scholarly journals Localizing informal practices in transnational entrepreneurship

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laure Sandoz
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Personal Goals ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Transnational Entrepreneurship ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities ◽  
Migration Regimes

Transnational entrepreneurs are often represented as active agents capable of mobilizing resources situated in different countries to develop new businesses. However, restrictive migration regimes limit the possibilities of individuals to become entrepreneurs. Based on ethnographic research in Barcelona, Spain, this article argues that, in a context of unequal access to formal resources, resorting to informality is crucial for many entrepreneurs as it enables them to expand their options for social mobility and achieve personal goals that would otherwise remain unreachable. The article proposes a critical perspective on the notions of informality and entrepreneurship. It highlights that these concepts rely on context-dependent norms set by certain social groups and challenged by others, which influence who can become an entrepreneur in specific environments. While certain categories of migrants are favorably positioned with regard to these norms, others are hindered by them and therefore are forced to engage in alternative entrepreneurial activities. How this is achieved, and the costs involved depend on the entrepreneur’s capacity to mobilize economic, cultural, social, and moral resources as well as on the perception of their practices as more or less legitimate or socially acceptable.

Slaves and society in Western Africa, c. 1445—c. 1700

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Fage
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
The Social ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Limited Supply ◽  
Sub Saharan

Published European first-hand accounts of the coastlands from Senegal to Angola for the period c. 1445-c. 1700 are examined to see what light they throw on the extent to which institutions of servitude in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa were autonomous developments or a response to external demands for African slaves. It seems clear that when, in the early years of this period, European traders first approached societies along the western African coasts, they were commonly offered what they called ‘slaves’ in exchange for the goods they had brought. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that a slave class was necessarily a feature of western African coastal societies when these were first contacted by Europeans. It is clear, for instance, that the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. The evidence suggests that in these societies most individuals were dependants of a ruling and entrepreneurial elite, but that there was also social mobility. A category of dependants that particularly attracted the notice of the European observers was women, whom men of power and wealth tended to accumulate as wives (and hence as the potential mothers of still more dependants). The necessarily limited supply of women may have been a factor encouraging such men to seek to increase their followings, and thus their status, power and wealth, by recruiting other dependants by forcible, judicial and economic means. While many such dependants, or their offspring, would be assimilated into the social groups commanded by their masters, the latter were certainly willing to contemplate using recently acquired or refractory recruits in other ways, such as exchanging them for alternative forms of wealth.

All change please: education, mobility and habitus dislocation

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Jill Wilkens
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Bisexual Women ◽  
Affinity Groups ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
Positive Ageing

This chapter examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class and sexual identity, and highlights the significance of same-sexuality social groups for older lesbians and bisexual women. Interviews with 35 women aged between 57 and 73, discussed ‘coming out’ in the 1950s and 1960s, loneliness and isolation and the experience of attending affinity groups. Many participants were rendered ‘out of place’ by aspects of their social mobility, generation, gender and sexuality. The chapter draws on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cleft habitus’ to consider the contradictions of these mobilities, suggesting that these women faced unprecedented and unique disjuncture between their original habitus and the new classed, sexual and gendered locations in which they finally ‘arrived’. The chapter looks at the potential of social groups to alleviate loneliness and isolation; for many, they are sites of resilience, helping to promote positive ageing for those who have faced marginalisation across their life course.

Status and Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
Alexei Shevchenko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Identity Management ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Competition ◽  
Russian Foreign Policy ◽  
International Standing

This chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book draws on social identity theory (SIT) for insights into how status concerns and social identity shape Chinese and Russian foreign policy. SIT argues that social groups strive to achieve a positively distinctive identity. When a group's identity is threatened, it may pursue one of several identity management strategies: social mobility, social competition, or social creativity. Using SIT as a framework, the book addresses several questions. First, how important were status considerations in shaping Chinese and Russian foreign policy? Second, why did China and Russia choose a particular strategy in a given context for improving their state's international standing? Third, how effective were their chosen strategies as measured by the perceptions and beliefs of the leading states.

scholarly journals ESPACIO VIVIDO: DEL ESPACIO LOCAL AL RETICULAR. NOTAS EN TORNO A LA REPRESENTACIÓN SOCIAL DEL ESPACIO VIVIDO EN LA GLOBALIZACIÓN

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (15) ◽  
pp. 225
Author(s):  
Enriqueta Lerma Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Lived Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Space ◽  
Los Grupos

