Navigating hostility, pursuing hospitality: Conceptualizing community engagement among migrant women entrepreneurs in peripheral areas

This article focuses on migrant women entrepreneurs’ engagement with local communities through creating hospitable spaces and explores how experiences of hospitality/hostility influence entrepreneurial activities and community engagement. Businesses, particularly in the service sector, often function as hubs of social interaction, providing opportunities for migrant entrepreneurs to engage with host communities in ways otherwise not readily available for non-entrepreneurs. These status-based opportunities for social exchange also come with risks and challenges, particularly in more peripheral areas that have traditionally attracted fewer migrants and are often perceived as less hospitable to newcomers. The study draws on 21 semi-structured interviews with migrant women entrepreneurs, analysing their approaches to community engagement to understand the constraints they encounter and the strategies they deploy to overcome hostility and create hospitable spaces. The findings are fourfold: (1) entrepreneurship can act as a vehicle for community engagement for migrant women seeking to identify and meet local needs; (2) community engagement can strengthen migrant women’s business activities through improved access to networks and other resources; (3) through active community engagement and responding to local needs, migrant women entrepreneurs become (re)makers of social infrastructure and (4) experiences of hospitality/hostility mediate migrant women’s entrepreneurial endeavours and community engagement. Conceptualizing the ways in which migrant women use entrepreneurial activities to engage with local communities deepens the understanding of migrant women’s approaches to overcoming hostility and creating more hospitable places and interactions.