Newcastle University e-prints Date deposited: 7th September 2010 Version of file: Author version Peer Review Status: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Piperopoulos, P. Ethnic minority businesses and immigrant entrepreneurship in Greece . Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 2010, 17 1 139-158. Further information on publisher website: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ Publishers copyright statement: The definitive version of this article, published by Emerald, 2010, is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14626001011019170 Always use the definitive version when citing. 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Tel. 0191 222 6000 Ethnic minority businesses and immigrant entrepreneurship in Greece Panagiotis Piperopoulos Department of Marketing and Operations Management, University of Macedonia, 49 St. Dimitriou Street, 58200 Edessa, Greece Tel: (+30) 2381051759, Fax: (+30) 2381051182] email: [email protected] Abstract Purpose The present paper reports and analyses empirical data from 391 ethnic minority entrepreneurs and 132 of their family members, from 8 different ethnic communities of Albanians, Armenians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Georgians, Indians, Nigerians and Russians in Greece. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents empirical data from a face-to-face interview type research conducted between January 2006 and August 2008 in the regions of Attica and Central Macedonia, Greece. The selection criteria used for the inclusion of enterprises in the ethnic minority business (EMB) database were: ethnicity of the business owner; sectors, including traditional sectors and emerging sectors of EMB; and finally location, i.e. in Attica and Central Macedonia Regions. Findings The findings of this research point to the fact that the three theories of ‘block mobility’, ‘opportunity structures’ and ‘ethnic resources’ complement each other in explaining the process of starting up an ethnic minority business and becoming self- employed, while the ‘cultural thesis’ seems to stand on its own. Originality/value This paper presents the results of the first-ever large-scale authoritative analytical research on EMBs and immigrant entrepreneurship in Greece; provides empirical evidence to why and to what extent ethnic groups are attracted to self-employment; in which economic sectors they develop occupational niches; and how strong is family participation and support in the EMBs, and attempts to go beyond most of the existing literature, which is focused mainly on ‘Black’ or ‘Asian’ ethnic groups, the research makes a contribution by presenting empirical evidence of five ‘Whites’, one ‘Asian’, one ‘Indian’ and one ‘Black’ ethnic group. 2 Keywords : ethnic groups; ethnic minority businesses (EMBs); Greece; immigrant entrepreneurship; minorities; self-employment. Paper type : Research paper 1. Introduction Ethnic entrepreneurship appears nowadays in a variety of nations and cultural settings. Entrepreneurs from specific ethnic communities are a part of the business landscape in most countries of the world, attracting a good deal of scientific attention (Engelen, 2001; Ram and Smallbone, 2003; Morawska, 2004; Wauters and Lambrecht, 2008). Enclaves of ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) can be found in the U.S. and other countries of the West (Portes and Shafer, 2007). East Indians in Edison, New Jersey; Cubans in Miami; Koreans in Chicago and Los Angeles, and Chinese in San Francisco and Vancouver, are among a new wave of immigrants who have turned to self-employment and entrepreneurship as a way of overcoming block mobility in the labour market, or as a key tool that allowed them to carve a socially respectable and economically viable position in the host societies or as an affirmation of an ethnically specific inclination for entrepreneurship (Light, 1972; Hiebert, 2002; Ram and Smallbone, 2003; Corsino and Soto, 2005; Portes and Shafer, 2007). Kloosterman and Rath (2001) argue that the immigrant entrepreneur may not come up with the introduction of a new product or service and make profit out of it but instead in much more modest ways they open up a business to serve for instance Indian foods to white population. “I am a professional businessman, you fool, not a professional Pakistani. I make money, not gestures”, commented a particularly ruthless “ethnic entrepreneur” in Hanif Kureishi’s “My Beautiful Launderette”. (Ram, 1997, p.149) Ethnic entrepreneurship is widely considered to be a critical element in the structures of Western Economies and the revival of the small business population, while EMBs have demonstrated remarkable increase in their numbers during the last two decades (Light and Karageorgis, 1994; Teixeira, 2001; Engelen, 2001; Ram, 2007). According to Heilman and Chen (2003), in 1998, 898,000 new firms were established - the highest number ever, representing a 1.5% increase from 1997 (U.S. Small Business Administration, 1999). As the authors argue from 1982 to 1998, the number of business tax returns filed in the USA increased by 73%, totaling 24.8 million in 1998. During the same time-period (1982-1997), the number of businesses owned by ethnic groups more than doubled, reaching an estimated total of 3 million businesses, providing jobs to nearly 4.5 million workers and generating $591 billion in revenues. Furthermore approximately 14% of the labor force of 216 metropolitan areas investigated was employed in ethnic niches (Wilson, 2003). Basu and Altinay (2002) argue in their research that immigrant entrepreneurs own over 50% of new business start-ups and 7% of all small businesses in London. According to Basu (2004) it is estimated that over two-thirds of all worldwide 3 businesses are owned or managed by families, while in the United States and Europe the percentage of family owned/managed businesses rises to 80%. A recent survey by the Small Business Service (SBS, 2004) in UK showed that in 2004 more than 250,000 small businesses were owned and operated by immigrant entrepreneurs representing over 11% of all new business start-ups. My study explores the concept of ethnic entrepreneurship in Greece, and using empirical research data, it aims at making three important contributions to the existing literature and theories of ethnic entrepreneurship: (1) present the results of the first- ever large-scale authoritative analytical research on EMBs and immigrant entrepreneurship in Greece; (2) provide empirical evidence to why and to what extent ethnic groups are attracted to self-employment; in which economic sectors they develop occupational niches; and how strong is family participation and support in the EMBs, and (3) attempt to go beyond most of the existing literature, which according to my extensive literature review and the words of Raghuram and Strange (2001) is focused mainly on ‘Black’ or ‘Asian’ ethnic groups, the research makes a contribution by presenting empirical evidence of five ‘Whites’, one ‘Asian’, one ‘Indian’ and one ‘Black’ ethnic group. The paper is organised as follows: section 2 identifies and reviews the different theories that explain the appearance and development of EMBs. The methodology of the empirical research in the regions of Attica and Central Macedonia in Greece is then presented in section 3, followed by the results of the study in Section 4. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible contribution of this research to the existing body of knowledge on ethnic entrepreneurship. 2. Theoretical Framework It is an undisputable general assumption that the vast majority of immigrants leave their home countries in search of a better life for them, their families and their children (Singh and DeNoble, 2004). A careful review of current ethnic entrepreneurship literature however suggests several different reasons for its appearance and development within an overall modern business and professional ethos. Indeed there is much debate in the literature about the self-employment entry motives and their business aspirations (Phizacklea and Ram, 1995; Kloosterman, 2003; Basu, 2004). Entrepreneurship among immigrants may arise from lack of suitable labor market opportunities (especially due to language barriers and ethnic/race discrimination), desire to amass wealth and return to one’s homeland, from business opportunities created by a growing community of co-ethnics, the potential for earnings advantage, upward social mobility in their host society, investment in family futures, or as a result of an entrepreneurial cultural predilection, heritage and attitude (Light, 1972; Aldrich and Waldinger, 1990; Zhou, 1992; Phizacklea and Ram, 1995; Sanders and Nee, 1996; Basu, 2004; Singh and DeNoble, 2004). Ethnic entrepreneurs are generally described in the literature as ‘sojourners’ who work harder, save money, spend less by living frugally, have preferential access to limited, low cost funding from family and community resources and use ‘social networks’ to find market opportunities as well as cheap labor (Barrett, Jones and McEvoy,