Chapter 12: Notions and Practices of Differences: An Epilogue on the Diversity of Entrepreneurship and Migration

Diversity is becoming the context through which researchers can account for different aspects of increasingly complexifying conditions of both entrepreneurship and migration. Taking a superdiversity perspective, this chapter uncovers and conceptualises what is diversifying particularly in migrant entrepreneurship. The authors identify four different dimensions of diversity and diversification affecting the activities of migrant entrepreneurs. First, with diversifying flows of migration, the characteristics of the entrepreneurs themselves as individual (usually transnational) migrants are diversifying. Second, with changing migration contexts, resources deriving from migration experiences are diversifying, exemplified by the different forms of transnational capitals used in entrepreneurship. Third, through migrant-led processes of diversification in the larger society, the main markets are diversifying, providing further opportunities to migrant entrepreneurs. Last but not least, the entrepreneurial strategies of migrant entrepreneurs are accordingly also diversifying, whereby finding different breaking-out strategies beyond the classical notion of only serving ethnic niche markets arise.

These diversities are embedded in the context of the overall superdiversifying society in which migrant entrepreneurs emerge and struggle to establish. By disentangling the different dimensions of diversity, this chapter contextualises debates on entrepreneurship and migration, including those in the present edited book, into the larger debate on the societal turn to superdiversity. It further discusses the notions and practices of differences embodied in migrant entrepreneurship, beyond the notion of the ethnic niche and the disadvantaged striving for market integration.