Facilitating New Migrant Businesses Development: A Collaborative Approach (2015-2017)

Lead Academic: Dr Maria Villares Varela

Introduction

This project aims to develop a long-term programme of knowledge exchange and collaborative research between the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) and Ashley Community Housing Community (ACHA) to support migrant entrepreneurs transforming ACHA’S organisational practice. ACHA is a social enterprise that specialises in housing and training provision to support the resettlement and employability of refugees. ACHA has supported approximately 1500 tenants over the last 6 years, moving them from homelessness towards employment and independent living.  ACHA provides personal and employment skills to over 500 individuals a year through programmes such as ESOL training, employability skills, job-search (500 a year), CV writing and interview skills (300 a year), and work placements (150 a year). CREME’s collaboration with ACHA will focus on establishing a capacity-building project to transform their relation to business and enterprise skills provision.

In order to fulfil this aim, the project will map the aspirations and capabilities of recently arrived migrants to become entrepreneurs. This framework will be implemented in order to identify the constraining and enabling factors that block/facilitate migrant entrepreneurs to realise their aspirations. The research design will focus on the life, migration, occupational and entrepreneurial trajectories of recently arrived migrants in order to capture the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs and the capabilities to do so. The results of this first stage will inform ACHA’s services for recently arrived migrants.

The cost of the overall project is £51,142. The project is funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Follow-up fund, the Higher Innovation Fund and ACHA. 

Research Objectives

• Mapping new migrant businesses in Birmingham, looking at the nexus between aspirations and capabilities of new migrants. 
• Encourage knowledge-sharing of opportunities and challenges of working with new migrant businesses with ACHA, business support intermediaries and community networks.
• Promote good practice arising from this intervention to other existing and aspiring new migrant entrepreneurs in the City and other parts of the UK 

Research Outputs

Information on the research outputs can be found on the CREME website.

Research Team

• Dr Maria Villares Varela
• Professor Monder Ram

Contact

Sophie Sinclair, CREME Centre Manager:

Tel: +44 (0)121 415 8362

Email: s.c.sinclair@bham.ac.uk