Noneconomic Dimensions of Migrants’ Adaptation to the Labor Market: Migrant Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Cultures during the COVID-19 Pandemic
 
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Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
 
 
Publication date: 2022-12-12
 
 
Polish Sociological Review 2022;220(4):427-442
 
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ABSTRACT
This article explores the interactions of migrant Polish business owners with the new entrepreneurial culture in their host country (the UK). The research question of the article concerns how migrant business owners experience the entrepreneurial culture of their host society and how this process reflects noneconomic aspects of labor market adaptation. In the theoretical dimension, the aim is to develop a perspective of examining the labor market adaptation of migrants as a cultural process which reflects certain values and internalized or institutionalized patterns of thinking and acting (Hofstede 2005). The study examines cross-cultural encounters in three interconnected areas: entrepreneurs’ relations with the state, their interactions with other business people, and their interactions with their employees. International mobility provides individuals with the potential to modify their habits and beliefs in the new structural settings and socio-cultural environment of their activities. Socioeconomic crises are moments of trial for migrants, highlighting the challenges of adaptation but also clarifying differences in values and behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic perpetuated the migrants’ view of the host country as an entrepreneurship-friendly state and enhanced their vision of the host’s entrepreneurial culture as one based on a high level of trust in regard to business owners. The analysis is based on the qualitative method (53 interviews with Polish migrant entrepreneurs).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Anne White (UCL SSEES) for her valuable comments concerning the research project which was the basis of this article, and anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful suggestions.
FUNDING
The project was financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange within the Bekker programme, contract number PPN/BEK/2019/1/00200/U/00001.
eISSN:2657-4276
ISSN:1231-1413
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