Initial Business Creation Among South Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Sweden

Sammanfattning

This study examines how South Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden utilize digital tools and platforms and social networks in order to overcome traditional barriers to initiate their businesses. The research is qualitative and uses thematic analysis on 17 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and 3 web articles from various industries in Sweden using an abductive approach. The research proposes a new layer named 'Digital Embeddedness' to the existing Mixed Embeddedness Framework (Kloosterman et al., 1999). The study indicated that digital platforms are often used by the recently migrated individuals temporarily to gain access to overcome language gaps and institutional barriers before establishing local social networks.