Paper short abstract:

Migrant entrepreneurs conducting business across borders have unequal access to mobility and must navigate mobility regimes to develop entrepreneurial activities. We aim to explore how informality can be used as a resource to face structural constraints and enhance upward social mobility.

Paper long abstract:

Research on the informality-migration nexus usually explores migrants’ incorporation assuming that informal practices are a default option for marginalized workers. However, it has neglected the diversity of business strategies displayed by migrant entrepreneurs with different socio-economic backgrounds, and in multiple geographic and normative contexts. As recent academic literature shows, migrant entrepreneurs conducting business across borders have unequal access to mobility and must navigate mobility regimes to develop entrepreneurial activities. In this context, informality can be used as a resource to face structural constraints and enhance upward social mobility. We argue that the interplay of mobility regimes and migrants’ strategies is a crucial aspect to understand (1) which migrants resort to informality as a resource, and (2) who is able to draw on informality to thrive with their business and convert their spatial mobility into social mobility.

Based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with migrant entrepreneurs who conduct diverse business activities in four locations (Barcelona, Sao Paulo, and Zurich), we provide a global and comparative perspective on business strategies relying on informal practices. By looking at informality as a continuum of context-dependent social practices, we challenge dichotomous understandings of this notion that oppose it to formal/legal economic arrangements and restrict it to a mechanism of labor market inclusion. Our aim is to explore under what circumstances informality can be deployed as a resource for income improvement and the achievement of personal aspirations, and how it enables some migrant entrepreneurs to move upward socially.