Nicholas Theodorakopoulos and Trevor Jones
Additional contact information
Monder Ram: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, mram@dmu.ac.uk
Nicholas Theodorakopoulos: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, ntheodor@dmu.ac.uk
Trevor Jones: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2008, vol. 22, issue 3, 427-446

Abstract: What form is small business activity taking among new migrants in the UK? This question is addressed by examining the case of Somalis in the English city of Leicester.We apply a novel synthesis of the Nee and Sanders' (2001) `forms of capital' model with the `mixed embeddedness' approach (Rath, 2000) to enterprises established by newly arrived immigrant communities, combining agency and structure perspectives. Data are drawn from business-owners (and workers) themselves, rather than community representatives. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were held with 25 business owners and 25 employees/`helpers', supplemented by 3 focus group encounters with different segments of the Somali business population.The findings indicate that a reliance solely on social capital explanations is not sufficient. An adequate understanding of business dynamics requires an appreciation of how Somalis mobilize different forms of capital within a given political, social and economic context.

Keywords: forms of capital; mixed embeddedness; Somali enterprise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017008093479 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:22:y:2008:i:3:p:427-446

DOI: 10.1177/0950017008093479

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().