Entrepreneurship as Survival Strategy for Visible Minorities

Survival through entrepreneurship

For many newcomers — including immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers — the journey doesn’t end with arrival. It often begins with a new set of barriers: language challenges, non-recognition of foreign credentials, racial discrimination, and limited access to traditional employment.

Faced with these obstacles, entrepreneurship becomes a means of survival — and more than that, a path to dignity, independence, and belonging. Rather than waiting for a job that may never come, newcomers create their own economic opportunities:

• Opening food stalls, tailoring shops, and convenience stores

• Launching cleaning, renovation, or delivery services

• Selling handmade crafts or cultural goods

• Starting consulting or translation businesses based on lived expertise.

These business enable the newcomers to support their families, contribute to the local economy, and integrate with fabric of the society with their own terms.

A Historical Parallel: Lessons from Earlier Immigrant Communities

The link between entrepreneurship and economic survival is not new. Earlier immigrant communities — such as Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century — often turned to small business ownership as a way to overcome discrimination, exclusion, and limited access to formal employment.

Faced with systemic barriers in mainstream labor markets, they built businesses within their own communities: tailoring shops, corner stores, bakeries, print shops, and service trades. These businesses not only sustained families — they created jobs, kept wealth circulating locally, and laid the foundation for long-term stability.

This history reminds us that entrepreneurship is often born out of necessity — and nurtured through community resilience. The key lesson from the historical experience of earlier immigrant communities — such as Jewish, Chinese, and the Italian entrepreneurs — is that entrepreneurship is not just a business strategy. It has often been a broader social and cultural response to exclusion, racism, and economic marginalization. When doors to mainstream employment and economic systems were closed, these communities built their own pathways: creating businesses that met community needs, provided jobs, and fostered self-reliance. Their entrepreneurial efforts were a form of economic resistance, community survival, and ultimately, social empowerment.

Visible Minorities face same challenges

Today, visible minorities continue to face many of the same barriers of the twentieth century— from systemic racism, language barrier, limited access to capital or credit. — and once again, entrepreneurship is emerging as a tool for reclaiming economic agency and transforming hardship into opportunity.

One of the most visible and vibrant examples of newcomer-led entrepreneurship is the rise of ethnic business enclaves — clusters of immigrant-owned businesses rooted in shared language, culture, and community. From Chinatown, Little Italy, and Somali Malls to South Asian plazas and Middle Eastern marketplaces, these enclaves are more than just places to shop. They represent economic survival, cultural pride, and community solidarity. Newcomers often create these business hubs out of necessity — facing exclusion from mainstream job markets, language barriers, or discrimination. In response, they form self-sustaining local economies, offering - ethnic goods and services; jobs for community members; social connections; cultural and spiritual spaces.

In addition, these enclaves serve as local economic engines, revitalizing aging or underserved neighborhoods and drawing customers from across the city. What begins as a cluster of culturally rooted businesses often transforms into a thriving commercial corridor — sparking foot traffic, boosting property values, and attracting diverse patronage. Restaurants, grocery stores, clothing shops, salons, and service providers not only meet the needs of their own communities but become destinations for multicultural exchange and economic activity.

Avenue of Nations Commercial Corridor

A compelling example of this transformation is the Avenue of Nations commercial corridor. Once known as one of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods — plagued by poverty, gang violence, drug activity, and prostitution — Avenue of Nations was widely considered unsafe and neglected. However, the low cost of rent and commercial space became an unexpected opportunity for African entrepreneurs, many of them newcomers, who saw potential where others saw decline.

They began opening African grocery stores, restaurants, barbershops, clothing boutiques, and cultural service centers, breathing new life into the area. Over time, Avenue of Nations evolved into a vibrant hub of African commerce and community, drawing customers from across the city and shifting public perception of the neighborhood. What was once a symbol of urban decay has now become a beacon of resilience, cultural pride, and inclusive economic renewal — led entirely by grassroots entrepreneurship.