Copyright, i Elvira Fetahu 2014

Transcription

Copyright,
i
Elvira Fetahu
2014
Udhёheqёsi i Elvira Fetahu, vёrteton se ky ёshtё version i miratuar i disertacionit tё
mёposhtёm:
The supervisor of Elvira Fetahu certifies that this is the approved version of the below
dissertation:
IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ITS LOCAL
INTEGRATION: A POSSIBILITY FOR TRANSNATIONAL
BRIDGING OF NATIVE ECONOMIES
ALBANIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE REGION OF
LOMBARDIA, ITALY
Prof. Dr. Antonio Maria Chiesi
Prof. Dr. Bardhyl Ceku
2
IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ITS LOCAL
INTEGRATION: A POSSIBILITY FOR TRANSNATIONAL
BRIDGING OF NATIVE ECONOMIES
ALBANIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE REGION OF
LOMBARDIA, ITALY
Pёrgatitur nga: Elvira Fetahu
“Disertacioni i paraqitur nё
Fakultetin e Biznesit
Universiteti “Aleksandёr Moisu” Durrёs
Nё pёrputhje tё plotё
Me kёrkesat
Pёr gradёn “Doktor”
Universiteti “Aleksandёr Moisu” Durrёs
December, 2014
3
DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my mother!
4
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I was able to write this dissertation thanks to the unconditional support of those who
shared their time and emotions with me. In this paragraph I want to say thank you
especially to the following people;
Thank you my advisors Prof. Dr. Antonio Maria Chiesi and Prof. Dr. Bardhyl Ceku , for
the excellent guidance, advices and belief you built in me to keep going on doing this
research. I was lucky to work with professors like you and share this experience together.
Your names in my thesis are one of the main things I am proud of!
Thank you Ilir Bejtja for the fantastic idea you gave me to study about immigrant
entrepreneurship and your time, too.
Thank you Graduate School in Social, Economic and Political Sciences (GSSPS) at the
University of Milan, Italy for giving me the possibility to be your PhD fellow and benefit
from your students experience and other facilities.
Thank you Astrit Cela and Albania e Futuro for helping me building my network for the
interviews and facilitating the procedures with the Chamber of Commerce in Milan.
Thank you European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI) in Flensburg Germany and its
staff for being so welcoming and professional.
Thank you Dr. Tove Malloy for giving me the possibility to be an ECMI PhD Fellow.
Thank you Dr. Andreea Udrea for being my friend and advisor at ECMI.
Thank you William McKinney for the many papers and books you provided me during
my stay at ECMI. For the advices, for teaching me how to use Mendeley, for the Turkish
coffees and teas we had together.
Thank you UAMD for giving me the possibility of being a PhD student even thought I
was 23 and at the very first stages of my career.
Thank you colleagues of PhD class of 2011for sharing time and experience together.
Thank you colleagues of Economic Faculty in Elbasan. Those who permitted my travels
in Germany and Italy and those who advised me in different stages of my research.
Thanks you Shpetim Cerri for assisting me and helping with materials and advises.
Thank you Family and Elgi, for being so supportive and enthusiastic about what I am
doing because it kept me going on.
5
Deklaratё mbi origjinalitetin
Elvira Fetahu
Deklaroj se kjo tezë përfaqëson punën time origjinale dhe nuk kam përdorur burime të
tjera, përveç atyre të shkruajtura nëpërmjet citimeve.
Të gjitha të dhënat. tabelat, figurat dhe citimet në tekst, të cilat janë riprodhuar prej
ndonjë burimi tjetër, duke përfshire edhe internetin, janë pranuar në mënyre eksplicide si
të tilla.
Jam vetëdijshme/shme se në rast të mospërputhjeve, Këshilli i Profesorëve të UAMD-së
është i ngarkuar të më revokojë gradën “Doktor”, që më është dhënë mbi bazën e kësaj
teze, në përputhje me “Rregulloren e programeve të studimit të ciklit të tretë (Doktoratë)
të UAMD-së, neni 33, miratuar prej Senatit Akademik të UAMD-së me Vendimin nr. ,
datë ________
Durrës, më _________________
Firma
6
PЁRMBLEDHJE
QЁLLIMI I STUDIMIT: Qëllimi i këtij studimi është të paraqesë një tablo analitike me
fokus mbi aktivitetin sipërmarrës të emigrantëve dhe jetës së tyre midis dy vëndeve si
sfida të reja në kuptimin e marrëdhënies midis sipërmarrjes migratore dhe zhvillimit
ekonomik të atij vendi. Qëllimi i këtij punimi është të tregohet profili i një sipërmarrësi
dhe fenomeni i cili quhet sipërmarrje e emigrantëve duke analizuar në menyrë specifike
sipërmarjen e emigrantëve shqiptarë në provincën e Milanos në Rajonin e Lombardisë.
METODOLOGJIA: Në kete punim ne kemi perdorur intervista personale dhe pyetesore
te cilet I kemi administruar personalisht me të dhëna nga një kampion sipërmarrësish
shqiptarëne provincën e Milanos, Itali. Ne i përdorim këto të dhëna për të bërë analizë
cilësore dhe ndërtuar modelin e regresionit për ndërkombëtarizimin e ekonomisë
vëndase.
PRURJET: Paraqitja e një tabloje të detajuar për gjëndjen e emigranteve sipërmarrës
shqiptarë në Provincën e Milanos duke iu përgjigjur pyetjeve kryesore të ngritura në
studim dhe dhënë evidencë të avantazheve që kjo lloj sipërmarrje do të japë për bizneset
e vendit mëmë si një urë lidhëse, kanal shpërndarje ndërkombetar për
ndërkombëtarizimin e produkteve vëndase dhe markës në tregjet ku operon.
