Paper short abstract:

‘Integration’ as a concept and as practices is often aimed at unemployed people with serious difficulties in finding a job. When it is discussed, entrepreneurship is rarely mentioned. My paper explores how entrepreneurship, which requires skills and independence, challenges the idea of integration.

Paper long abstract:

Entrepreneurship of foreign-born individuals in Finland is an under-researched phenomenon. ‘Integration’ as a concept and as practices is most often aimed at unemployed people with migrant backgrounds. In the recent years, especially women’s situation has been in focus. In these discussions, the representation of ‘a migrant woman’ easily becomes a person who needs to be emancipated and empowered, suffers from suppression and violence and is an outsider behind a language barrier.

In contexts where ‘integration’ is discussed and developed, entrepreneurship is rarely mentioned, although the self-employment rate is much the same for ‘immigrants’ and people with Finnish background. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, a person with foreign background started every third new business in Finland. The stereotypical image is that foreign-born entrepreneurs run restaurants or other hospitality businesses. The reality is more versatile and there are, for instance, IT companies, accounting and consultancy, education and other businesses run by highly skilled experts.

In my paper, I will explore how entrepreneurship, which requires skills, know-how and independence, challenges the idea of ‘integration’ as a concept and practice. Internationally, there is a lot of research on ‘immigrant entrepreneurship’ because it has been thought to increase innovativeness and has an impact in the so-called creative destruction. How does ‘immigrant entrepreneurship’ challenge the concept of integration, which has the intrinsic idea of ‘natives’ being the active and leading actors in the process?