1) The study analyzes differences in entrepreneurial intentions among immigrants, regional in-migrants, and life-long residents in the UK, as well as the impact of gender and other factors. 2) It finds that both immigrants and in-migrants are more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions than life-long residents, and that the propensity is highest in the first 3 years after arrival. 3) While immigrants have higher entrepreneurial intentions from the start, barriers prevent many from acting on those intentions in early years, showing a gap between intentions and action.

1. Crossing the Borders towards Entrepreneurship:
Migrant Status, Gender and Entrepreneurial Intention
Anastasia Ri
Kamilya Suleymenova
Neha Prashar*
Karen Bonner*
Mark Hart*
Laura Heery*
Jonathan Levie *
ISBE
November 15th , 2019

2. Background/ Aim
Objective: provide empirical analysis leading to a better understanding of
factors shaping the entrepreneurial process of immigrant and in-migrant groups
in the UK
•What are the differences in Entrepreneurial
Intentions (EI) among different population
demographics?
•What factors shape them?
•How well EI transform into action?
Immigrants
(non UK born)
Regional in-migrants
(UK born)
Life-long residents
Gender
GEM UK report 2018: for the first time ever, reports a decline in total early-
stage Entrepreneurial Activity Rate among immigrants (Hart et al, 2019).

3. EI models
TPB (Ajzen, 1991)
EE (Shapero, 1984)
Attitude
Social Norms
Perceived
behavioural
control
Desirability
Propensity
to actFeasibility
Barriers &
Facilitating
factors
Integrated Entrepreneurial Intentions Model (Krueger, 2009; Esfandiar et al., 2019)
Perceived
Desirability
Propensity
to act
Perceived
Feasibility
Personal
Desirability /
Attitude
Perceived
social norms
Perceived Self-
Efficacy
Perceived
Collective
Efficacy
Perception of
OPPORTUNITY
Goal
INTENTION
Implementation
INTENTION
/ACTION
SCCT (Lent et al., 1994 ; Liguori et al., 2019))
Entrepreneurial
Self-Efficacy
Entrepreneurial
Outcome
Expectations
Prior Exposure
Social support
Entrepreneurial
Attitude
Entrepreneurial
Intentions
Locus of
control
Risk-Taking
Propensity
Creating,
Knowing,
Planning
Style
Personal factors
Contextual factors

4. Context and Time specific EI Model with focus on migration
Personal
Desirability /
Attitude
Perceived Self-
Efficacy
& Propensity to act
Perceived
Collective Efficacy
Perceived
Social norms /
Attitude
Adagio motivatorsAllegro motivators
Newness Adaptability
In the host country
And in the country of origin
Formalandinformal
institutions
Includingmigrant-
specific
12
3 4
Short-term/
Feasibility
IndividualSociety
Long-term/
Desirability
“Four-leaf clover of
migrants’ EI”

5. Hypotheses
(i) Both immigrants and in-migrants have
higher EI than life-long residents.
(ii) Newness factor positively influence the EI
of in-migrants and immigrants: they are
more likely to have EI in the first years of
their coming to a new region.
(iii) In presence of formal and informal
institutional barriers, the likelihood of in-
migrant and immigrants to convert their EI
into action increases with time through the
adaptability mechanism.
Immigrants
(non UK born)
Regional in-migrants
(UK born)
Life-long residents
Gender

6. Data / Methodology
We use pooled cross-sectional GEM UK data over 2003-2017 period
•Individual with no entrepreneurial intention (would not be classed as a
potential entrepreneur)
•Potential entrepreneur (the stage at which an individual is intending to start a
new business within the next three years);
•Nascent entrepreneur (the stage at which an individual begins to commit
resources, such as time and money, to starting a business and up to three
months after the business has started to pay wages);
•New business owner-managers (the stage which covers the period beginning
three months after the business has started to pay income, such as salaries or
drawings, and up to forty-two months (up to 3.5 years old);
•Established business owner-managers (the business has been paying income,
such as salaries or drawings, for more than forty-two months.
51, 890 obs
Data limitations:
•we are not able to track the same individual over time
•the survey questionnaire does not cover all the constructs useful for
understanding the mechanisms behind entrepreneurial intention

7. Data / Methodology
Sequential 2 steps design:
1. we explore personal and contextual predictors of EI with a particular focus
on migrants and gender status. We argue that modelling of EI requires
accounting not only for individual and social feasibility and desirability, but
also for the time dimension.
2. we interact the same dependent variables with the likelihood of being a
nascent entrepreneur on the left-hand side.
Personal Desirability / Attitude
age, gender, education, ethnicity
Perceived Self-Efficacy and Propensity to act
“have skills”, “fear of failure”, “see opportunity”
Budget constraint and necessity:
“income” and “working status”
Perceived Collective Efficacy
“know entrepreneur” as a measure of
networking opportunities, and region and year
variables as contextual controls
Perceived Collective Desirability
“social desirability” and “social
status” to control for agents’
perceptions of informal institutions
Migrant-specific
“migrant status” and “newness”;
“newness” is obtained as an interaction
between the “migrant status” and the
“years in the region” variable