KONTRIBUTI: Ky kërkim shkencor jep kontribut në literature mbi sipërmarrjen e
emigrantëve duke dhënë evidencë të gjëndjes aktuale të sipërmarrësve shqiptare
emigrantë në Itali, dhe përfshirjen e tyre në këto sipërmarrje duke paraqitur një përfshirje
sociale dhe zhvillim social të lidhur por dhe i cili rrjedh nga aktiviteti i tyre ekonomik dhe
sipërmarres në vëndin pritës.
FJALЁ KYCE: SIPЁRMARRJA EMIGRANTORE, URA TRANSNACIONALE,
NDЁRKOMBETARIZIM, KANALE TE SHPЁRNDARJES MARKETING.
7
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: An analytical framework with focus on immigrant transitional and
transnational living can provide new challenges in understanding the relationship
between immigrant entrepreneurship and country of origin economic development. The
scope of this thesis is to show the socio-economic and cultural profile of that
phenomenon which in the international literature is named as immigrant
entrepreneurship, by specifically analyzing Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship in the
province of Milan and Region of Lombardy.
METHODOLOGY: We use personal interviews and self administered questionnaires
data from the sample of Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs in the province of Milan,
Italy. We use the data to conduct qualitative analysis and built the regression model of
internationalization of the home country economy.
FINDINGS: Once providing a detailed view on the state of nature of the Albanian
immigrant entrepreneurship in the province of Milan, we tried to answer the main
questions raised here above and provide evidence of the advantages that immigrant
entrepreneurship would provide for home country businesses as a transnational bridge,
international distribution channel for the internationalization of home products and
brands in the markets it operates.
CONTRIBUTION: This research contributes to the literature on immigrant
entrepreneurship by providing evidence of the actual status of Albanian immigrants and
their involvement in entrepreneurship by also giving a view of their social involvement
and development related to and derived by their business and entrepreneurial activity in
the host country.
KEY WORDS: IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP, TRANSNATIONAL
BRIDGE, INTERNATIONALISATION, MARKETING DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS.
8
Table of Contents
List of tables..................................................................................................................... 11
Table of figures................................................................................................................ 12
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 13
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON RESEARCH ABOUT ETHNIC IMMIGRANT
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ................................................................................................... 16
2.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 16
2.2 ETHNIC VERSUS IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP................................. 17
2.2.1 ETHNIC ECONOMY AND ETHNIC ENCLAVE ECONOMY .................... 18
2.3 THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSNATIONALISM AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
....................................................................................................................................... 20
2.3.1 LIVING AND BRIDGING TRANSNATIONALLY ...................................... 20
2.4 ETHNIC MARKETING ......................................................................................... 22
2.4.1 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING CHANNELS .......................................... 27
2.5 INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE ....................................................................... 29
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ........................................................ 33
3.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 33
3.2 CONCEPTUAL MODEL ....................................................................................... 35
3.3 RESEARCH DESIGN ............................................................................................ 37
3.3.1 SECONDARY DATABASE ANALYSIS ....................................................... 37
3.3.2 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ......................................................................... 38
3.3.3 ONLINE SURVEY .......................................................................................... 40
3.3.4 THE QUESTIONAIRE .................................................................................... 41
3.4 MODEL AND ESTIMATION DISCUSSION ....................................................... 42
3.4.1 PRICE OPTION APPROACH ......................................................................... 42
3.4.2 NON-PRICE OPTION APPROACH ............................................................... 47
4. FINDINGS AND OUTCOME ANALYSIS ................................................................. 53
4.1 EVIDENCE OF THE ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN
ITALY ........................................................................................................................... 53
4.2 THE AVERAGE ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEUR PROFILE ..... 57
4.3 CHARACHTERISTICS OF FIRMS ...................................................................... 71
5. CONCLUSION, POLICY RECOMANDATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH ........ 77
9
APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................... 80
A.1 LIST OF ABREVIATIONS ................................................................................... 80
A.2. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AND GRAPHS TO THE PRICE-OPTION
APPROACH TO INTERNATIONALIZATION.......................................................... 80
A.3 DATASET QUESTIONS OF INTEREST/QUESTIONARE ............................... 87
A.8 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW, SECONDARY DATABASE,
ONLINE SURVEY ....................................................................................................... 95
A.9 SUCCESS CASES ............................................................................................... 100
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 107
10
List of tables
TABLE 1: ANALYSIS OF HAZARD RATIOS BY SECTOR AND ETHNICITY ............................................................26
TABLE 2: THE STATE OF THE ALBANIAN ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN GREECE. .......................................31
TABLE 3: THE PROFILES OF PROMOTION STRATEGIES .....................................................................................31
TABLE 4: STAGES AND METHODOLOGY USED FOR THE RESEARCH.................................................................34
TABLE 5: TIMES SERIES DATA FOR ALBANIA .................................................................................................45
TABLE 6: NON – EU CITIZENS LEGALLY RESIDING IN A SINGLE COUNTRY OF CITIZENSHIP (TOP 20 COUNTRIES)
AND GENDER (VAL. %). DATA AS OF JANUARY 1, 2011. .......................................................................54
TABLE 7: FOREIGN EMPLOYEES WITH NON – EU CITIZENSHIP LEAST AFFECTED BY ACTIVATIN OF JOB
RELATION BY SECTOR OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY. ....................................................................................57
TABLE 8: CLASSIFICATION OF ALBANIAN IMMIGRANTS’ ENTERPRISES. .........................................................60
TABLE 9: ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS BY GENDER. ...................................................................61
TABLE 10: DEPENDENT AND TURNOVER TRENDS THE LAST THREE YEARS. ....................................................66
TABLE 11: FREQUENCY TABLE FOR INFLUENCING FACTORS IN ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT. .........................67
