Abstract
Immigration is increasing in prevalence worldwide. In 2020, 272 million people migrated, which is 51 million more than in 2010. Two-thirds of migrants move for economic reasons, making money the most common reason for migration: they hope to move to a country with greater opportunity to earn wealth and support themselves and their families (UN, 2020). These immigrants often start their own businesses to accomplish their monetary goals. The study of this phenomenon is called immigrant entrepreneurship (IE).
Many immigrants come from countries with strong entrepreneurial traditions, which can follow entrepreneurs into the host country. For example, the world’s largest producer of immigrants is India, which had 77.9% self-employment in 2018 (World Bank, 2018). Common destinations for migrants include Western Europe, North America, and Australia (UN, 2020). These “magnet countries” for immigrants have also seen the most research on IE, limiting their generalizability (Dabic et al., 2020). However, migration patterns are changing, and so too should our study of IE. Developing nations, which receive greater numbers of immigrants every year, stand to gain much from immigrant entrepreneurs. IE, like entrepreneurship in general, can be a large boon to the host country’s economy (Kerr and Kerr, 2016) and in some areas may be the primary driver of economic development (Echikson, 2000).
In addition to IE’s limited focus on a handful of magnet countries, IE studies also often center on a single population of immigrants, often from China (i.e., Wang and Warn, 2018), which again limits their generalizability. There are calls for IE studies to be more holistic to reflect “the multidimensional character of this phenomenon” (Dabic et al., 2020), which includes multiple populations of immigrants from different nations.
Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Cases from Contemporary Poland, edited by Beata Glinka and Adam W. Jelonek, begins to fill in the gaps in IE research by challenging its reliance on magnet countries and exploring multiple populations of immigrants. The book discusses Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Poland in terms of their motivations, strategies, and identities. The purpose of the work is to “provide knowledge about immigrant entrepreneurship in Poland against the Western European or USA background of similar processes described by researchers in other countries.” The book comprises two studies: ethnographic interviews (n = 75) and a survey (n = 251) of immigrant entrepreneurs from five Asian countries (Vietnam, China, India, South Korea, and the Philippines). The book is heavily based on the qualitative portion of the research, with only the last chapter discussing the quantitative study in-depth.
The Introduction provides an overview of the volume. Research on IE is demonstrated to be critical as immigration becomes more prevalent and countries must cope with integrating migrants into their economies. The authors discuss both their choice to use a mixed-methods approach, their selection of Asian immigrants as their sample, and Poland as their context. Chapter 1 discusses trends in global immigration, with those effects specifically applied to the Polish context. Poland is shown to have several demographic challenges (aging population, low fertility, and mass emigration of young Poles) that can be remedied by an influx of immigrants. However, that necessary immigration is challenged by “global nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and anti-immigration movements.”
Chapter 2 reviews the various research streams and traditions of IE. The authors describe the necessity of studying IE in an interdisciplinary fashion, combining aspects of sociology, psychology, economics, and management. Likewise, the authors discuss the predominant theories represented in IE research: cultural theories, social and human capital theories, institutional theories, and embeddedness theories. Chapter 3 describes in-depth the five chosen immigrant populations and discusses the rationale for their selection.
The following three chapters, Chapters 4, 5, and 6, discuss the results of the qualitative study. Chapter 4 discusses the motivations that compel immigrants to become entrepreneurs. There is discussion of push and pull factors, and it is demonstrated that pull factors are more important for the sampled populations, in keeping with cultural theories of IE and potential “admiration for entrepreneurs” in many Asian cultures. Chapter 5 discusses the different strategies employed by the sample of immigrant entrepreneurs in terms of choosing employees, target customers and markets, business partners, and dealing with competitors. Few have formal business plans or market research, and all groups are shown to “provide products or services mostly to Polish customers” rather than to fellow immigrants. Chapter 6 discusses the identity construction processes of the sampled populations. Identity is demonstrated to be impacted by immigration, entrepreneurship, ethnicity, and the relationship with the host country.
The final chapter, Chapter 7, discusses the quantitative results from the survey. As the authors state, “the qualitative study findings were confirmed in the survey.” Though the sample size is low and the analyses performed are simple, this triangulation using both qualitative and quantitative results is a major strength of this book. The authors also discuss limitations, practical implications, and future research.
Overall, the book was well-written, easy to follow, and interesting. The mixed-methods setup, choice of multiple populations of immigrants as the sample, and use of a developing country as the context are strengths. There are some limitations and issues with the text, though. The survey had a low sample size, as did some of the interviewed populations, which prevented thorough comparisons of groups. Although the book pushed the boundaries of IE by looking at multiple populations of immigrants in a developing country, generalizability may still be limited to immigrants from Asia in central Europe.
However, the goal of the research was largely exploratory, as the first study of IE in the Polish context was only conducted within the last decade. The authors did not set out to do rigorous hypothesis testing (in fact they did not even create explicit hypotheses), but to fill gaps in our understanding of IE by answering calls for more multidimensional studies of multiple populations in understudied contexts and providing a jumping off point for further study of immigrant entrepreneurs. And they succeeded in that.