scholarly journals The Canadian experience from the perspective of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship in Toronto

Author(s):  
Michel Mott Machado ◽  
Roberto Pessoa de Queiroz Falcão ◽  
Eduardo Picanço Cruz ◽  
Caroline Shenaz Hossein

Objective: The study aims at analyzing the socio-demographic profile of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship in Toronto, its entrepreneurial behavioral traits, in addition to their business profiles. Methodology/approach: This research is multi-method, with qualitative predominance, being exploratory-descriptive. For data-collection it was conducted a survey and further deepening with face-to-face interviews and field observations. Main results: The majority declared themselves to be from the Brazilian Southeast, white, 35 to 49 years old, married, with children, high academic and professional background. The influence of the state of social malaise in Brazil and the official Canadian discourse, seem to act as factors of "expulsion-attraction" to migration. The job condition of unemployment upon immigrants’ arrival can “push” them into necessity-driven entrepreneurship, although there are also ventures that have identified opportunities. Most of the businesses are small and operate in the service sector, concentrated on the West End of Toronto. In many businesses, there was a strong search for identification with the ethnic community itself, which suggests the formation of 'enclave economy', but in some cases, the main market for local consumers was targeted. Theoretical/methodological contributions: The article highlights the importance of conducting a multi-method research to understand possible entrepreneurial configurations by Brazilian immigrants. Relevance / originality: the article has academic relevance given the scarce work on the theme of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship overseas. Truly little is known about this phenomenon in Canada. Social and management contributions: The entrepreneurial trajectories described minimize risks for future immigrants; in addition, the discussion about the social capital of the ethnic community allows comparisons with the business of Brazilians in other countries.

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-605
Author(s):  
Claudia Gomez ◽  
B. Yasanthi Perera ◽  
Judith Y. Wesinger ◽  
David H. Tobey

PurposeThe social capital used to access ethnic community resources is widely recognized in the literature as being important for immigrant entrepreneurship. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the extent to which immigrant entrepreneurs' agency, specifically their motivations, influence their use of, and contributions to, their ethnic social capital. In this paper, the authors explore this relationship.Design/methodology/approachBased on a qualitative approach, this research utilizes semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to identify the motivations, sources and effects of ethnic social capital.FindingsThis research indicates that immigrant entrepreneurs have mixed motives when engaging with their ethnic communities. The findings suggest that the immigrant entrepreneurs' social capital–mediated interactions within their ethnic community are driven not only by the social structure but that their agency, specifically their motivations, play an important role in them. While entrepreneurs hold mixed motives, they recognize the importance of business success. Thus, they make concessions to their ethnic community and utilize its resources if doing so benefits their business.Research limitations/implicationsThis research explores the role that immigrant entrepreneurs' motivations play in how they use and contribute to immigrant community social capital. By doing so, this study brings agency to the forefront of the discussion on immigrant entrepreneurship and social capital.Practical implicationsThis study provides insight into the connection between the extent to which immigrant entrepreneurs utilize and contribute to their ethnic community's social capital, their motivations for doing so and the effect that these factors have on the businesses as well as their ethnic communities. This understanding might be useful for organizations seeking to foster immigrant entrepreneurship as well as for entrepreneurs themselves.Originality/valueIndividuals' motivations as they relate to social capital involve a variable that is rarely, if ever, considered – that is, individual agency. Thus, this research contributes this perspective to the immigrant entrepreneurship literature but also more broadly to the social capital and entrepreneurship fields. This research can be extended to understand the impact of entrepreneurs' motivations on the communities in which they are embedded.


Author(s):  
Mariek Vanden Abeele

Recent empirical work suggests that phubbing, a term used to describe the practice of snubbing someone with a phone during a face-to-face social interaction, harms the quality of social relationships. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this chapter presents a framework that integrates three concurrent mechanisms that explain the relational impact of phubbing: expectancy violations, ostracism, and attentional conflict. Based on this framework, theoretically grounded propositions are formulated that may serve as guidelines for future research on these mechanisms, the conditions under which they operate, and a number of potential issues that need to be considered to further validate and extend the framework.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teruyoshi Kobayashi ◽  
Mathieu Génois

AbstractDensification and sparsification of social networks are attributed to two fundamental mechanisms: a change in the population in the system, and/or a change in the chances that people in the system are connected. In theory, each of these mechanisms generates a distinctive type of densification scaling, but in reality both types are generally mixed. Here, we develop a Bayesian statistical method to identify the extent to which each of these mechanisms is at play at a given point in time, taking the mixed densification scaling as input. We apply the method to networks of face-to-face interactions of individuals and reveal that the main mechanism that causes densification and sparsification occasionally switches, the frequency of which depending on the social context. The proposed method uncovers an inherent regime-switching property of network dynamics, which will provide a new insight into the mechanics behind evolving social interactions.


