Migration and entrepreneurship are two of the most actual issues on the global scene. Supported by the specificity of a precise case study (Peruvian and Ecuadorian businesses in the city of Rome), this research will try to evaluate how and why the interrelation between them, in the form of migrant entrepreneurship, triggers a socio-economic impact in the host society. The investigation has been led by the Hypothesis that, in reason of the transnational features characterising migrant enterprises, migrant entrepreneurship catalyses immigrants’ integration in the receiving socio-economic system, generating a simultaneous spill-over effect in the host country’s social and economic spheres.
Along the study, primary data related to the case study (in the forms of quantitative mapping, surveys and semi-structured interviews) have been gathered in person and complemented by secondary sources. This empirical material has been subsequently analysed through the perceptive lenses provided by the theoretical framework, namely: Theory of Immigrant Capital (and its combination between resources and opportunities) in the context of Ethnic Economies, followed by the concepts inherent to the Socio-Economic Impact. The analysis, later on, has been configured on the foundations provided by a multivariate hierarchical cluster analysis; as a matter of facts, theories have been applied to the results of this preliminary analysis.
Two groups emerged from this analysis, showing different entrepreneurial strategies and economic performances. Referring to them, theories have been gone through one by one and interesting finding emerged: one group has been acknowledged as economically more performing, while the other one showed stagnant or declining economic indicators. Moreover, the economically successful group has been furtherly divided in two sub-groups, according to the different strategies employed to achieve the flourishing entrepreneurial results. In light of this categorisation, applying the theoretical concepts to this results, most of the ideas expressed in the Hypothesis found fertile ground to be confirmed. Notably, at least for what concerns the case study, it appears to be mostly true that migrant entrepreneurship fosters a given immigrant community’s integration in the receiving society; nonetheless, it does not happen only and exclusively in reason of the transnational features characterising the business. Consequently, transnationalism does not seem to be a binding element for economic success. Furthermore, it has been assessed a considerable positive socio-economic impact delivered under the form of employment contribution, innovation, integration and foreign trade and monetary capital mobility.
In reason of the ever-growing migration numbers and of entrepreneurship phenomenon’s centrality in the capitalist system, the overall topic of immigrant entrepreneurship is estimated to acquire growing importance on the global scene. This is the reason why, as a whole, the research aims to add a mainly qualitative specific contribution to the immigrant entrepreneurship existent literature about the case of Peruvian and Ecuadorian entrepreneurs in the city of Rome, furnishing at the same time, an insight of results’ meaning in general terms.