Ethnic Entrepreneurship in Australia

This paper explores the historical and contemporary dimensions of immigrant self-employment and entrepreneurship in Australia. In doing so it draws on the growing literature on immigrant entrepreneurship in Australia and the literature on the impact of globalisation on western economies. The paper presents a brief history of the important role of immigrant entrepreneurship and self-employment in Australia before presenting 1996 census data on rates of immigrant selfemployment by gender and by generation. The paper then summarizes the key findings of the Australian research into immigrant self-employment, with a particular emphasis on the ways that the immigrant self-employed in Australia draw on class resources and ethnic resources. It ends by arguing that theories of immigrant self-employment must focus on two key, interrelated, aspects. First, the ways that ethnicity, gender and social class interact through a complex, uneven and changing lens of racialisation. Second, the important role of the way in which the processes of globalisation and the state responses to it shapes different patterns of the embeddedness of immigrants and, in turn, their opportunities as entrepreneurs and wage labourers