Super-diverse migrants—similar trajectories? Ghanaian entrepreneurship in the Netherlands seen from a Mixed Embeddedness perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Ghanaian population in the Netherlands is relatively well-endowed in terms of human capital. In addition, a large number of them came when deindustrialisation had run its course and the Dutch economy, the service sector in particular, started growing again after 1985. On the basis of the Mixed Embeddedness model, we expected that the combination of, on average, higher levels of human capital and the transformation of the (urban)economy, would lead to rather different patterns of entrepreneurship when compared to their predecessors who came as guest workers. We explored this issue using interviews with 84 Ghanaian entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. Our data only partly corroborated our hypotheses. Notwithstanding, the higher levels of human capital and the shifts in the urban economies, a significant number of Ghanaian entrepreneurs still end up in the lower echelons of the opportunity structure.