TABLE 12: FREQUENCY TABLE FOR NON INFLUENCING FACTORS IN ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT....................68
TABLE 13: FREQUENCY TABLE FOR ITALIAN CONSULTANT. ...........................................................................69
TABLE 14: CRISIS EFFECT ..............................................................................................................................70
TABLE 15: IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY SECTOR ...............................................................................72
TABLE 16: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DEPENDENTS ........................................................................................74
11
Table of figures
FIGURE 1: TOP TEN COUNTRIES BY EMIGRANTS TO EUROPE. ..........................................................................24
FIGURE 2: LOGICAL SCHEME OF THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE ALBANIAN ECONOMY .......................35
FIGURE 3: ELEMENTS OF SECONDARY DATABASE FROM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN THE PROVINCE OF
MILAN. .................................................................................................................................................38
FIGURE 4: LABOR COSTS: SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER THAN THE REST OF EUROPE BUT HIGHER THAN FASTGROWING ASIA. ....................................................................................................................................42
FIGURE 5: EXPORTS OF GOODS AND SERVICES (% OF GDP) ...........................................................................43
FIGURE 6: ENTREPRENEURSHIP BIRTH BY YEAR .............................................................................................50
FIGURE 7: ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY BUSINESS FISCAL CODE ............................................................................51
FIGURE 8: ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY PERSONAL FISCAL CODE ...........................................................................52
FIGURE 9: PERFORMANCE OF THE PRESENCE OF CITIZENS OF ALBANIAN ORIGIN RESIDENT IN ITALY , NON-EU
CITIZENS OF EUROPEAN CITIZENS AND NON-EU FOREIGNERS LEGALLY RESIDING IN ITALY ( A) - YEARS
1991 / 92-2009 .....................................................................................................................................54
FIGURE 11: IMMIGRANT EMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE DURING CRISIS ................................................................55
FIGURE 12: EMPLOYMENT ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY IN ITALY ................................................................55
FIGURE 13: EMPLOYED (15 YEARS OLD AND OTHERS) PER CITIZENSHIP AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SECTOR (V.
%). ........................................................................................................................................................56
FIGURE 14: THE PRESENCE OF IMMIGRANT ENTERPRISES IN ITALIAN REGIONS (DISTRIBUTION IN % OVER THE
TOTAL IMMIGRANT ENTERPRISES) .........................................................................................................58
FIGURE 15: IMMIGRANT ENTERPRISES PRESENT IN ITALY. DISTRIBUTION IN % ACCORDING TO THE
NATIONALITY OF THE IMMIGRANT ........................................................................................................59
FIGURE 16: ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP BASED ON DEPENDENTS NUMBER ..........................60
FIGURE 17: TERRITORIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE CITY OF BIRTH. ....................................................................62
FIGURE 18: EDUCATION LEVEL OF ALBANIAN ENTREPRENEURS ...................................................................63
FIGURE 19: DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS ACCORDING TO ACTIVITY SECTORS...................64
FIGURE 20: BUSINESS SECTOR CONCENTRATION ...........................................................................................65
FIGURE 21: CRISIS IMPACT OVER THE ENTERPRISES IN 2012 ..........................................................................65
FIGURE 22: THE DECREASE OF IMMIGRANT ENTERPRISES IN THE SECTORS ...................................................66
FIGURE 23: STOCK INCREASE IN ENTERPRISES OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE YEARS OF CRISIS .............................69
FIGURE 24: TURNOVER EFFECT BASED ON SECTOR.........................................................................................70
FIGURE 25: IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY SECTOR ..............................................................................73
FIGURE 26: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DEPENDENTS .......................................................................................75
FIGURE 27: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INDEPENDENTS ....................................................................................75
12
INTRODUCTION
Recently, the research on immigrant entrepreneurship has entered in a new phase by
paying more attention to the economic perspective, the role of the institutional framework
and the impact of international market developments on them. The overall idea that
pervades the research on this phenomenon states that immigrant adapt to the resources of
the environment where they live which vary across countries. The discussions and
statements on immigrant entrepreneurship are categorized in the ones that point out the
characteristics of immigrants in general and the specific characteristics which determine
their success; in the importance of the network and resources fostering their involvement
in an entrepreneurial activity, as well as upholding the development of their enterprises
and their human capacity/capabilities on entrepreneurship; and in the labor market,
institutional and regulatory framework which impact the entrepreneurial activity.
Although there is a trend of different studies to focus its relationship with the home land
only with the remittances, actually the knowledge about IE1 and their economic activities
have produced a wealth of knowledge related to the import of economic and
noneconomic relations. The research trying to analyze the above relationship, refer to the
concept of transnational living which means the “cross border relations in the context of
social, political, economic, cultural aspects and which emerge from immigrants drive to
maintain and reproduce their social milieu or origin so far” (Guarnizo, 20003).
Immigrant entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurship have served as a transnational bridge
among countries of origin of the immigrant groups and the international market where
they operate. They are positioned in between as transmitters of the international behaving
standards to the economies of origin and, in the same time, as distribution channels of the
country of origin brand, gusto and sometimes behavior in the international market by
guaranteeing a low risk entry in the market, as well as on the same time a sustainable one.
First, they do this by building their niche market segment in host countries (enclave)
characterized by a profound national behavior, meanwhile opened for consumers of the
host country, introducing and disseminating on the same time this taste in the market, as
well as establishing stable bridges between their native gusto or uses and the international
market ones. Furthermore, such a process provides a strong competitive advantage,
possible to be gained by their native authentic brands to internationalize in the foreign
markets, consolidating this way opportunities for economies of scale, hard to be achieved
in the native domestic markets which, in the case of Albania, are highly limited in size,
penetration, and standardization as well.
