The doctoral dissertation in the field of Sociology will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies at Joensuu campus. The public examination will be streamed online.
What is the topic of your doctoral research? Why is it important to study the topic?
My doctoral research is about Somali immigrant entrepreneuring in Finland and in the United States. Studies on Somali immigrant communities over the past two decades have provided important information addressing great similarities in group characteristics across the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. Interestingly, entrepreneurship is an area where significant differences come into play. The high levels of Somali immigrant entrepreneurial activity which have emerged in a US context, for example, have been a topic of interest within the Nordic countries. Scholars from the field often arrive at the same question following inquiry into the role of different models of welfare state.
In this study, expanding the questions asked in relation to immigrant entrepreneuring from a pool of resources, opportunities and regulations to a wider context, I approach the host society as a work-learning setting of immigrant entrepreneurship and ask: 1) How do learning and participation in the resettlement society relate to the ways Somali immigrants perceive and construct themselves as legitimate actors of entrepreneurial activity within their resettlement societies?, and 2) What processes shape immigrants’ approaches to entrepreneurial activity? Noting that immigrant entrepreneurship is fast becoming a key strategy for economic and social integration also in Finland, the topic is timely and important to study.
What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research?
One key finding that stands out from those reported earlier is that Somali immigrants in Finland and in the US, regardless the similarities in group characteristics, enter different cultures of immigrant reception thereby coming to the entrepreneurial practice from different peripheral positionalities. Both economics of labour control and politics of knowledge control come into play as Somali immigrants’ experiences of labour market, integration schemes and public discourses intertwine and shape the periphery from which Somalis approach entrepreneurship. In both contexts, these different experiences accumulate to a substantial resource conveying information about both ‘what makes an immigrant an entrepreneur’ and the value of immigrants’ working selves in the given context.
Also, community imaginaries seem to play an important role on the immigrant side for marking the conditions of social membership in the host society. In the case of Finland, ‘knowledgeability’ prevails as the most important qualification to fulfil, whereas being ‘industrious’ is given the most weight in the case of the US. These different imaginaries also give direction to Somali immigrants’ articulations of ‘what is essential’ to becoming immigrant entrepreneur in their host societies. From a sociological perspective, we are capturing a process of moral regulation. It is moralisation of both the immigrant agent and the immigrant economic activity.
How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice?
In this research, the varying contexts of reception immigrants enter (labour markets, immigrant integration schemes and everyday places) unfold as the key learning sites for (Somali) immigrant entrepreneuring. One practical implication thus might be to consider expanding entrepreneurial education designed for immigrant groups to these key learning sites. Such a course of action would rely upon an important shift in the way participation question is addressed in the debates of immigrant entrepreneurship. The insights gained from this study may also be of assistance to understanding ‘participation to host society’ as an integral part of immigrant entrepreneuring, rather than reading it merely as an outcome to entrepreneurial engagement.
What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research?
Conceptualising immigrant entrepreneurship as an outcome of a learning process where immigrants are learners, and the host society stands for the context of learning, I deployed a work-learning perspective and the theory of situated learning (Lave & Wenger,1991) in this research. In terms of methods, I adopted a case study approach and deployed a qualitative inquiry followed by informed choices in relation to data collection and data analysis. Semi-structured interview method is used for data collection and reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was chosen for working on the data. A case study approach was particularly useful as it allowed approaching ‘Somali immigrant entrepreneuring’ at its entirety of places, actors and activities. It also allowed for the inclusion of a variety of additional data sources such as employment-related integration data, statistics, as well as both academic and non-academic literature existing on the subject.
The analysis draws upon two separate data sets conducted with Somali immigrant entrepreneurs living in Finland and in the states of Maine and Minnesota in the US. Comparison is used for descriptive purposes, but the data sets are not collected for the purpose of comparison and converge in one presenting Somali immigrant entrepreneurs as the ‘legitimate peripheral participants’ of the entrepreneurial practice in both countries. Increasing theoretical understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship was the main motivation behind this research design.
Is there something else about your doctoral dissertation you would like to share in the press release?
The findings of this study, I would say, also add to a new, yet rapidly expanding, research paradigm in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship studies – the ‘place’ paradigm. Borrowing from Webster and Kontkanen (2021), I would like to note that: “the process of naming ‘where’ and ‘what’ in relation to spaces and places goes beyond utilizing context: it highlights how space and place may reveal the powerful intricacies and relations of space- and place making in economic activities”– hence place matters.
The doctoral dissertation of Yasemin Kontkanen, M.Soc.Sc, entitled Legitimate Peripheral Entrepreneuring: Somali immigrant entrepreneuring in Finland and in the United States will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies. The Opponent in the public examination will be Professor Östen Wahlbeck of the University of South-Eastern Norway, and the Custos will be Professor emerita Leena Koski, of the University of Eastern Finland.