Mixed Embeddedness in Motion: Kurdish and Turkish Entrepreneurship in Germany and the UK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/21182Keywords:
Ethnic economy, Historical perspective, Migrant entrepreneurship, Mixed embeddedness, Transnational dimensionAbstract
Drawing on the case of Kurdish and Turkish migrants and their descendants in the Ruhr Region and London, this paper argues that the Mixed Embeddedness Approach (MEA) would benefit from a conceptual extension to include historical and transnational dimensions, in addition to its established focus on institutional and social embeddedness. Despite the different institutional and social contexts in Germany and the UK, the findings demonstrate that these groups have developed remarkably similar entrepreneurial patterns, resulting in analogous ethnic economies in both countries. This convergence is not coincidental but is instead shaped by historically contingent processes such as neoliberal restructuring, deindustrialization, economic crises, migrant unemployment, demographic concentration, and evolving migrant needs since the 1970s, which have reshaped opportunity structures over time. Furthermore, the entrepreneurs’ transnational activities, including investments abroad, sourcing from external markets, and establishing cross-border customer relations and networks, have contributed to shaping this opportunity structure. Rather than treating transnationality and historical change as external or secondary factors, the paper argues for their integration into the MEA as constitutive dimensions of opportunity structures. In doing so, the paper frames MEA as not merely a combination of social networks and institutional contexts, but as a dynamic, processual framework attuned to historical transformations and transnational linkages. This historically contextualized MEA provides a more comprehensive perspective on ethnic/migrant entrepreneurship, opening new avenues for research and policy development in this area.References
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