Author(s):  
Lillian Mwanri ◽  
Leticia Anderson ◽  
Kathomi Gatwiri

Background: Emigration to Australia by people from Africa has grown steadily in the past two decades, with skilled migration an increasingly significant component of migration streams. Challenges to resettlement in Australia by African migrants have been identified, including difficulties securing employment, experiences of racism, discrimination and social isolation. These challenges can negatively impact resettlement outcomes, including health and wellbeing. There has been limited research that has examined protective and resilience factors that help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the aforementioned challenges in Australia. This paper discusses how individual and community resilience factors supported successful resettlement Africans in Australia. The paper is contextualised within a larger study which sought to investigate how belonging and identity inform Afrodiasporic experiences of Africans in Australia. Methods: A qualitative inquiry was conducted with twenty-seven (n = 27) skilled African migrants based in South Australia, using face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Participants were not directly questioned about ‘resilience,’ but were encouraged to reflect critically on how they navigated the transition to living in Australia, and to identify factors that facilitated a successful resettlement. Results: The study findings revealed a mixture of settlement experiences for participants. Resettlement challenges were observed as barriers to fully meeting expectations of emigration. However, there were significant protective factors reported that supported resilience, including participants’ capacities for excellence and willingness to work hard; the social capital vested in community and family support networks; and African religious and cultural values and traditions. Many participants emphasised their pride in their contributions to Australian society as well as their desire to contribute to changing narratives of what it means to be African in Australia. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that despite challenges, skilled African migrants’ resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to a healthy resettlement in Australia, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations, and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of integration.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199231
Author(s):  
Anne Aiyegbusi

Group analysis privileges the social and political, aiming to address individual distress and ‘disturbance’ within a representation of the context it developed and persists in. Reproducing the presence and impact of racism in groups comes easily while creating conditions for reparation can be complicated. This is despite considerable contributions to the subject of racism by group analysts. By focusing on an unconscious, defensive manoeuvre I have observed in groups when black people describe racism in their lives, I hope to build upon the existing body of work. I will discuss the manoeuvre which I call the white mirror. I aim to theoretically elucidate the white mirror. I will argue that it can be understood as a vestigial trauma response with roots as far back as the invention of ‘race’. Through racialized sedimentation in the social unconscious, it has been generationally transmitted into the present day. It emerges in an exacerbated way within the amplified space of analytic groups when there is ethnically-diverse membership. I argue it is inevitable and even essential that racism emerges in groups as a manifestation of members’ racialized social unconscious including that of the conductor(s). This potentially offers opportunities for individual, group and societal reparation and healing. However, when narratives of racism are instead pushed to one side, regarded as a peripheral issue of concern only to minority black or other members of colour, I ask whether systems of segregation, ghettoization or colonization are replicated in analytic groups. This is the first of two articles about the white mirror. The second article which is also published in this issue highlights practice implications.


2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 489-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Read ◽  
Chirag Shah ◽  
Lupita S-O’Brien ◽  
Jaqueline Woolcott

Exploring ways in which new technology impacts adolescents’ information behaviours and creates a social space requires holistic investigation. A qualitative study of 21 seniors in an upper-middle-class suburban high school revealed highly individualized use of Facebook and its features. These included: (i) Friends groups of 50—3700 members, with even the largest groups representative primarily of face-to-face connections, and (ii) a clear articulation within those groups of various categories, each with its own distinct communicative channel and style. A meaningful connection was found between the social value of various social network (SN)-mediated relationships and the communicative modes used to maintain and enhance them. Through a comprehensive literature review and clearly grounded analysis of rich data, this work supports the contention that adolescent social groups in which SNs are embedded form a distinct domain, and establishes a rationale for further investigation of adolescents’ contextualized use of SNs within social relationships.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Tine Vekemans