En este artículo argumento la necesidad de repensar el espacio vivido. Propongo complejizar el análisis, consensado teóricamente, del espacio local, integrando el enfoque del espacio reticular. Busco incluir el margen de espacialidad que los grupos sociales construyen fuera de sus lugares cotidianos para explicar las representaciones sociales del espacio vivido, producto de las posibilidades de movilidad social hacia otros lugares.   LIVED SPACED: FROM LOCAL TO RETICULAR SPACE. NOTES ON THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF LIVED SPACE WITHIN GLOBALIZATIONABSTRACTIn this article, I defend the need to rethink lived space. I propose increasing the complexity of the analysis of local space, based on theoretical consensus, by integrating a reticular approach to space. I seek to include the margin of spatiality that social groups construct outside their every day places in order to thus explain the social representations of lived space resulting from the possibilities of social mobility toward other places.

Alternative Futures

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Luke
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Willful Ignorance ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Extractive Economies ◽  
Corporate Social

This chapter explores heritage landscapes through the lens of extractive economies and jurisdiction of forests and archaeological zones. This new body politic rallies around economic profit that is bolstered by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, which enhance opportunities for social mobility and higher standards of living. Case studies explore the industries of marble and gold in the context of intangible and tangible heritage. Willful ignorance gives tacit approval for continued environmental degradation and erasure of archaeological heritage under the rhetoric of economic security. The evidence is contemporary, drawing from international fairs, ethnographic research, and the bureaucracies of heritage statecraft.

scholarly journals Reforming Men, Refining Umma: Tablīghī Jamā‛at and Novel Visions of Islamic Masculinity

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-253
Author(s):  
Halkano Abdi Wario
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Northern Kenya ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Main Target ◽  
Militant Groups ◽  
Being And Becoming

Tablīghī Jamā‛at, a pietistic movement run by laypeople that originated in India is currently the most widespread Muslim missionary group worldwide. It is essentially men-oriented in terms of its main target for proselytization and organization. Spaces of proselytization are mosques, sacred spaces frequented by men, and the home, a place of reinforcement of ‘lifestyle evangelism’ dominated by women. The group has been described as anti-intellectualist, apolitical, docile, otherworldly, and a front for militant groups. Based on recent ethnographic research in northern Kenya, the paper explores two main thematic questions: What does it take to be a Tablīghī man? Does emerging Tablīghī masculinity embolden or reconfigure gender/patriarchal relations? The paper posits that the movement provides social mobility for non-‘ulamā men in an alternative religious hierarchy but also lays the foundation for the emergence of a transnational practice of Islamic masculinity that appropriates the different local versions of being and becoming a man.

India’s Middle Class

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Political Entrepreneurship ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
Ordinary Folk ◽  
Social Entities

The category “middle class” can refer to quite different social entities. In the United States, it is often used as a synonym for “ordinary folk.” In the United Kingdom it references an elite with economic and social privileges. In India, “the middle class” acquired its own valence through a history that encompasses colonialism, nationalism, and desire for upward social mobility. At one level the Indian middle class was evidently derivative. Indians who wished to emulate the achievements and standing of the British middle class adopted the category, “middle class” as a self-descriptor. Yet the Indian middle class was hardly a modular replica of a metropolitan “original.” The context of colonialism, indigenous hierarchies, and various local histories shaped the nature of the Indian middle class as much as any colonial model. Composed of people—often salaried professionals—who were reasonably well off but not among India’s richest, being middle class in colonial India was less a direct product of social and economic standing and more the result of endeavors of cultural and political entrepreneurship. These efforts gave the middle class its shape and its aspirations to cultural and political hegemony. The same history, in turn, shaped a variety of discourses about the nature of society, politics, culture, and morality in both colonial and post-independent India. Contradictions were inherent in the constitution of the middle class in colonial India, and continue to be apparent today. These contradictions become even more evident as newer, formerly subaltern social groups, seek to participate in a world created through middle class imaginations of society, culture, politics and economics.

