ISBE 2019: Entrepreneurship in Minority Groups

Chair:

Dr Tom Domboka, Birmingham City University

Entrepreneurship in minority groups continues to be a source of fascination for researchers. The importance of their businesses go beyond their financial contribution, but also have social implications and they share similar business experiences such as breaking out of low value added, overcrowded service sectors and access to finance and markets, etc.

The Track focuses on the movements and patterns of entrepreneurship in minority groups, processes of evolution, growth and crises of scalability and sustainability. Interests are on entrepreneurship research that treats ‘Minority Groups’ in a more inclusive frame, to embrace but avoid a narrow dependence on ethnic minority groups. The Track seeks to encourage and make visible a wider range of research that explores how entrepreneurial activities are embedded in economic, political and socio-cultural contexts of both developing and developed economies as well as migrant/travelling, diaspora and ‘marginal’ (e.g. LGBT, refugee, disabled) populations.

The Track covers a wide range of topics, including:
• Ethnic entrepreneurship, spatial and temporal dimensions of ethnic minority businesses
• Diaspora entrepreneurship, trans-national diasporas and entrepreneurial networks (family and kinship), challenges and opportunities
• Landscapes of entrepreneurship in specific but under-studied groups (e.g. disabled, LGBTs, expatriates, migrants, refugees, ‘new/old’ communities).
• Patterns of entrepreneurship evolvement in informal settings particularly in developing/transitionary economies and evolution from informality to formality.
• Empowering role of entrepreneurship among minority groups (e.g. using the platform of entrepreneurship for negotiating identities and social justice)
• Entrepreneurship among ethnic minority women and young people
• The cultural dimensions of entrepreneurship in minority groups
• Markets, competition, break-out strategies, growth and scalability in minority owned businesses.