In early 2020, Jain diaspora communities and organizations that had been painstakingly built over the past decades were faced with the far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and its concomitant restrictions. With the possibility of regular face-to-face contact and participation in recurring events—praying, eating, learning, and meditating together—severely limited in most places, organizations were compelled to make a choice. They either had to suspend their activities, leaving members to organize their religious activities on an individual or household basis, or pursue the continuation of some of their habitual activities in an online format, relying on their members’ motivation and technical skills. This study will explore how many Jain organizations in London took to digital media in its different forms to continue to engage with their members throughout 2020. Looking at a selection of websites and social media channels, it will examine online discourses that reveal the social and mental impact of the pandemic on Jains and the broader community, explore the relocation of activities to the digital realm, and assess participation in these activities. In doing so, this article will open a discussion on the long-term effects of this crisis-induced digital turn in Jain religious praxis, and in socio-cultural life in general.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline S.L. Tan

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine psychological ownership (PO) experienced by followers of social media influencers toward both influencer and the product. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews that were conducted with 30 respondents and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings The study demonstrated that the PO experienced by the follower changes under different conditions resulting from perceived value, social currency and follower activity. Social currency plays a vital role in determining the target of PO, often affecting the narrative by the follower. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the transference of PO between product and influencer as experienced by the follower. It provides an understanding on PO that is experienced in different levels of intensity and changes depending on the motive of the follower; hence, transference of PO occurs and it is not a static.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Pessoa de Queiroz Falcão ◽  
Michel Mott Machado ◽  
Eduardo Picanço Cruz ◽  
Caroline Shenaz Hossein

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to investigate how social integration, immigrant networks and barriers to ventureing affect the entrepreneurial activities of Brazilians in Canada, indicating how mixed embeddedness takes place in that context.Design/methodology/approachData were collected in Toronto, through the application of a survey with 74 Brazilian entrepreneur respondents and 42 semi-structured interviews with selected subjects, thus representing a multi-method approach. The analysis included descriptive statistics from the survey data and a qualitative analysis of the trajectories and life stories of Brazilian immigrants.FindingsOur sample comprises respondents with a high level of education and proficiency in English, coming predominantly from the southeast of Brazil, white, aged from 30 to 49. The majority of businesses are small and related to the service sector. The article contributes to the literature by discussing the elements related to mixed embeddedness, including the need for cultural adaptation and for the creation of networks as a crucial element for business venturing.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focuses on entrepreneurs regardless of their businesses sector or formality/informality status. It could be used as an instrument to support Canadian public policies for welcoming Brazilians and for the Brazilian government to prevent the evasion of potential entrepreneurs.Originality/valueThe article contributes to the body of knowledge of immigrant entrepreneurship in Canada and of Brazilian entrepreneurship overseas. The results suggest factors that may be relevant to the expansion of their business, such as social networking, cultural embeddedness and adaptation of the products/services to a wider range of target customers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilufer Ruzgar

It is essential in all organizations to provide integration of human resources and the organization, in terms of organizational effectiveness. In organizations that are active in service sector, this integration is especially important because of the fact that the employees are in face-to-face relationship with the customers. In this sense, the extent of responsibility on managers/leaders, is really important. Managers/leaders in organizations can adopt a leadership style and behave as “Task (Work) Oriented” or “Employee (Relationship) Oriented”. The style that is adopted by the leader, has a considerable effect on their relationship with employees.Leader-member Exchange Theory (LMX) is the leading theory that scrutinizes endogeneity and exogeneity. LMX, codes human resources as inner-group and outer-group in the context of leader-member exchange. The leadership styles that are adopted by the managers, have great impact on the exchange among leaders and subordinates. Thus, the subordinates perceive their situation either inner-group members or outer-group members.The purpose of this study, is to find out the effect of the leadership style that is adopted by the managers on Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). In this context, a survey method is applied to the tourism agencies that are active in Yalova, Turkey. The survey consists Fiedler’s LPC (least preferred co-worker) measure, Leader-member Exchange measure and demographical questions. According to the results, there is no statistically significant effect of Task Oriented leadership style on Self Oriented dimension of LMX. On the other hand, it has been found that there is statistically significant effect of Relationship Oriented Leadership Style on Self Oriented dimension of LMX.


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