Mixed Embeddedness and the Dynamics of Self-Employment among Turkish Immigrants in Finland

The article analyses dynamics of social capital that can explain how Turkish immigrants in Finland become self-employed and why they have established themselves within a particular economic sector. The mixed embeddedness perspective on ethnic and immigrant entrepreneurship is utilised to achieve a better understanding of these processes. The interview study indicates that immigrants are able to establish ethnic economies also in countries with relatively small and geographically dispersed immigrant populations. Immigrant entrepreneurs can mobilise transnational social capital for the establishment of businesses, but only under circumstances where transnational resources can be utilised as a local resource. To understand the dynamics of immigrants businesses requires an analysis of the embeddedness of immigrants in a simultaneously transnational and local social context.