Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
turer opened a restaurant, a chemical engineer bought a flower shop, the
owner of a piano academy established a pet food store; at opening almost
60 percent of entrepreneurs were working in a business unrelated to their
area of expertise in their home countries. The advantage of these consumer
sectors was an immediate cash flow demonstrating to monitors that eco-
nomic activity was underway. In contrast the regulatory maze of environmen-
tal, labour and product codes, inspections and licensing in order to establish
manufacturing and construction companies, and then the need to produce
revenues, would cut too deeply into the two-year probation entrepreneurs
faced in having something tangible to present to immigration authorities.
Retailing and the restaurant sector had other advantages. There were stores
for sale - half the entrepreneurs bought an existing business rather than
launch a new one - requiring minimal refurbishing before opening day, and
there were many opportunities to work within the large ethnic Chinese
enclave, where mother-tongue usage was possible.
Of the three national groups, overall the Korean-origin entrepreneurs
were the most successful, even though in most cases revenue streams and
their own satisfaction remained modest. 16 Indeed country of origin was the
single best predictor of commercial success, followed by university educa-
tion and with weaker effects from English-fluency (Ley 2006). 17 Interestingly,
the level of capital investment made no difference to economic outcomes.
Nor was there evidence of discrimination as an important barrier, support-
ing other studies suggesting that in the current phase of immigrant entre-
preneurialism, this form of blocked mobility is of dwindling significance
(Li 1992; Glover and Sim 2002; Hiebert 2003; but contrast Wong and
Ng 2002). The relative success of the Korean entrepreneurs had much to do
with their geographical marketing strategy. With a Korean population of
under 20,000 in the Vancouver region in the 1990s, they had a much smaller
and fairly dispersed co-ethnic market, and as a result selected business loca-
tions throughout the region, including areas with a high share of white,
Canadian-born residents. This spatial strategy of serving the non-immigrant
mainstream, true of Korean merchants elsewhere (Lo et al. 2002), involved
language challenges but was rewarded by positive revenue streams. In addi-
tion, the Korean respondents had cut adrift from home country transna-
tional economic ties to a greater degree, while Hong Kong and Taiwanese
entrepreneurs were much more likely to maintain trans-Pacific business
linkages (cf. Tseng 1995; Wong and Ng 2002). As the most fully embedded
in the Canadian economy, Korean-Canadians had the most to gain (and
lose) from their investment and were motivated to succeed.
The spatial strategy of Taiwanese and Hong Kong entrepreneurs in contrast
made heavy use of the ethnic enclave. Relatively high proportions of their
customers fell within the enclave, and Cantonese and Mandarin were often
used, seemingly minimizing the barrier of language. More familiar product
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