Female Immigrant Entrepreneurs: More Than a Family Strategy

This article explores the issue of immigrant women entrepreneurship. It focuses on the emergence of new points of view on self-employed migrant women and in particular their search for independence. With the support of qualitative research carried on in Italy, it will set out a typology of motivations and strategies to become self-employed in which, besides a "family strategy" and an "independency strategy", a "mixed network strategy" also emerges. This last focuses on the role of mixed networks (with other foreigners and/or natives) not only in business management but also in the promotion of transnational social activities. Policies that support associations, creating opportunities for gathering and exchanging with local residents and improving the presence of immigrant women in local institutions, could have the side-effect of increasing participation by immigrant women in self-employment, not for lack of alternatives but as a path towards self-fulfilment and empowerment.