From Relatedness to Resources: Kinship, Ethnic Resources and Entrepreneurial Success among Migrant Entrepreneurs in Europe / KINETIC

Background and Research Objective

Minority entrepreneurship has become an increasingly important field of research as e.g. the goups of migrant and ethnic minority entrepreneurs contribute significantly to economic development, employment creation and social integration across Europe (David et al., 2025). Entrepreneurship among migrant communities represents not only an economic activity but also a mechanism through which individuals and communities participate in processes of social and economic inclusion (Acs et al., 2009; Bolzani et al., 2026). Migrant entrepreneurs contribute to local economies by creating businesses, generating employment and establishing economic connections across national and cultural boundaries (Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Kloosterman & Rath, 2001).

Despite their growing importance, migrant entrepreneurs often operate within social and institutional environments that differ from those experienced by majority entrepreneurs (David & Terstriep, 2025). Traditional entrepreneurship research has largely focused on individual-level factors such as entrepreneurial intentions, human capital, innovation capabilities and access to financial resources (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). While these factors remain essential, they provide only a partial explanation of how migrant entrepreneurs identify opportunities, overcome constraints and sustain their businesses (Refai et al., 2025). Increasingly, entrepreneurship research emphasises that entrepreneurial activity is socially embedded and shaped by relationships, institutions, cultural identities and historical experiences (Granovetter, 1985; Welter, 2011; David et al., 2026).

The concept of embeddedness has become particularly influential in understanding migrant and minority entrepreneurship. Granovetter (1985) argues that economic action is embedded within social structures and cannot be separated from interpersonal relationships. Entrepreneurs depend on social networks through which they gain access to information, trust, legitimacy and resources. This perspective is especially relevant for migrant entrepreneurs, who may face barriers in accessing mainstream entrepreneurial ecosystems, including limited access to finance, professional networks and institutional recognition (Kloosterman et al., 1999; Kloosterman, 2010; Ram et al., 2017). In such contexts, informal social relationships may become important mechanisms through which entrepreneurs compensate for institutional disadvantages and develop alternative pathways for economic participation (Bisignano & El-Anis, 2019).

However, existing research has paid limited attention to the processes and the influence through which kinship and ethnic resources are mobilised and transformed into entrepreneurial resources. While both kinship and ethnicity have been widely examined in migration studies and ethnic entrepreneurship research, they have largely been studied separately and are often treated as static characteristics or background conditions rather than dynamic, relational and startegic resources. Moreover, little is known about how entrepreneurs actively construct, negotiate and mobilise these resources throughout their entrepreneurial journeys and across generations and sectors. This project addresses this gap by adopting a processual perspective on kinship and ethnic resources, examining how migrant entrepreneurs, including second-generation entrepreneurs, draw on different forms of relatedness and ethnic embeddedness to recognise opportunities, startegically mobilise resources and achieve entrepreneurial success within diverse European contexts.

The central research question guiding this study is:

How do migrant entrepreneurs mobilise kinship and ethnic resources as strategic assets to create entrepreneurial opportunities and achieve business success?

Theoretical Contribution

This project develops an integrated perspective that connects entrepreneurship research with migration studies, social capital theory and contemporary kinship theory. The central argument is that entrepreneurial success among migrant entrepreneurs is shaped not only by individual capabilities or institutional opportunities but also by the ability to mobilise socially meaningful relationships as entrepreneurial resources and strategic assetts.

A key contribution of the study is the reconceptualisation of kinship. Previous entrepreneurship research has often examined family support in terms of immediate relatives or household members (Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Portes & Sensenbrenner, 1993). However, contemporary kinship scholarship argues that relatedness extends beyond biological or legal definitions of family. Kinship is socially produced through practices of care, trust, obligation, exchange and mutual responsibility among a related group of people (Carsten, 2000; Franklin & McKinnon, 2001). Applying this perspective to entrepreneurship allows the study to examine a broader range of relationships that may function as entrepreneurial resources. Kinship is therefore conceptualised as a dynamic resource system (Andrikopoulos, 2026) that includes immediate family members, extended relatives, fictive kinship relationships and transnational forms of relatedness (Drori et al., 2009). Such relationships may provide entrepreneurs with financial assistance, unpaid labour, business knowledge, emotional support, legitimacy and access to markets also in the second generation. This perspective is particularly relevant in migration contexts, where geographical mobility and transnational lifestyles reshape traditional understandings of family and relatedness. Migrants often maintain social relationships across borders, creating transnational kinship networks through which information, resources and business opportunities circulate (Drori et al., 2009; Andrikopoulos, 2026). Rather than weakening kinship relations, migration can transform them into important entrepreneurial resources.

