ENG Immigrant entrepreneurs in Madrid: resilience and sustainability strategies

Abstract

Following the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus, which halted economic activities in general and particularly affected the businesses of immigrant entrepreneurs, a new phase has begun in which so-called 'ethnic' businesses and services are having to adopt new resilience and sustainability strategies in the face of current challenges for small immigrant-run enterprises. Therefore, our objective is to analyze immigrant businesses located on a number of commercial streets in Madrid that were previously studied at the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis. These businesses were revisited after the economic crisis in 2015 and are now being analyzed again to observe their evolution and possible changes, following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodology is comparative, applying both quantitative and qualitative techniques, the latter based on direct and participant observation”. This analysis allows us to conclude that the resilience and sustainability strategies of immigrant entrepreneurs are similar, with no dependence detected between certain changes and the immigrant's origin or gender. We only found an association between the immigrant entrepreneur's origin and the receipt of public aid, between origin and the evolution of demand in recent years, and between origin and gender with the use of ecological transport.