An analytical framework with focus on immigrant transitional and transnational living
can provide new challenges in understanding the relationship between immigrant
entrepreneurship and country of origin economic development. The scope of this thesis is
to show the socio-economic and cultural profile of that phenomenon which in the
international literature is named as immigrant entrepreneurship, by specifically analyzing
Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship in the province of Milan and Region of Lombardia.
1
We will abbreviate immigrant entrepreneurship as IE in the rest of the study.
13
The following scheme visualizes the above statements and the conceptual relation of the
phenomenon and how it is researched through this work.
Internationalization of
Albanian Economy
International Market Demand
Import
Domestic
Consumption of
Foreign Gusto
Market Penetration –
Cost/Price Approach
Market Penetration – NonPrice Option Approach
Weak Ties with Alters in
the Foreign Market
International
Competition
Immigrant Enclaves of
Consumption – Double
Oriented
Traditional Consumption
Education of Domestic
Market
Consumption
Market through
Immigrant
Consumption
Experience Abroad
International
Standardization of
Consumption in the
Domestic Market
Export – Traditional
International Marketing
Channels
Export – Transnational
Bridging through
Immigrant
Entrepreneurship
Genuine Products
/ Genuine Gusto
Domestic
Production
Standardized
New
Technology
14
Innovation
through Tacit
and Implicit
ways
Raw Materials
and Unprocessed
Products of
Albanian Origin
The study organized in five different chapters will show the elaboration of the above
scope starting with the next, Chapter II, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON
RESEARCH ABOUT ETHNIC IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP, where issues
such as the history of this kind of entrepreneurship, concepts different of IE and EE2, and
the economics of transnationalism will be developed. A discussion on data and
methodology is the focus of Chapter III on RESEARCH DESIGN. We will give a
detailed analysis of the questionnaire design steps, the selection of the sample/population,
the process of interview, an analysis of the specific data gathered, extended with focus
group discussions, as well as accompanied with the success cases selected from the
sample of our study, using an induction-deduction-induction process. Characteristics of
the businesses studied according to their specific parameters of the business are shown
through graphs and tables helping in understanding the overall situation of this
entrepreneurship. Chapter IV on EVINDENCE OF THE ROLE OF IMMIGRANT
ENTREPRENEURSHIP; will give evidences of the role of IE and in the last one,
Chapter V on CONCLUSION, POLICY RECOMANDATION AND FUTURE
RESEARCH; we will list the findings and conclusions of this study, ending in some
recommendations and question marks for future research.
The study will answer to questions; to what extend ethnic entrepreneurship foster the
internationalization of the home country economies and business and how? What effects
can it bring? Which sectors do the Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy operate?
We will try to understand how it can serve as an effective and efficient marketing for the
internationalization of the Albanian economy and brand.
The analysis of Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship in the province of Milan in the
sectors in which it operates and prospered to development, provides a schedule and
identification of the possibilities that the home-country businesses have in co-building
international marketing channels with them in order to internationalize the Albanian
brand. The evidence and highlights of the capacities of immigrant entrepreneurship will
assist home country businesses to better understand the advantages they can gather using
their intermediation in the international trade, as well as advantages related to their
international cultural integration due to their social and cultural life abroad. The second
can be a good premise for the Albanian gusto to be spread and disseminated, and by the
other side an important help to the Albanian market to come closer to the international
gusto of consumption, fostering this way the international standards use in the Albanian
market. Getting use of their international cultural integration can serve as a very useful
integrated marketing communication system serving to reduce barriers on the promotion
of the Albanian gusto and its particular characteristics that its authenticity brings as
consumer newness, avoiding or not necessarily involving competition elements such as
low prices or low operational costs very difficult to be provided by the Albanian business
due to their low competitive capacities in technology and production.
Once providing a detailed view on the state of nature of the Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurship in the province of Milan, I shall try to answer the main questions raised
2
We will abbreviate Ethnic Entrepreneurship as EE in the rest of the study.
15
here above and provide evidence of the advantages that immigrant entrepreneurship
would provide for home country businesses as a transnational bridge, international
distribution channel for the internationalization of home products and brands in the
markets it operates. The study raises and tests following hypothesis:
 Null Hypothesis H0: There is no value added by the involvement of ethnic
entrepreneurship on internationalization of the home countries’ economies and
business, as well in a higher social integration of the ethnic minorities in countries
they live and work
 H1: Immigrant entrepreneurship will enhance Albanian genuine products to be
distributed in the Italian market reducing costs and time.
 H2: Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship increases Albanian consumption
standards in the national market. The integration in consumptions of Albanians
gets Albania closer to EU.
The research and test of these hypotheses will move through testing some assumptions as
follow:
For H1:
1. IE can introduce EU standards of consumption in the Albanian production
2. IE will speed up innovation in the Albanian production
3. IE will introduce the application of the best practice in marketing channel
building transnational bridges between Albania and Italy
4. IE success is related to the degree of their international market ties and networks
(Italians)
For H2: Ethnic minorities can gain higher social and professional status in the host
countries through entrepreneurship, building transnational bridges to internationalize
national economy
This research contributes to the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship by providing
evidence of the actual status of Albanian immigrants and their involvement in
entrepreneurship by also giving a view of their social involvement and development
related to and derived by their business and entrepreneurial activity in the host country.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON RESEARCH ABOUT ETHNIC
IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Ethnic entrepreneurship is of course not a new phenomenon in the world but since the
middle of the twentieth century and recently it has changed and developed together with
the macro factors which influenced the life of many countries. This change has made
ethnic entrepreneurship being very significant and having a good influence on host and
national economies.
