A research programme of immigrant entrepreneurship in the four main cities in the Netherlands, sponsored by the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research NWO

The central aim of this research programme is to explore the interrelationship between immigrant self-employment and the multi-cultural city. To investigate this complex interplay between immigrant entrepreneurs and the wider urban environment, a new, more comprehensive, concept of embeddedness will be used. This concept of mixed embeddedness refers to the complex way in which immigrant businesses are inserted, on the one hand, in the specific Dutch socio-economic and institutional context and, on the other, immigrant contexts and which involves diverse configurations of financial, human, and social capital. Complex configurations of mixed embeddedness enable immigrant businesses to survive -- partly by facilitating informal economic activities -- in segments where indigenous firms, as a rule, cannot. Exploring these forms of mixed embeddedness among immigrant entrepreneurs in concrete Dutch metropolitan milieus allows us to assess to what extent immigrant entrepreneurship in conjunction with informal economic activities constitutes a distinct trajectory of incorporation.

To explore the complex interrelationship between immigrant self-employment and the multicultural city, a multilevel analysis will be undertaken involving the following six research questions:

• How has immigrant self-employment evolved in terms of numbers, of the distribution over the various sectors of the economy, and of the spatial distribution (inter- and intra-urban) in the four largest cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht), and how is this related to processes of urban transformation in the last two decades?
• How are the (in)formal economic activities of immigrant entrepreneurs embedded in their concrete markets with respect to customers, workers, suppliers, competitors, and business associations?
• How are (in)formal economic activities by immigrant entrepreneurs interrelated with the welfare system, the overall regulatory framework and enforcement regimes?
• In which social networks are immigrant entrepreneurs embedded, how are these networks constituted, and to what extent does this embeddedness help to reduce transaction costs (with regard to information, labour, financial capital etc.)?
• What types of configurations of mixed embeddedness can be distinguished and how are they related to different trajectories of socio-economic incorporation of immigrants?
• To what extent are these configurations of mixed embeddedness and their concomitant trajectories of incorporation of immigrant entrepreneurs tied to the specific Dutch context and to what extent are they are part of more general post-migratory processes?