Essays on immigrant entrepreneurshipdiscovery of entrepeneurial opportunities

Resumen

a literature review and explorations of figures about immigrant entrepreneurship in Spain in order to identify gaps in the literature. Once the gaps have been identified our contribution comes out in the next part. So, Part Two is formed by three empirical essays that have arisen as contributions for immigrant entrepreneurship literature. Regarding the essays, the first is qualitative research and the last two are quantitative approached. We begin with a general idea of the discovery process among immigrants in Spain. So, a multiple-case study in-depth is used to explore the role of information and experiences on the discovery process. Next, considering our results, we enlarge the factors, focusing on human capital ¿ general and specific ¿ for analyzing the discovery process, comparing immigrants and natives in Spain. Logistic econometric model is applied for the vi analysis. Then, in the last essay, we examine the business creation by EU and non-EU immigrants in Spain considering their characteristics acquired in the country of origin and in Spain. For the analysis also Logistic econometric model is applied and EU and non-EU immigrants are compared. Regarding the data, a sample of cases are used for the qualitative essay and data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor ¿ GEM2008 ¿ and the National Immigrant Survey ¿ ENI-2007 - are used for conducting the quantitative essays. These data are described in Section 3. In general, findings of literature review have showed that immigrant entrepreneurship has been focused on main developed countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia. Regarding the context of Europe, a few studies were published about this phenomenon despite a big contingent of immigration exist in some European countries such France, Germany and Spain. So, realize that a context like Spain has little research on immigrant entrepreneurship has turned an opportunity for us. Also, literature review showed that studies have focused on specific groups of immigrants such as Asian and Hispanics which is a common trend for some developed countries such Canada. Furthermore, aspects of theoretical frameworks and methodologies are depicted in this chapter. To sum up, these two chapters help us to find the gap for our empirical essays. As mention before, our gap identification is not only based in study a new context like Spain but to introduce the theoretical approach of discovering entrepreneurial opportunities into the immigrant entrepreneurship literature. This means, if the trend in literature has been analyzing directly the business creation, we propose to look at the previous step, the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. vii Regarding the finding from essays, it is showed that Latin-Americans discover entrepreneurial opportunities by systematic search considering previous experiences and information which have been acquired in their home and host countries. The usage of previous experiences is clearly seen for creating a business in the catering sector. As the previous essay relies on experiences and information, human capital is used as a theoretical background for the next essay. The influence of human capital on the discovery process by natives and immigrants has similarities and there are some skills acquired in the home country that positively influence the process of discovery entrepreneurial opportunities immigrants in Spain. Furthermore, we examine the business creation by EU and non-EU immigrants in Spain. As mention before, studies on immigrant entrepreneurship have focused their attention on different kind of ethnic groups but EU and non-EU immigrants have been neglected in literature. The findings showed that some factors acquired in the country of origin and in the host country affect differently on the probability of creating a business by both EU and non-EU immigrants in Spain. Finally, this dissertation offers some contributions for research and practice, for policy and for future lines of research, some limitations are also highlighted.