Recent studies of European countries facing the phenomenon of IE prove that IE is
strongly oriented toward specific segments of the opportunity structure where the barriers
of entry for setting up the business are relatively low and they do not absolutely need
16
sophisticated skills and specific large amount of capital. Usually this business accepts
small profit margins because of the highly competitive environment where entrepreneurs
basically compete with prices rather than quality with their co-nationals who are in the
same business.
2.2 ETHNIC VERSUS IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP
There is a number of ethnic groups around the world that play the roles and occupy the
position of the so called “middleman minority” compared to other groups and in contrast
to most ethnic minorities the economic role they play is important as much as the
relatively intermediate status they posses. According to Bonacich 1973, examples like
this are well know in the world for groups such as Jews in Europe, Chinese in Southeast
Asia, Armenian in Turkey and Japanese and Greeks in US.
According to Rath and Kloosteman, 2000 in a study on immigrant entrepreneurship, this
phenomenon is located at the intersection of many different disciplines which revealed
different scientific responsiveness to the contemporary rise of it. Many studies in Europe
have a specific focus on immigrant entrepreneurship because of the important economic
impact it has on the host societies. IE, if successful, provides good opportunities in
employment and income of this category of people but also it affects overall the
employment opportunities of other immigrant groups with which they establish a special
network conditioned also by the supplier chain. According to Rath and Kloosteman, 2000
the study of immigrant entrepreneurship is linked up with various contemporary
theoretically-informed research perspectives. The first perspective3, sees the entrepreneur
as an economic actor and questions the ability of the entrepreneurs to be innovative and
not dictated from the market. According to this perspective through innovation of the
product, logistic and marketing the entrepreneur can generate a monopoly form of doing
business in short term by raising prices and profits consequently. The second perspective
uses the context of social capital and emphasis the fact that entrepreneurs operate and are
embedded in various social networks which help them to benefit for the successful
realization of their economic goals. The importance of embeddedness in social networks
and research on international distribution, and extend of such network indicates a role in
transnational economies. The third perspective discusses the immigrant business position
in a economic network and values system and the extend that their immigrant background
conditions this position by advantaging or disadvantaging it. So, this perspective starting
point is the business and not the entrepreneur himself. The fourth perspective, underlines
the relationship between immigrant business and the urban economic activities in the
specific economic sectors. The fifth and the last perspective, focuses on the law, rules and
regulations and explores the kind of favorable or unfavorable relationships that exist
between the political institutional framework and IE. Last but not least is the international
comparison perspective which proposes the development of comparative researches
about IE and their role in other economies so that we develop a new vision of this
phenomenon.
3
Schumpeterian entrepreneurship (Rath and Kloosteman, 2000)
17
There is an emphasis in theoretical explanation of e phenomenon of ethnic
entrepreneurship and these explanations are oriented mostly toward the term “ethnic
group” as it is referred “as a set of connections and regular patterns of interaction among
people sharing common national background or immigration experiences” ( Waldinger et
al., 1990). Various definitions of “ethnic group” have been suggested and the definitions
of it differs from that of “immigrant entrepreneurship because it does not exclude the last.
According to Yinger (1985:27) an ethnic group is “ a segment of larger society whose
members are thought, by themselves or others, to have common origin and to share
important segments of a common culture and who, in addition, participate in shared
activities in which the common origin and culture are significant ingredients” On the
other side, “immigrant entrepreneurs” include individuals who have immigrated to the
host society e few decades ago and this excludes the members of ethnic minority groups
who have lived in these countries since may centuries ago. Ethnic entrepreneurship has
its root in the USA and is relate to the long history of this phenomenon there since 1880
where the foreign born where observed to have been overrepresented in small businesses.
The earl theory related to the above history explains that ethnic businesses are a response
to the blocked opportunities in the labor market. Europe, on the contrary has a diverse
nature of this phenomenon which is related to immigrant rather than ethnic groups. The
immigrants initially came as a working force for growing companies and where very
homogeneous until after World War II ( Waldinger et. Al., 1990). Because of this new
phenomenon in the continent and because of the increased demand for specific goods and
services the evolution slowly started for the ethnic businesses. These specific conditions
on products and services could only be fulfilled by the co-ethnic who had knowledge of
tastes and buying preferences because of the culture and attitudes. The business entry
decision has been studies by different theorists in order to better understand the
phenomenon and explain the involvement of ethnic groups into entrepreneurship. Some
theory focuses on culturalist approach or structural factors in explaining the rise of ethnic
entrepreneurship. The first, believe that immigrant groups have culturally determined
features leading to a propensity to favor self employment (Masurel et al., 2004). On the
other hand, the structuralist approach, there are external factors such as discrimination,
education and language deficits or entry barriers which push the foreigners into selfemployment (Volery, 2007). Market segments occupied by ethnic entrepreneurs are
characterized by “low barriers of entry”, “small – scale production”, and “low added
value” (Volery, 2007). These characteristics indicate a specific feature of this kind of
business which is high start up and low failure. Consequently, in order to survive and
remain competitive, “the temptation to apply informal practices with respect to taxes,
labor regulations, minimum wages and employing children and immigrant workers
without documents is quite large” (Rath and Kloosterman, 2002).
2.2.1 ETHNIC ECONOMY AND ETHNIC ENCLAVE ECONOMY
Recently there has been an increased interest on understanding the dynamics of ethnic
economies, including their formation and development in order to understand how it has
evaluated and to investigate the role of social capital in ethnic entrepreneurship and
enclaves. The economic theory of clubs is a potential unifying theoretical paradigm for
the study of ethnic economies and the behaviors of ethnic entrepreneurs. Studying ethnic
entrepreneurship in the context of theory of clubs helps understanding “the benefits
derived from an ethnic grouping as a “club” good supplied at the ethnic level, demanded
18
by the various key stakeholders within an ethnic neighborhood, economy or enclave, and
with clear characteristics of excludability” (Galbraith, Carlos, Rodrigues and Stiles,
2007). In order to understand the ethnic economy we should properly use and clearly
define the concept of “club good” which is one of the main concept in understanding the
club theory. Social capital for example is a concept of ethnic economies used as a club
good. Derived from the sociological literature, club good is used to explain the behaviors
of immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurs. “It is traditionally defined as an asset, resource or
capability that arises from trust, reciprocity, goodwill and knowledge among a well
defined network of relationships” (Galbraith, Carlos, Rodrigues and Stiles, 2007).
Analyzing social capital in the light of sociological perspective is very important in order
to explain the level of trust generated through the use of a common language, set of
customs and non written rules of behaviors in doing business. On the other side,
analyzing social capital from the economic point of view and organizational perspective
helps detecting the benefits which derive from the reduction of transaction costs, time in
searching for partners and contracting re-contracting costs are also reduced. Many
theorists try to explain the nature of social capital as a club good through it nature of
excludability. The good fit of social capital as an economic good within the framework of
club theory explains its nature and the fact that it is supplied at the co-ethnic level via the
network with the ethnic population and is also demanded by a different stakeholder
within the groups such as co ethnic laborers or business owners. Another argument in
favor of explaining social capital as a club good stands for the limited access of outsiders
toward this element. People outside the group or co ethnic population can be prevented
by sharing this good with them. Because it is a collective asset outsiders can be prevented
for sharing the benefits with them by making evident its nature of excludability.
Together with other types of capital such as human capital or cultural capital, social
capital is also a concept and theory which contributes in a variety of contexts especially
in economic organization by favoring competitive advantage. As a capital it is
“formulated to understand the utility of resources in affecting life chances” (Lin and
Erickson 2008). Social capital was initially defined by Coleman and then extended by
Putnam (2000:19) as “connections among individuals-social networks and the norms of
reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them”. Social network and social capital
are evaluated as “interchangeable or alternative elements” by scholars who empirically
studied the definitions of social capital and further work by Putnam added the confusion
by the involvement of the civic engagement which theoretical is not clear how it is
related to trust or norms of reciprocity. As a result of this confusion there was a boom of
approaches and freely used measures in empirical studies including “network features,
social relations, frequency of interactions, perceived relations or support as well as
generalized or interpersonal trust, cohesion, reciprocity and so forth” (Lin and Erickson
2008). As a concept, “capital” the value possessed and invested in a given society, while
as a theory it is a mechanism by which valued resources are “produced, reproduced, and
accumulated” (Lin 2001); or “ generate returns to individual and collective actors in a
society”( (Lin and Erickson 2008). Social capital is “rooted precisely at the juncture
between individuals and their relations and is contained in the meso-level structure or in
social networks” (Lin and Erickson 2008). The fact that social capital is driven by the
network is something overall accepted by the scholars and it is the network that gives
advantage because of the investment in social relations. The resources embedded in
19
social networks are not good possessed by the individual but resources access through
direct or indirect ties. (Lin and Erickson 2008). The three elements of social capital
according to Flap(2001)4, demonstrate that its is resources and network through which
actors of it capture or benefit from others actors’ resources and facilitate information flow
trust and generate outcome in the marketplace. One very common return to social capital
is employment. According to Lin and Erickson (2008), a person with strong social capital
and with network diversity leads to a more prestigious job and that advancement in job
hierarchy are connected to the degree of networking. But it is obvious that not all kind of
people are exposed equally to the degree of social capital they can access. People with
high social capital usually are those advantaged in their social locations and
systematically exposed to a greater network. Family background is also an important
aspect of unequally exposure toward social capital as well as gender, race or ethnicity.
Education also is a very important environment in increasing the chances for a larger
social capital as proved by studies of Bekkers, Volker, van der Gaag ect where is
concluded that “better education leads to better social capital”. The social capital gained
from work is of specific interest especially in the case of ethnic or immigrant
entrepreneurship taking into consideration the fact that these kinds of businesses mostly
start as a kind of employment and their success is basically based on ethnic network,
ethnic ties and the social capital of the ethnic group.
2.3 THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSNATIONALISM AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
2.3.1 LIVING AND BRIDGING TRANSNATIONALLY
The ties connecting immigrants with their countries of origin and their long distance
economic relations with them have been subject of many intensive researches in
immigrant entrepreneurship. One interesting but not very successful approach to look at
this connection is the monetary remittances to fully measure the multiple macroeconomic
effect of immigrant economic and noneconomic activity. Immigrants’ social, cultural,
political and economic relationship with their homeland is implicated theoretically and
practically by their multiple economic effects. According to Guarnizo 2003, their activity
has multiple effects not only on the global macroeconomic processes such as
international trade and consumption of culture but also on the localities and countries of
origin.. According to Guarnizo 2003, literature review suggests four types of relations
and themes studied until now related to the field of transnational living; monetary
remittances, business investments, collectives support for local development and transfer
into local economies of any type of knowledge that they have gained abroad.
Based on recent works the transnational living is defined as the cross border relation that
connect the immigrant with their country of origin. It signifies an active and dynamic
field of social intercourse that involves and simultaneously affects actors located in
different countries (Guarnizo, 2003). This kind of living is a condition on the relationship
of immigrant in the host country to position themselves socially and integrate their
4
(a) the number of others who are prepared to help, (b) the extent to which they are prepared to help(the
strength of tie), and (c) what is at the other end of the tie in terms of accessible resources.
20
businesses. One of the main themes concerned with transnational concept which have
also concerned many scholars, is the immigrants transnational entrepreneurship. This is
somewhat related to remittances because it refers to money sending of immigrant to their
country of origin but differs in the sense that a small portion of this money is invested
and not used for consumption. This explains somewhat the general tendency in
transnational entrepreneurial activity undertaken by immigrants which also differs from
just immigrant entrepreneurship or ethnic entrepreneurship.
Transnational entrepreneurship strongly relies on the macro forces of the environment
where it operates as well as in the entrepreneurial spirit and resources of immigrants as
individuals. Macro factors, such as policies on immigrants in the host country, determine
the early stages of transnational entrepreneurship. Without such favorable conditions,
there will be very little room for maneuver and to operate even for the most creative
entrepreneurs with strong links. Economic and political relations between the host
country and parent country are of particular importance for determining the activities of
transnational migrants. Parent Governments also try to give their entrepreneurs in the
host countries financial support in various forms including interest-free funds for newly
born enterprises, credit guarantees or direct investment.
Transnational entrepreneurship represents the most dynamic part of ethnic
entrepreneurship. Transnational entrepreneurs have conspicuously higher income and
more employees compared with those of the parent country. Like any entrepreneurship in
general, transnational entrepreneurship creates employment for immigrants and promotes
economic development in the individual and community level. Many businesses in the
parent country have knowledge gaps in language, culture and doing business with other
countries. They need transnational entrepreneurs with international experience, mutual
knowledge, but with a past and history of the home country and to facilitate the entry of
these businesses in the international market, thus internationalizing the country of origin
products. Findings from the study of TIE suggest that a significant proportion of Chinese
- Canadian entrepreneurs build successful businesses based on their relationship to their
home country or a third country.
Ethnic business and professional organizations actively promote transnational exchange
of knowledge, technology and expertise. They organize training sessions, seminars,
missions and performances on markets and invite delegations from the host country or
business missionaries from the parent country. So their goal is to combine the advantages
of both countries. Studies suggest that the ties with countries abroad and internet use give
transnational entrepreneurs an incentive to participate in transnational economic
activities. So the links on both sides have effects on transnational entrepreneurship. Many
entrepreneurs have wide tribal friendship ties. They are more commonly associated than
are the local entrepreneurs with countries, the host and origin. Their connections are more
extensive, more diverse and richer in resources. So transnational entrepreneurship
depends on connections beyond the boundaries that have a global outreach, as well as the
local interactions. So these "Glocalisations", enable immigrants to find opportunities and
combine different sources of venture performance. TIE study has revealed that
transnational entrepreneurs are more likely to be part of various business organizations
than entrepreneurs of the home country.
21
According to Guarnizo 2003, living a transnational life endangers two main sets of
processes. The first is related to the immigrants desire to reproduce a piece of their
cultural practices and customs in order to maintain and preserve their local and national
identities in the host country. This means that most prefer to live as in their country of
origin by generating so demand for goods and services in the country of origin. Eating
and drinking national food, trading national food and specialties, listening and dancing to
the national music becomes the thing to do for many immigrant and ethnic enclaves they
are part of. This demand is spread to businesses back home for which the IE is an
extension of the native market with a higher purchasing power than that of conational at
the origin country. This demand is a bridge for internationalization of national producers
to internationalize their operation, production and quality. A prime illustration of this
effect is the Mexican beers’ penetration of the U.S market. Some state that Corona
success in the American market is due to clever marketing strategies and because of this
is consider one of the most impressive marketing successes in the industry. In fact, the
success key lies elsewhere. The group which manufactures the beer first appealed to a
“core group of Mexicans living in the United States” ( Wills, 1991). This way of
internationalization of products is widely used also among Dominicans, Salvadorans, and
Colombians. This demand for products often is accompanied with demand for supportive
services which also internationalize with the products, too. So, this implies that without
goods internationalization ours also the transnationalisation of some services which
would never have the possibility to expand with this demand generated by the
immigrants. The second, is related to the maintenance of more of less stable the relations
from the economic, social and political point of view. Consequently to maintain this
transnational relationship alive is required a demand for transportation and
communication services. For this reason, many advertising campaigns for international
companies that provide this king of services, such as “AT&T, MCI, American Airlines
and United Airlines have been designed to appeal to ethnic diversity and the interest in
ancestral ties” ( Guarnizo, 2003)
2.4 ETHNIC MARKETING
In a time of relationship marketing and just in time production, keeping effective
communication with outside, actual and potential clients, suppliers, agents and
distributors is fundamentally important for a successful internationalization (Axelsson &
Easton, 1991). Marketing is essentially an activity of the processing of information,
which connects the organization with the outside environment in which it operates. The
processing of information is widely accepted as the 5th “P” of mix marketing and a great
number of studies have shown that effective management of information systems could
be a powerful source of competitive advantage (Cecil & Goldstain, 1990; Earl, 1989;
Feeney, 1988). The necessity for effective management of information is especially
important in international marketing, where companies have relations with different,
complex and wide environments, which are subject of fast and unexpected changes.
Empirical evidences show that marketing research over effective exports is a critical
success factor, which makes the difference among successful small exporters from
unsuccessful ones. We could certainly confirm that the key to have success in the
entrance in new markets is the collection and analysis of relevant and in time
information. Intelligent decisions could not be taken up to the moment where the
22
companies are able to find, collect and evaluate valuable information about necessities
and desires of their customers (Hamill, 1997: 309).
