Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

As cities around the world continue to attract both domestic migrants and international migrants into their bustling metropolises, immigrant entrepreneurship emerges as an important urban phenomenon that calls for careful examination. From Chinatown in New York to Silicon Valley in San Francisco, immigrant-owned businesses are not only changing the business landscape in their hosting cities, but also transforming the spatial, economic, social, and cultural form of local communities. Forward-thinking world cities have started to initiate various policy tools to tap into the urban economic development potential of immigrant entrepreneurship and ease the hurdles and challenges immigrant business owners face.

Despite its increasing popularity, we know little about the breadth and depth of such policies. For example, the welcoming cities initiative in the U.S. have a crucial component to promote immigrant entrepreneurship. In the European context, cities have also initiated policies to govern and promote urban diversity and ethnic entrepreneurship.

In this paper we will use data from various sources, including Survey of Business from the U.S., Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and OECD reports, as well as other official documents, archival data, and field research to systematically examine the current landscape of local immigrant entrepreneurship development efforts in selected cities around the world. We will draw cases from several U.S. cities and European cities with explicit programs targeted at immigrant entrepreneurship to develop a policy framework and discuss any similarities and differences.