Participation in the Labour Market through Transnational Entrepreneurship: Migrant Entrepreneurs Navigating Professional Work in Singapore and Japan

This presentation examines how migrants’ access to the host country labour market is facilitated by a classed habitus and by engaging in digital transnational entrepreneurship in the knowledge-intensive sector. As migration scholarship and the sociology of labour have demonstrated migrants often face barriers when trying to access the host country labour market due to lack of social or cultural capital and institutional knowledge. A frequent strategy is entrepreneurship, which however tends to push migrants in ethnic niche businesses that do not allow them to utilize their skills or to further develop their careers. I use an institutional approach to demonstrate how highly-educated migrants circumvent the aforementioned barriers by founding knowledge-intensive firms that either operate fully online or hire digitally (and thus remotely) working staff overseas, while the migrants stay physically put in their host societies. The argument builds on qualitative fieldwork among migrant entrepreneurs in Japan and Singapore. Both countries’ labour markets are difficult to access for foreigners. Singapore’s increasingly strict visa regime presents obstacles to hiring even highly-skilled foreigners while Japan’s internal labour market and the need of Japanese proficiency are major obstacles to foreigners’ employment. Data from interviews with 69 migrant entrepreneurs in both countries reveal that (partly) digital work allows these business owners to a) venture into self-employed work that is commensurate to their professional training and qualifications, b) hire staff overseas and thereby overcome language barriers or skill shortages among the workforce in the host society, and c) access new markets or clients. The study finds that while this helps migrants establish themselves in their countries of residence, and thus enables them to maintain life as a foreigner, some of the digital and internationally executed work and hiring practices do not necessarily contribute to social justice.