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Categorising and labelling entrepreneurs : Business support organisations constructing the Other through prefixes of ethnicity and immigrantship

På svenska

Author

  • Lena Högberg
  • Tobias Schölin
  • Monder Ram
  • Trevor Jones

Summary, in English

This article demonstrates how Swedish support organisations approach and target immigrant entrepreneurs in terms of categorisation and labelling. In their strategic positioning, and as a result of framing and communicating specific target groups for their activities, organisations simultaneously produce and reproduce categories of clients. We argue that despite its emancipatory intent, the process of categorisation runs the risk of reproducing an inferior Other. Adding prefixes in labelling entrepreneurs may replicate the societal hierarchies that business support initiatives were designed to counteract. This article questions the basis of business support for minority entrepreneurs and is a contribution to wider debates concerned with exposing the constructed nature of entrepreneurship.

Publishing year

2016-05

Language

English

Pages

242-260

Publication/Series

International Small Business Journal

Volume

34

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • business support
  • categorisation
  • ethnicity
  • immigrant entrepreneurship
  • labelling

Status

Published

Research group

  • Sten K. Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0266-2426