8. Findings
Know entrepreneur 0.0507***
(0.00314)
See opportunity 0.0660***
(0.00318)
Have skills 0.0810***
(0.00607)
Fear of failure -0.0191***
(0.00281)
Social desirability 0.00594***
(0.00215)
Social status -0.00253
(0.00270)
0.0377***
(0.00247)
0.0396***
(0.00171)
0.0819***
(0.00429)
-0.0336***
(0.00153)
-0.000257
(0.00256)
-0.00922***
(0.00226)
In-Migrant 0.0170***
(0.00379)
Immigrant 0.0448***
(0.00741)
0.0114***
(0.00238)
0.00628
(0.00389)
EI Nascent
Female -0.0239***
(0.00475)
-0.0142***
(0.00246)
Non-white 0.0688***
(0.00521)
0.0238***
(0.00548)

9. Newness
EI Nascent
In-Migrant
(0-3 years)
0.0264*** 0.0329*** 0.0174* 0.0201*** 0.0122 0.0270***
(0.00671) (0.0126) (0.00955) (0.00727) (0.00765) (0.00879)
In-Migrant
(4-8 years)
0.0237** 0.0174 0.0283*** 0.0116*** 0.00528 0.0171***
(0.00943) (0.0135) (0.00819) (0.00403) (0.00664) (0.00458)
In-Migrant
(9-15 years)
0.0172*** 0.0276** 0.00647* 0.0159*** 0.0129* 0.0176***
(0.00665) (0.0128) (0.00345) (0.00413) (0.00697) (0.00463)
In-Migrant
(16-25 years)
0.0189*** 0.0286*** 0.00743 0.00784** 0.00540 0.00933**
(0.00399) (0.00323) (0.00632) (0.00316) (0.00431) (0.00406)
In-Migrant
(26-35 years)
0.00757** 0.0125 -0.000133 0.0132*** 0.0228*** 0.00429
(0.00323) (0.0113) (0.00958) (0.00507) (0.00710) (0.00517)
In-Migrant (36+
years)
0.00636 0.00987 0.00249 0.000874 0.00688* -0.00495
(0.00753) (0.00703) (0.00970) (0.00297) (0.00372) (0.00419)
Immigrant
(0-3 years)
0.0689*** 0.0924*** 0.0389 -0.00670 -0.0179* 0.00561
(0.0249) (0.0260) (0.0291) (0.00636) (0.0101) (0.00779)
Immigrant
(4-8 years)
0.0592*** 0.0765*** 0.0396*** -0.00160 -0.0150* 0.0139
(0.0115) (0.0155) (0.0125) (0.00791) (0.00873) (0.00899)
Immigrant
(9-15 years)
0.0618*** 0.0600*** 0.0648*** 0.0302*** 0.0356*** 0.0260**
(0.0161) (0.0107) (0.0234) (0.00778) (0.0134) (0.0128)
Immigrant
(16-25 years)
0.0308*** 0.0330* 0.0257** 0.0150 0.0256** 0.00297
(0.0102) (0.0180) (0.0102) (0.0108) (0.0112) (0.0153)
Immigrant
(26-35 years)
0.0152 0.0230 0.00334 -0.0163 -0.0123 -0.0206**
(0.0134) (0.0227) (0.0171) (0.0123) (0.0189) (0.00860)
Immigrant
(36+ years)
-0.00240 0.00346 -0.0103 0.00624 -0.00216 0.0167
(0.0156) (0.0202) (0.0240) (0.00746) (0.0129) (0.0108)
Male Female Male FemaleAll All

10. Doctorate 0.0436*** 0.0411*** 0.0518*** 0.0223* 0.0270* 0.0178*
(0.0114) (0.0156) (0.0167) (0.0119) (0.0152) (0.00999)
Master’s
degree
0.0570*** 0.0457*** 0.0766*** 0.0158** 0.00760 0.0272***
(0.00508) (0.00903) (0.0126) (0.00719) (0.0108) (0.00819)
Batchelor’s
degree
0.0397*** 0.0277*** 0.0590*** 0.00721 0.000584 0.0171***
(0.00561) (0.00946) (0.00666) (0.00530) (0.00772) (0.00654)
A levels or
equivalent
0.0345*** 0.0252*** 0.0501*** 0.00258 -0.00574 0.0138*
(0.00559) (0.00935) (0.00940) (0.00663) (0.0102) (0.00734)
GCSE or
equivalent
0.0148*** 0.00350 0.0325*** 0.00589 -0.00204 0.0171*
(0.00418) (0.00840) (0.00552) (0.00437) (0.00624) (0.00905)
Vocational
qualification
0.0276*** 0.0186** 0.0456*** -0.00124 -0.0144 0.0149**
(0.00631) (0.00853) (0.0103) (0.00599) (0.0126) (0.00690)
Other
qualification
0.0379*** 0.0338* 0.0472** 0.0129 -0.00157 0.0333**
(0.0128) (0.0176) (0.0185) (0.00953) (0.0109) (0.0142)
Education
EI Nascent
Male Female Male FemaleAll All
This finding stresses the importance of education in encouraging female
entrepreneurship. Women, being on average more risk averse, and less confident than
men, benefit greatly not only from training and mentoring, but also from formal
education.

11. Conclusions
•both immigrants and in-migrants are more likely to have EI than life-long
residents.
•propensity of migrants to have EI is different depending on the duration of
their stay in the region.
•we find that the probability of EI in an individual newly arrived in a location
from abroad or from another region, is at its highest during the first three
years.
•while immigrants have a higher likelihood of EI from the very beginning of
their residence in the region, they face important barriers which prevent them
from converting their intentions into action in these early years, thus
confirming the temporal gap between EI and action.
•while we find no statistically significant relationship between formal education
level and the likelihood to start a business among men, there is a significant
relationship for women.