Migrant entrepreneurs: stories of agency and recognition

Blog post by Nadine Thielemann and Lejla Atagan, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
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Public debates about migration often allege economic burden, stress cultural differences or question integration. What tends to be overlooked are the everyday strategies through which migrants create stability, dignity, and a sense of belonging in their new environments. One place where these strategies become visible is in small businesses – especially in gastronomy, a sector where many migrants find opportunities despite structural barriers to the labour market. But what does it actually mean to become an ‘entrepreneur’ when one’s life has been shaped by migration? And how do migrants make sense of this transition in their own words?

Our Identities article, ‘Empowerment through enterprise: Balkan migrants and the narrative of entrepreneurial identity’, explores these questions through the lens of narrative identity. We conducted qualitative interviews with migrant entrepreneurs from the Balkan region who run gastronomy businesses in Vienna. Rather than evaluating their businesses, we examined how they narrate their identities, how they came to their current positions and what entrepreneurship means to them in their lives.

Across the interviews, a distinctive narrative pattern emerged. Migrants weave together two storylines often treated as separate: classical entrepreneurial themes of self-reliance, hard work and autonomy, and migrant experiences of vulnerability, marginalization and the search for recognition. When intertwined, they create a unique variation of the entrepreneurial ‘success story’, shaped by the realities of migration.

A key feature of these narratives is what we refer to as a transformation plot. Interviewees describe their life trajectories as journeys from powerlessness to agency, from being positioned as dependent or invisible to becoming self-determined actors. The starting point is typically a disruption: leaving home, arriving with limited resources, or being confined to precarious jobs. Entrepreneurship then becomes a turning point, a moment through which narrators claim control over their futures.

Yet their stories are not simply about economic independence. Establishing a small business also serves as a means of securing social legitimacy. Narrators highlight their contribution to the local economy, to the social life of the neighbourhood, and to customers who value their food and hospitality. In doing so, they respond to dominant migration discourses that often frame migrants as burdens or problems. Through the entrepreneurial narrative, they position themselves as capable, resilient and deserving of recognition.

These insights have implications for research and practice. They demonstrate the value of interpretive, language-sensitive approaches: conducting interviews in migrants’ native languages enabled the capture of meanings that standardized formats would have missed, revealing how people navigate exclusion and imagine futures despite limited institutional support.

The findings also challenge deficit-based views that focus primarily on vulnerability. Structural constraints matter, but they do not define migrants’ experiences. The narratives show agency and strategic action. When institutions respond only to ‘need’, they risk overlooking initiative; recognizing migrants’ capacities can help shift practice toward supporting autonomy and contribution.
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Finally, the stories migrants tell have relevance beyond research. Making visible their everyday achievements challenges public narratives that portray migrants as passive or problematic. Small businesses may not transform entire economies, but they do shape local social worlds, create jobs and foster connection. Acknowledging these contributions helps create a more nuanced and appreciative understanding of migration and belonging.

Listening closely to how migrant entrepreneurs narrate their journeys offers a reminder: migration is not only a structural process but also a deeply human one, shaped by aspiration, creativity and the quest for recognition. Their narratives of transformation and self-empowerment reveal how identity is forged in the interplay between constraint and possibility – and how entrepreneurship can become a powerful story of agency in the making.

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Image credit: Author’s own.

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Read the Identities article:
Thielemann, N. & Atagan, L. (2025). Empowerment through enterprise: Balkan migrants and the narrative of entrepreneurial identity. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2025.2604441   OPEN ACCESS

Read further in Identities:

Pushed or pulled? Entrepreneurial behaviour among immigrants as a strategy to cope with negative social identity

Can stigma become a resource? The mobilisation of aesthetic–corporal capital by female immigrant entrepreneurs from Brazil

​Negotiating multiple boundaries: diasporic Hong Kong identities in the United States