Immigrant Entrepreneurship and the path through business life : From a causational to an effectual logic of business support

Abstract: This article is about immigrant entrepreneurs and their way through business life in an unfamiliar business world. Focusing on the region of Växjö, Sweden the article presents different attitudes of immigrant entrepreneurs and shows common problems and barriers. The article investigates how immigrant entrepreneurs’ deal with their daily life and what they struggled with in the past. What kind of barriers do immigrants face when they leave their home country? The overall aim is to research what support is needed in order to help regional immigrant entrepreneurs with their business. Therefore this article highlights barriers which immigrant entrepreneurs struggle with. As the regional support programs influence the path of business life the article presents their perspective as well. These supporters have a lot of experience in dealing with immigrant entrepreneurs which can be used to investigate improvements. As the most outstanding result, this article presents the importance of overall integration in the host country. The way through business life for immigrant entrepreneurs is characterized by an effectual logic but the support to entrepreneurs is often based on a causation-logic. Therefore the support givers should consider focusing on the individual entrepreneurs and the surroundings that influence the integration.