Socio-cultural factors and transnational entrepreneurship

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Urbano ◽  
Nuria Toledano ◽  
Domingo Ribeiro-Soriano
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Entrepreneurial Attitudes ◽  
Transnational Entrepreneurship ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities

This article addresses theoretical and empirical issues concerning the emergent field of transnational entrepreneurship. We discuss issues regarding the antecedents of transnational entrepreneurship focusing specifically on the socio-cultural factors affecting this phenomenon in the Spanish context. Entrepreneurship, ethnic and transnational entrepreneurship literature is combined with institutional approach to explain what and how different socio-cultural factors influence the emergence and development of transnational entrepreneurship in Catalonia (in the north-east of Spain). We do this by looking at four case studies of transnational entrepreneurs with different ethnicity (Ecuadorian, Latin American; Moroccan, North African; Chinese, Asian; and Romanian, Eastern European). Important differences between socio-cultural factors that affect the emergence of transnational entrepreneurship (role models, immigrants’ entrepreneurial attitudes) and those that facilitate the development of transnational entrepreneurial activities (transnational networks and immigrants’ perceptions of the culture and opportunities of the host society) are found.

scholarly journals INTERAKSI SOSIAL KOMUNITAS SAMIN DENGAN MASYARAKAT SEKITAR

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indah Puji Lestari
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Personal Goals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Village

Komunitas Samin merupakan bagian dari masyarakat desa Klopoduwur yang menganut dan mempertahankan ajaran Samin Surosentiko. Komunitas Samin mempunyai tata cara, adat istiadat, bahasa serta norma-norma yang berbeda dengan masyarakat pada umumnya. Dalam kajian ini penulis menjelaskan tentang bentuk interaksi sosial antara komunitas Samin dengan masyarakat sekitar desa Klopoduwur, faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi interaksi sosial antar komunitas Samin dengan masyarakat desa Klopoduwur dan kendala yang dihadapi dalam interaksi sosial. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa bentuk-bentuk interaksi sosial antara komunitas Samin dengan masyarakat sekitar berupa kerja sama, akomodasi dan asimilasi. Sedangkan konflik atau pertentangan dalam interaksi sosial antara komunitas Samin dengan mayarakat sekitar desa Klopoduwur tidak tampak jelas. Interaksi sosial antara komunitas Samin dengan masyarakat sekitar dipengaruhi oleh berbagai faktor, yakni situasi sosial, kekuasaan norma kelompok, tujuan pribadi, kedudukan dan kondisi individu serta penafsiran situasi. Kendala-kendala yang dihadapi dalam interaksi sosial antara komunitas Samin dengan masyarakat sekitar adalah perbedaan bahasa yang sulit dipahami oleh masyarakat sekitar,dan adanya perbedaan nilai antara kedua kelompok sosial tersebut.. Samin community is part of the village community Klopoduwur who embrace and defend the teachings of Surosentiko Samin. Samin community has ordinances, customs, language and norms that are different from society at large. In this study, the author describes forms of social interaction between Samin and their surrounding community in Klopoduwur village, factors that affect the social interaction and the obstacles they faced. The study results indicate that these forms of social interaction between the community of Samin and local residents take the form of cooperation, accommodation and assimilation. There are no conflicts or contradictions in the social interaction between the Samin community and their neighbours. Samin social interaction between communities and local residents affected by various factors, namely the social situation, the power of group norms, personal goals, status and condition of the individual as well as the interpretation of the situation. Constraints encountered in the social interaction between communities and local residents Samin is the difference in language, and the value difference between the two social groups.

scholarly journals Is this Transnational Entrepreneurship? Five Cases in Which It Is Hard to Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-40
Author(s):  
Aki Harima ◽  
Thomas Baron
Keyword(s):  
Research Field ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Status ◽  
Transnational Entrepreneurship ◽  
Transnational Entrepreneurs ◽  
Research Orientations ◽  
Research Propositions ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities

Scholars have lately started using the notion of ‘transnational entrepreneurship’. However, transnational entrepreneurship has not achieved the status of an independent research field in literature yet. Scholars and policymakers do not seem to have managed to address the clear-cut, distinctive nature of transnational entrepreneurship due to its conceptual ambiguity. This challenge calls for thoughtful consideration of the scope and range of the transnational entrepreneurship concept. Consequently, this study aims at critically reviewing the recent literature on transnational entrepreneurship in contrast to migrants’ entrepreneurial activities and international entrepreneurship to identify the current scholars’ underlying assumptions about this phenomenon and challenges them by demonstrating its heterogeneity with the presentation of five empirical cases. In these five cases, entrepreneurs conduct business in which transnationalism plays a certain role, yet differently. We contrast the presented cases with the four assumptions about transnational entrepreneurs identified from literature: (a) frequent travels between home and host countries, (b) simultaneous entrepreneurial engagement in two countries, (c) deep dual embeddedness in home and host institutional environments and (d) highly educated migrants. Based on the discussion, we develop a set of research propositions regarding the characteristics of transnational entrepreneurs, which are not fully considered in literature. By demonstrating the heterogeneity of transnational entrepreneurship and by showing future research orientations, we contribute to the literature on transnational entrepreneurship.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document