Alongside kinship, the project examines ethnic resources as a second major dimension of migrant entrepreneurship. Research on ethnic entrepreneurship has demonstrated that ethnic communities can provide entrepreneurs with valuable resources, including cultural knowledge, trust-based relationships, market information and access to customers and suppliers (Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Light & Gold, 2000; Zhou, 2004). These resources may reduce uncertainty and facilitate entrepreneurial activity, particularly when entrepreneurs face barriers within mainstream institutions. Both kinship and ethnicity are closly related, but distinct at the same time.

However, ethnicity is not understood as an automatic entrepreneurial advantage. Ethnic resources become valuable only when entrepreneurs are able to transform social and cultural connections into economic opportunities. Strong ethnic embeddedness may provide support and solidarity, but excessive reliance on closed networks may also limit access to broader markets and institutions. Successful entrepreneurship often requires balancing bonding relationships within communities with bridging connections to wider economic environments (Putnam, 2000; Portes, 1998).

By examining kinship and ethnic resources together, this study moves beyond approaches that treat family networks, ethnic networks and social capital as separate phenomena. Instead, it investigates how different forms of relatedness interact and how entrepreneurs actively mobilise them in response to opportunities and constraints.

Research Design and Methodology

The study adopts a qualitative research design based on approximately 40 semi-structured interviews in Europe and further interviews in Canada with migrant male and female entrepreneurs across Europe in the first and second generation. Participants will be selected from diverse migrant and ethnic minority backgrounds and will operate in different national and institutional contexts. This comparative European approach allows the research to examine how kinship and ethnic resources vary across different communities and entrepreneurial environments.

A qualitative methodology is particularly suitable because kinship and ethnic resources represent relational and context-dependent phenomena that require an understanding of entrepreneurs’ lived experiences and interpretations. Semi-structured interviews enable the study to explore how entrepreneurs define kinship, which relationships they consider meaningful, and how social connections are transformed into entrepreneurial resources.

The interviews will focus on entrepreneurs’ experiences with family relationships, extended kinship, fictive kinship, transnational connections, ethnic communities and broader entrepreneurial networks. Particular attention will be given to how these relationships contribute to processes such as opportunity recognition, access to knowledge, financial support, labour mobilisation, market entry and business development. The collected data will be analysed using qualitative thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns, mechanisms and variations across cases. Following an inductive and theory-informed approach, the analysis will examine how entrepreneurs construct, negotiate and mobilise social relationships as resources within different European contexts.

Expected Contribution

The project contributes to entrepreneurship research by extending existing theories of entrepreneurial embeddedness and social capital. While previous research has demonstrated that networks matter for entrepreneurial outcomes, this study shifts attention from networks as structural arrangements towards relationships as dynamic resources shaped by trust, obligation and social meaning (Fubah & Moos, 2025). Furthermore, the project advances research on migrant entrepreneurship by showing that kinship and ethnicity should not be understood merely as demographic characteristics or background conditions. Instead, they represent active social resources that entrepreneurs construct, maintain and mobilise in order to navigate complex economic and institutional environments.

By integrating kinship theory with ethnic entrepreneurship research, this study provides a novel perspective on how migrant entrepreneurs in Europe transform relatedness into entrepreneurial resources. It highlights that entrepreneurial success emerges through the interaction of individual agency, social relationships and institutional contexts (Welter, 2011). Overall, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship as a socially embedded process in which communities, identities and relationships serve as important sources of entrepreneurial capability.