New Migrant Enterprise: Novelty or Historical Continuity?

How far does new migrant enterprise represent a departure from traditional ethnic minority entrepreneurship in the UK? This paper draws on a qualitative survey of 165 new migrants in the UK to address this question. New migrants to the UK are emblematic of ‘super-diversity’, which some believe heralds a significant departure from previous forms of migration. The extent to which this process has a substantive impact on the kinds of businesses that new migrants run is rarely considered. It is argued that migrant business, ‘new’ and ‘old’, is structurally disadvantaged and underpinned by mixed embeddedness. This can be applied to demonstrate that new migrants are essentially subject to the same structural handicaps as their forerunners.