Thursday, August 26, 2010

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Working with New Migrant Businesses in the West Midlands: Challenges and Opportunities


In recent years, the West Midlands has seen a wave of migration from countries such as Somalia and Poland. This is sometimes called new migration, in contrast to established patterns from countries in the Caribbean and South Asia. Many new migrants establish their own businesses, a process of great importance for their economic integration but it remains a neglected contributor to entrepreneurial activity in the region. Yet there is little research on their enterprises or experiences of business support.

Studies by De Montfort University’s Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) and early evidence-gathering by Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre of Expertise (MEECOE)1 as mentioned in previous blog posts on new migrant businesses in the West Midlands has revealed:

• An alarming dearth of information on the scale and nature of new migrant business activity Considerable interest in entrepreneurship as a career option amongst new migrants
• Involvement of new migrants in a diverse range of business activities
• Unacknowledged human capital within many businesses
• A lack of awareness of the existence and role of ‘mainstream’ business support agencies
• Active interest in pursuing appropriate support to develop their businesses
• A willingness to engage with business support professionals

Barriers to enterprise

Access to finance

It was suggested that new migrants struggled to secure finance from banks and other ‘mainstream’ financial intermediaries. This led to reliance on informal sources, and the running of severely under-capitalised businesses.

Cultural constraints

Language was seen as a barrier for some groups, as was a lack of familiarity with rules and regulations surrounding the business activities. Equally, it was noted that business support intermediaries rarely had an appreciation of the different cultural traditions of new migrant communities.

Trading patterns

The tendency for new migrants to trade primarily with their own communities meant that their potential customer base was extremely narrow. There was a lack of attention to the need to diversify their businesses.

Lack of information

New migrants often struggled to secure information on the process of business start-up and functions such as marketing and business planning.

Implications

A number of issues merit further consideration:

• Self-employment is reputed to be an important economic activity for new migrants in the region. Its scale and dynamics need to be understood if appropriate policy interventions are to be devised.
• ‘Mainstream’ business support agencies do not appear to be widely utilised by such groups. This is a concern since the boosting of enterprise in disadvantaged areas (where new migrants are often located) is a key objective of such agencies. Further, such agencies’ knowledge of the new migrant business activities appears limited.
• There is considerable diversity in the experiences of new migrant communities in the region; this needs to be understood and reflected in policy interventions.
• There does not appear to be a clear mechanism to articulate the experiences and needs of new migrant entrepreneurs. Ethnic minority business intermediaries should reflect upon their links with such communities.
• Consideration should be given to new and innovative ways of engaging new migrant business owners.


1 Funded by Advantage West Midlands, the Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre of Expertise is an exciting two-year project that aims to promote a strategic and innovative approach to supporting ethnic minority businesses in the West Midlands. A consortium led by De Montfort University’s Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME), in collaboration with the University of Lancaster and CSK Strategies, will work with public and private sector stakeholders to enhance policy and practice for ethnic minority enterprise in the region.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Behind the scenes at CREME – Planning the Annual Ethnic Minority Business Conference



The Annual Ethnic Minority Business Conference is one of the main highlights in the CREME calendar each year. It is an opportunity for all of our stakeholders to meet up and hear about current developments in business support for ethnic minority businesses, new policy initiatives as well as CREME’s research projects.

It is now 14 years since the conference began and I have been involved in its organisation for 9 of those years. My first experience of this event was in 2000, when planning stages consisted of inviting a few speakers and sending out a mail shot by post. The planning, organisation and marketing activities have become far more detailed and sophisticated since then and each year we aim to continue to make the programme relevant for the conference audience.

The planning of the conference this year began in January with a search for a suitable venue and following an assessment of a number of options, the Ricoh Arena in Coventry was chosen. This year the conference will be showcasing the work of the Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre of Expertise (MEECOE), a project led by CREME to develop strategic and innovative approaches to supporting ethnic minority businesses in the West Midlands. We therefore wanted to host the event in this region.

We then invited some of CREME’s key stakeholders (who have also been actively involved in the MEECOE project) to attend a series of meetings to plan the sessions at the event focussing on Business Support, Access to Finance and Access to Markets. We have been engaging with Dr Richard Roberts, SME Research Director at Barclays, Simon Leggett, Sales & Marketing Director at The Consortium and David Darlaston, Regional Director West Midlands at Business in the Community on a regular basis to develop the programme further. In particular, we have been focussing on moving away from a traditional format of presentations to give participants the opportunity to interact and contribute to debates via Q&As and panel discussions.

Over the next 12 weeks, activity in the CREME office will increase dramatically as I work with my colleague, Liv, on a whole host of activities such as publicising the event, dealing with bookings, liaising with sponsors, creating packs for the participants and making arrangements for the Gala Dinner (being held after the conference).

We will be looking forward to meeting the numerous people that we will be in contact with over the next few months at the reception desk on the morning of Thursday 14th October 2010.


For more details about the conference, please contact us at: creme@dmu.ac.uk

Liz Frost