International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship
Volume 34, Issue 3, 2016, Pages 242-260

Categorising and labelling entrepreneurs: Business support organisations constructing the Other through prefixes of ethnicity and immigrantship (Article)

Högberg L. , Schölin T.* , Ram M. , Jones T.
  • a Linköping University, Sweden
  • b Lund University, Sweden
  • c University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
  • d University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Abstract

This article demonstrates how Swedish support organisations approach and target immigrant entrepreneurs in terms of categorisation and labelling. In their strategic positioning, and as a result of framing and communicating specific target groups for their activities, organisations simultaneously produce and reproduce categories of clients. We argue that despite its emancipatory intent, the process of categorisation runs the risk of reproducing an inferior Other. Adding prefixes in labelling entrepreneurs may replicate the societal hierarchies that business support initiatives were designed to counteract. This article questions the basis of business support for minority entrepreneurs and is a contribution to wider debates concerned with exposing the constructed nature of entrepreneurship. © 2014, © The Author(s) 2014.

Author Keywords

Ethnicity categorisation immigrant entrepreneurship Business support Labelling

Index Keywords

[No Keywords available]
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84964815825&doi=10.1177%2f0266242614555877&partnerID=40&md5=a80f475340e253be49d4086054acb2bc
DOI: 10.1177/0266242614555877
ISSN: 02662426
Cited by: 8
Original Language: English