Breaking Boundaries: Exploring the Process of Intersective Market Activity of Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the Context of High Economic Inequality

• Author: Eliada Wosu Griffin‐EL,Joy Olabisi
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12327
• Date: 01 May 2018

Breaking Boundaries: Exploring the Process

of Intersective Market Activity of Immigrant

Entrepreneurship in the Context of High Economic

Inequality

Eliada Wosu Griffin-EL and Joy Olabisi

Robert Morris University School of Business; RIT Saunders College of Business

ABSTRACT We explore immigrant entrepreneurship using structuration theory to understand

how migrant-led venture creation conducts socially-intersective market activity in the host

country of high economic inequality and social exclusion. Applying Gidden’s structuration

theory to immigrant entrepreneurship (1994), we unravel the co-evolutionary process of both

the entrepreneurial agent and the social structure of the host country via three phases of

venture creation. We collected and examined original and longitudinal empirical data of eight

South African-based immigrant entrepreneurs using a process-oriented theory-building

approach. Our findings unveil a process by which home and host institutions shape immigrant

entrepreneurial agency to identify non-ethnic business opportunities and to form relationships

across diverse actors that counter existing norms of intergroup segregation and hostility. The

process illustrates how an immigrant’s social orientation to his/her host country’s structure

changes over time, and symbiotically, how the immigrant entrepreneur’s actions – which

break socially constructed boundaries – also change the social structure.

Keywords: economic inequality, immigrant entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship,

markets, social norms, structuration theory

INTRODUCTION

The experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs – which the literature characterizes as indi-

viduals building a venture in a foreign nation (Aldrich and Waldinger, 1990) – represent

a phenomenon of increasing intellectual query. The literature attributes the rise of

immigrant entrepreneurship to the unfavourable reception from local residents (Portes

Address for reprints: Joy Olabisi, Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester,

NY 14623, USA (jolabisi@saunders.rit.edu).

Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper and are listed alphabetically.

V

C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 55:3 May 2018

doi: 10.1111/joms.12327

and B€or€ocz, 1989), regulation that impedes the acquisition of assets (Kanas et al., 2009),

and exclusionary labour policies (Blevis and Pezet, 2012; Parker, 2009). Prior research

depicts the immigrant entrepreneurial community as emergent micro-enterprises and

small-scale production or distribution entities targeting co-ethnic markets to mitigate

their economic vulnerability (Moyo, 2014). According to the literature, co-ethnic social

relationships of strong kinship ties, a common language, and cultural identity readily

support immigrant entrepreneurs within the host country (Evans, 1989; Ndofor and

Priem, 2011; Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993). Attributes such as solidarity and trust

often govern such relationships (Portes and B€or€ocz, 1989).

Recent studies within the immigrant entrepreneurship literature depict the relation-

ship between entrepreneurs and their host country’s social structure as static and non-

evolving. The social structure of the host country can be rigid, within which immigrant

entrepreneurs find their ‘fit’ and create a bounded space that enables them to co-exist.

Hence, the resulting venture represents an alternative approach towards economic inte-

gration for outsiders within a stoic and uncompromising social landscape (Kanas et al.,

2009). Immigrants’ heightened awareness of their exclusion shapes their contextual

interpretation, and in turn, how they identify and pursue opportunity. However, the lit-

erature falls short in explaining how immigrants’ orientation to their home country

influences how they engage with and identify opportunity within the local context, and

how the host country context – when socially fragmented due to economic inequality –

evolves as the immigrants’ ventures unfold.

The analysis of longitudinal data from eight cases of immigrant entrepreneurs based

in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa conveys a host country context that is

unfavourable, and in some instances, hostile to the foreign African nationals. Contrary

to the literature’s description of immigrant entrepreneurial activity that is exclusive to eth-

nic clientele or ethnic goods due to such treatment, the market activity of these men and

women is the opposite; they are intersective in creating opportunities that generate jobs for

the historically-stigmatized South African locals. Moreover, they are producers and

innovators of goods and services that target an increasingly economically and racially-

diverse customer base. Thus, this phenomenon inspires the research question: How do

immigrant entrepreneurs use home and host country institutions to create intersective market activity while

building ventures?

Using a case study methodology, we explore this phenomenon within a social struc-

ture that is highly fragmented and unfavourable towards foreigners, due to high eco-

nomic inequality. This study features immigrant entrepreneurs, who reside in the host

country of South Africa, and who come from the surrounding African countries of

Namibia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, and Zim-

babwe. We collected data via in-depth semi-structured interviews, site visits, and partici-

pant observation, and analysed the data using a combination of thematic coding and

the adoption of a process-oriented approach to building theory (Langley, 1999). We

apply a temporal bracketing perspective to the data, and interpret the events and actions

according to the entrepreneurs’ narrative and perceptions. We draw theoretical ground-

ing from the structuration and institution theories, which recent studies have applied to

the entrepreneurship field. Our core argument is that social and cognitive institutions of

the entrepreneurs’ home country influence their agency. These institutions guide how

458 E. W. Griffin-EL and J. Olabisi

V

C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies