Social networks for cross-border business activities: a comparison between transnational and domestic Moroccan migrant entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

The existing literature shows that social contacts and resources available through social networks are particularly important for migrant entrepreneurs. This seems to apply also to transnational migrant entrepreneurs, who are migrants involved in entrepreneurial activities crossing national borders. It is still not entirely clear which kind of social contacts they use, nor the differences with migrant entrepreneurs conducting a domestic (namely, non-transnational) business. The paper focuses on the use of social networks by transnational and domestic entrepreneurs, by illustrating the case of Moroccan migrant entrepreneurs in Amsterdam and Milan. The research reveals that transnational entrepreneurs have more heterogenous, geographically dispersed and territorially articulated support networks, which are both more extensive and less dense than those of domestic entrepreneurs. Transnational entrepreneurs exploit their capacity to have contacts with different people in different places. In contrast, domestic entrepreneurs tend to mobilize resources within their dense, homogeneous, and locally based networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant entrepreneurs
• social networks
• transnational entrepreneurship
• transnationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All Dutch figures include both first- and second-generation migrants. Italian statistics consider only people born outside Italy.

2 The entire interview guide can be consulted here: https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/4505986/170994_09_Appendix.pdf

3 Given that this article does not focus on the kind of support received, but rather on the contacts that provide support, results linked to this question are not reported here (see Solano, 2016).

4 This difference holds when other business or individual characteristics – business type (ethnic/mainstream),city, sex, and education – are controlled for in a regression model, although the resultwas weakly statistically significant (β = 2.53; p = 0.09). I also ran a set of regression analyses to confirm the other results. This was done each time a Wilcoxon rank-sum test was conducted. The results of the regression analyses, which are not reported here, always confirmed the result of the test.

5 I decided not to include the variable ‘contact living abroad’ in the model for several reasons: having key contacts with people living abroad was part of the definition of transnational entrepreneurs; living in the immigration city and living abroad are very highly correlated (r =  −0.63, p < 0.01). I ran the same model with the variable ‘contact living abroad’ anyway, without the ‘city of immigration’ variable: 1) the overall results were confirmed, except for ‘contact known before the business start-up’ which became very weakly significant (p = 0.09); 2) as expected, transnational entrepreneurs are more likely to receive support from contacts living abroad (β = 0.53; p < .06), while this is less likely for domestic entrepreneurs (β = 0.11; p < .001).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education and a mobility scholarship from the European Commission (Erasmus Placement/Erasmus+Traineeship). Furthermore, Fondazione Roberto Franceschi Onlus and Fondazione Isacchi Samaja (Young Professional Grant – 2013 edition) provided the financial support for the fieldwork on which this article is based.

Notes on contributors

Giacomo Solano

Giacomo Solano is Assistant Professor in Migrant Inclusion at the Nijmegen School of Management, Department of Economics and Business Economics. He is affiliated to the Radboud University Network on Migrant Inclusion (RUNOMI), and he cooperates with the Global Data Lab. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and University of Milan-Bicocca (joint degree). His research interests include social and labour market integration of migrants, migrant entrepreneurship, comparative integration policies, social dynamics in developing countries and social network analysis. In the past, he worked for the Migration Policy Group (MPG) as Head of Research, the European Commission (DG Employment), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Eindhoven University of Technology (as post-doc researcher).