The Entrepreneurial Trap?: Race, Gender, and Migrant Women’s Path to Self-Employment

• In Event: 50412 - Informal and Unregulated Economies

Abstract

Contemporary literature underscores the structural barriers that migrant women and particularly racialized migrant women face in accessing and sustaining stable employment in Canada. Worldwide, many migrant women turn to self-employment as an alternative pathway in response to challenges such as credential devaluation, language barriers, and labor market discrimination. This paper presents preliminary findings from a study of 40 self-employed migrant women from diverse national backgrounds living in Québec, Canada, examining the driving factors to transitioning to self-employment. While participants articulate a strong sense of purpose and autonomy in their entrepreneurial journeys, their experiences also reveal the deep entanglements of self-employment with gendered, ethnic and racialized forms of precarity. Drawing on theories of governmentality and self-making, this paper critically interrogates contemporary entrepreneurial discourses that frame self-employment as a form of empowerment and economic “freedom” in the migration context. It argues that rather than providing an escape from structural inequalities, entrepreneurship often demands an intensified form of self-regulation, where migrant women must continuously navigate intersecting forms of marginalization while performing resilience and adaptability. By situating self-employment within broader neoliberal labor market transformations, this presentation critically examines the contradictory positioning of entrepreneurship as both an opportunity and a constraint, foregrounding the ways in which race, gender, and class shape the precarious conditions under which migrant women must negotiate their economic futures.

Author

• Carolina Gallo Garcia, Concordia University