Female migrant entrepreneurship through the economic crisis in Italy

As recently pointed out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, one of the public opinion’s requests to face the recent economic crisis has been the reduction of migration flows ; with the consequent growing tension on the control of European borders, associated with a representation of migrants as a sociocultural problem, and a perception that the ‘migratory risk’ could be contained within defined boundaries. Up to now it has been a double shortsighted attitude: in a forward-looking perspective, the focus on borders as control tools for migratory flows seems to be simplistic and unsuccessful, as recently showed, by the migration flows due to the North African crisis; on the other hand, immigration flows in Europe, with their complexity and variety, meet European needs from both an economic and demographic point of view: it offsets population decline and ageing, but it also helps maintaining and developing economic activities, eventually expanding the host country’s foreign trade using their transnational linkages. Migration is also useful for an economic recovery through the direct creation of new businesses. The size and the nature of the businesses created by migrants result from different situations, ranging from the frail condition of migrants starting a business because they lack other employment alternatives, to the stronger position of highly skilled migrants starting very successful job-creating firms. At any rate, as a matter of fact “the potential contribution [of migrant entrepreneurs] to the economies of host countries has not escaped the attention of policy makers : an upward trend in the adoption of specific admission policies for migrant entrepreneurs and investors has been observed in the past decade in OECD countries” (OEDC, 2010 b). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development stresses the need to investigate on successful factors and main obstacles of migrant entrepreneurship; studies on this topic have not yet focused on the role of gender factors in migrant entrepreneurship even though, as the recent economic crisis underlined, the object is today of crucial importance. Objective of this work is to provide a consideration on the role of women migrant entrepreneurship from a social and economic perspective and to analyze the recent happenings and growing dimension of the phenomena in the Italian context. The analysis is based on wide-ranging statistical data available in Italy in recent years. The number of women entrepreneurs is increasing in Italy, as far as the shares of migrant females in business ownership compared to migrant male and native counterpart. The policy implications of this phenomena are clearly visible, among other domains, in terms of the integration process of immigrant populations: labour market integration is a key factor to ensure that immigrants and their children make their way and are accepted in the societies, and immigrant women are key actors of the integration process.