I would suggest you to read , Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (2006) In: . Casson,M; Yeung, B; Basu, A., and Wadeson, N. (eds) , The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship. He suggests that ethnic /migrant entrepreneurship should be define by taking into consideration the characteristics of those groups, economic conditions, where those groups are embedded and the nature of business they are engaged in.

Read also:

Basu A. (1998). ' An exploration of entrepreneurial activity among Asians in Britain, Small Business Economics, 10(4):313-26;

Aldrich, H. and Waldinger (1990), ;Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship'

Annual Review of Sociology 16:111-135.

Hi Tendai,

Agree with Frederic, this topic as been researched over a number of years by academics around the world. Would check on Monder Ram about ethnic entrepreneurs in the UK, he has carried out extensive work in this area. Also there are a number of past and current journal articles regarding this issue relating to SA. Suggest you carry out a Literature search.

Regards

Rob

Dear Tendai,

I totally agree with Frédéric on the fact that ethnic/migrant entrepreneurship has been extensively researched and studied. Indeed, as a result of that, consolidated conceptual frameworks and theories on the topic have been proposed and that may be retrieved from the very interesting literature Upananda, Frédéric and Robert suggested. In addition to those suggestions, I would add a couple of papers. The first presents an updated systematic literature review, which may help you have an overview on what areas of the ethnic/migrant entrepreneurship have been explored, and the second discusses interestingly on what should be and what should not be defined "ethnic". Here are the references:

• Aliaga-Isla, R. et Rialp, A. (2013). Systematic review of immigrant entrepreneurship literature: previous findings and ways forward. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25(9-10), 819-844
• Pécoud, A. (2010). What is ethnic in an ethnic economy? International Review of Sociology - Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 20(1), 59-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03906700903525677

I must say that the research seems well developed everywhere but in Africa, since the major studies are mainly published in and on North America (US and Canada), Europe and Oceania (Australia). I personally usually struggle to find some papers on Africa… they might be not well disseminated. I found, though, a couple of reference that may be of help:

• A 2009 PhD thesis on ethnic entrepreneurship in RDC by KAMAVUAKO-DIWAVOVA Justin of the University of Reims (France) available at http://www.ife.auf.org/documents/These_Justin_2009.pdf . Although it is written in French, there are some (few) interesting references on ethnic entrepreneurship in Africa that you could look at.
• Bruce Mitchell (2003) Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Preliminary Findings From A South African Study, Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 17:1, 47-62, DOI: 10.1080/08276331.2003.10593312, a comparative study of Indian, European and African entrepreneurs in terms of networks.

I hope this help and good luck with your research!

Ralph

Dear Ralph, Willaims,

I have to agree with Tendai that imigrant entrepreneurship is still at infancy. Majority of such researches are centered around immigrants to USA and Britain.  However immigrants to Middle-East and their entrepreneurial activities are not yet been explored.  Moreover, entrepreneurial activities of immigrants who have returned to their legitimate state also had been under-explored.

Upananda

You can find an interesting perspective in this article

Chapter Bringing Africa into Entrepreneurship Research