Entrepreneuring in Diverse Neighbourhoods: Policies and Minority Business in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Milan and Warsaw

Recent literature claims that minority entrepreneurship is changing, e.g., entering non-ethnic sectors. A change partly related to spatial transformations (such as gentrification) in neighbourhoods where minorities are settled and to policies affecting their ventures. This article aims to disentangle how targeted and general policies affect minority entrepreneurship in neighbourhoods characterised by ethnic and class diversity in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Milan and Warsaw. Based on a comparative analysis of qualitative interviews, this article aims to answer the following questions: How do changes in neighbourhoods characterised by population diversity affect minority entrepreneurship? Are policies – especially those at city and neighbourhood level (including regeneration measures) – sustaining or challenging minority entrepreneurship? Our findings show that, despite local variations in terms of political economy, welfare structure and urban governance, notwithstanding displacing effects related to national and local policies, many minority businesses are responsive to neighbourhood changes and succeed to extend their market range beyond the ethnic or impoverished clientele

Policy Brief 5: Diversity in Entrepreneurship

Diverse neighbourhoods represent significant opportunities for different forms of entrepreneurship, which can contribute to their economic regeneration. This policy brief focuses on entrepreneurship in deprived and diverse neighbourhoods. It discusses the relations between diversity and entrepreneurship and presents evidence on the connections between entrepreneurship, diversity and economic performance, and the role of entrepreneurship on social cohesion. It argues for revising existing policies related to the different forms of entrepreneurship in diverse and deprived neighbourhoods, as well as for new measures to support entrepreneurship

Attributes and Characteristics of Regional Resilience: Defining and Measuring the Resilience of Turkish Regions

<p>Eraydin A. Attributes and characteristics of regional resilience: defining and measuring the resilience of Turkish regions, <i>Regional Studies</i>. The increasing frequency of recessionary shocks and the difference in regional growth trajectories in periods of both recession and recovery have resulted in an increased interest in the notion of resilience in the recent literature. This paper, through a discussion of the impacts of recession on Turkish regions, presents an empirical exploration of the concept of regional resilience, categorizing the responses of different regions during economic cycles. A discriminant function analysis is used to explore and explain the differences between resilience categories based on the attributes of the 26 NUTS-II regions, indicating which attributes contribute most to group separation.</p

Political twists and turns in left-behind places: reactions of an extractive heartland to changing state strategies

This paper investigates the twists and turns that characterise the political reactions of some ‘left-behind’ places. Offering a situated, context-sensitive and temporal analysis of Turkey’s once extractive heartland, we unveil a volatile and particularly fragile political terrain and throw light on its contingency on changing modes of state intervention and power-laden strategies responsive to disaffection and discontent. We suggest that this power-laden mechanism that plays down, if not eradicates, the ability of places to transform and thrive precludes conceptions that invariably position left-behind places as ‘vengeful’ and invites dynamic and context-sensitive comprehensions of discontent and agential and processual reconceptions of left-behindness.</p

Diversity matters: immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution of different forms of social integration in economic performance of cities

While it is quite common in studies of diversity to focus on its negative aspects, this paper specifically aims to emphasize the contribution of immigrants to the urban economic performance. By exploring different kinds of social integration, this paper discusses how immigrant groups can be important agents of urban economic growth and competitiveness by liberating creative forces and enhancing the competitiveness. Immigrant entrepreneurship is defined as the most important means of social inclusion and sustained economic performance in two different cities, with different features yet hosting considerable number of immigrants with diverse characteristics, namely Antwerp (Belgium) and Izmir (Turkey). The findings of our two case studies reveal that different kinds of diversity play an important role in urban economic performance. Immigrants contribute to the growth of different forms of production and services, not only because of their talents and skills, but also because of their social connections. Social capital enables immigrants to survive in a recipient country, and integrate into an economy as active agents. They can fill the gaps in an economy as entrepreneurs or the skilled labour, which are the most important assets for the cities aiming sustained economic growth in volatile economic conditions

The role of regional policies along with the external and endogenous factors in the resilience of regions

This article aims to discuss the importance of the different policies and measures defined by governments in the resilience of regions, besides their connectedness to the global economic system and their endogenous capacities. The article explores the importance of different attributes in the resilience of Turkish regions (26 NUTS II regions) in the last two recessionary shocks and in the following recovery periods. By analysing the role of regional policies in the resilience of regions in two distinct periods, the article concludes that the existing policies have made only a limited contribution to the building of resilient regions, and emphasises the need for a new perspective in the developing of policies for regional resilience

Fieldwork Entrepreneurs in Istanbul, Turkey

nalysis of how urban diversity and policies and arrangements with respect to urban diversity affect different population groups living in cities in terms of economic performance and to clarify who (which social groups) profit and how they profit