Multicultural embeddedness: Chinese experience of entrepreneurial 'breakout' in a superdiverse and transnational city of Birmingham

Shinnie, Xiping (2024) Multicultural embeddedness: Chinese experience of entrepreneurial 'breakout' in a superdiverse and transnational city of Birmingham. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

The past half century has witnessed the rise of migrant entrepreneurship as a significant socio-economic phenomenon across diverse disciplinary areas. With insights drawn from the current migrant entrepreneurship research, mixed embeddedness has been employed as the reference approach, albeit its narrow focus on the lower end of market in a static social context has attracted criticism. Meanwhile, multiculturalism in a transnational, superdiverse entrepreneurial breakout context as an emerging research theme outshines others. Therefore, this thesis aims to ground a conceptual framework of multicultural embeddedness to extend the theoretical framework of mixed embeddedness in a superdiverse, transnational breakout context.

Due to the phenomenal global success of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship, and since Birmingham is renowned for its multicultural ethnic economies, migrant entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and mainland China were selected as the two major groups of Chinese migrants. Thereafter, qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 Hong Kong and 15 mainland Chinese entrepreneurs who are based in Birmingham. The collected data were analysed to explore the extent to which these two groups of Chinese entrepreneurs departed from the traditional Chinese ethnic economy associated with the catering sector in the UK. With regard to entering the markets, the dynamics between ethnic and industrial clustering was evidenced through the identification of the A38 corridor. In the same vein, divergent breakout experiences were witnessed between the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese entrepreneurs due to their use of diverse combinations of enclaved and mainstream digital platforms. Importantly, entrepreneurial breakout was comprehended through access to resources as gendered, aesthetic, and emotional experiences. Above all, transnational breakout is constructed as a multicultural, contextualised embedding process related to multiple future directions, involving not only the markets and resources of both the host and home countries but also third countries’ multicultural markets and resources.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 4 August 2023 Submitted 15 February 2024 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Multicultural Embeddedness, Ethnic Enclave, Entrepreneurial Breakout, Transnationalism, Superdiversity, Ethnic Clustering, Industrial Clustering, Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship, City of Birmingham
Subjects:	CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-02 - business studies
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Jaycie Carter
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2024 11:11
Last Modified:	15 Mar 2024 11:11
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15319

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