Abstract
Current discussions on immigration in Germany emphasize the economic benefits of migrant economies and ethnic entrepreneurship, pointing to the positive effects on the ‘integration’ of migrants into the German labour market and into German society. This article focuses on the ethnographic example of Brazilian small-scale businesswomen in Berlin, who run cosmetic salons specialized in body hair removal, and how they embed their businesses in the Berlin landscape of multicultural consumption. On the basis of their migration trajectories I discuss these women's manifold cultural, gendered and class-informed strategies of negotiating integration, encompassing not just their economic activity, the role of independent work and the associated social effects, but also the commodified beauty practice itself. Thereby, the article inquires into conceptions of emancipation connected to migrant women's entrepreneurship in their everyday life that is still highly constrained by migration and gender regimes.
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