Although it is widely accepted the importance of marketing research over exports,
evidences show that very little of small entrepreneurs adopt systematic procedures in this
aspect. One of the main reasons is the idea that marketing research for exports has high
costs. Its scope is very complex and difficult; while the nowadays small
entrepreneurships are more concentrated in daily problems and have modest objectives
rather than being interested to adopt a long run strategic perspective. Small enterprises
lack personnel, knowledge and source for marketing research. Under this aspect of
internationalization of small enterprises, we can also evaluate ethnic entrepreneurship. In
general they are characterized from restricted personnel, which use market segments and
low scale of attractiveness, have low know how human resource and suffer from a high
pressure of competiveness, taking into consideration their social status.
The problems that ethnic entrepreneurship faces as well as their specifics in organization
as well as the markets that they aim, but also the roles they undertake in the market show
the need for continual and increase of improvement in use of marketing from these
entrepreneurships. The tincture of marketing and its elements with ethnicity elements
makes the nature of marketing in these entrepreneurships very specific and we call it
ethnic marketing. Cultural elements and the high level of reciprocity are very important
in its definition and in projecting of marketing in general but also of mix marketing to
achieve an approach with ethnic orientation within a holistic marketing projected and
applied from ethnic entrepreneurships. In continuity, we will define as ethnic marketing
the hole processes undertaken from ethnic entrepreneurships in understanding of
consumers and market in general, in segments in which they operate, the projection of
product and services, the defining of price, communication through ethnic channels and
their delivery toward ethnic segments of consumers to fulfill their needs and to maximize
the profits of ethnic entrepreneurship in a high scale of sustainability.
The crucial specifics of this type of marketing, ethnic marketing, are the segments of
ethnic market- ethnic enclaves- ethnic product and services, ethnic communication
channels and stable relationship in the minority or migratory community.
From a lot of experience and studies, especially in markets with ethnic diversity, this
diversity is in general the key of future market and economic development. If we
consider some examples, we notice that the weight of ethnic population (minorities) in
developed countries is very high (US 30%5 of its population, EFTA 15 around 12%) and
the influence of their economic activity, social and vital in these countries is very
important. Moreover, the second generation of emigrants nowadays is becoming a very
important element of population in these countries. So, about 36% of adult in EU in the
same time holding the nationality of the origin country, weight about 42% of emigrant
born outside EU6. In table 1, for some countries is showed the percentage of immigrants
5
Global Commission on International Migration, Migration in Europe, by Christina Bosswell, September
2005
6
Orsolya Lelkes, Poverty among migrants in Europe, European Centre, Policy Brief, April 2007
23
that are placed in EFTA 15 countries in proportion with the overall number of immigrants
in these countries. Albania is placed the second with about 88.2% of its emigrants in EU.
This indicates the possibility of a great potential of them related with the possibility to
intermediate between home country and host country related to cultural aspect as well as
integration of home country in the international community especially in the European
ones, as well as in the aspect of creation of marketing and exchange channels between
home countries and countries where they live and do business. Immigrants and in general
ethic communities, represent a very important buying power in the market. Along with
their overall commitment in the economy, immigrants have also brought their cultural
domain and ethnic behaviors during the cohabitation with the majority population in
these counties. These implies that their cultures, and in more details their preferences,
behavior, tradition, services, recipes and menu, costume models, brands are not unknown
anymore for the wide mass of consumers in these markets. We can easily notice this in
the broad communication of consumers, in countries where emigrants are now part of the
communities for Chinese kitchen, for Italian style, for spicy Indian foods, for the
Egyptian exquisite taste, for traditional product from countries where modernization still
has not damaged the virginity of their production and the equilibrium that they
established with the nature.
Figure 17: Top ten countries by emigrants to Europe.
Referring to an earlier coverage in this topic, we notice in a broad sense that the
integration of immigrant in these countries is not only social but also economical and
political. Nowadays, they are crucial elements in the market. They have established and
7
Source: Data from United Nations. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/
24
developed their niche environments of ethnic markets, where normally the behaviour of
businesses that act within them is deeply oriented from their ethnicity. So, they also deal
with mix marketing projected exactly with a holistic orientation, where the social
relationship marketing occupies an important place. In each case, it takes into
consideration of what above we called, ethnic marketing. Consequently, a differentiated
marketing relies not only on basis of traditional characteristics that we usually use for
market segmentation but on basis of ethnic preferences of consumers and their ethnicity,
too.
Globalization era, nowadays a worldwide phenomenon, has stimulated furthermore their
cultural openness toward other cultures like in their countries of residence as well as in
countries where they have immigrated. This has brought to a quicker combination of
cultures between them, especially in aspects of consumption and everyday life. Their
lifestyle is relatively different from being deeply traditional and relied in ethnic cultures,
but has a wide part of universal elements of “global culture” that have intervened in the
ethnic culture of emigrant groups and as a result their enclaves are not any more of the
traditional forms of the 20’s of the last century, but more open, more communicative and
globally integrated. We can easily notice this in the effects that facing with other cultures
has had in the language, clothing, lifestyle, education, work culture, but also in the way of
handling a business according market rules of those markets.
Based on human resources of these ethnic communities and on the capabilities that they
posses, they have continually found themselves in different sectors of the economy of the
countries where they have immigrated in the form of entrepreneurship initiative and the
opening of ethnic business. These sectors are not exclusively low attractive sectors, but
ethnic entrepreneurship still find more facilities in these sectors where the competition is
relatively low from the domestic companies. In many cases it is stimulated from the ties
of the home country, by bringing their experiences and country tradition in these markets.
In the following table, is shown a situation of ethnic entrepreneurship in Italy and sectors
where they have more easily found space and development.
25
China
Egypt
Marocc
Peru
Senegal
o
Other manuf.
Total
1.509
Trade
1.396
1.155
Transports
1.655
0.928
Cloths
1.554
Cleaning
0.421
Building
0.655
Hawking
0.357
Restaurants
1.362
Total
1.679
0.264
0.246
0.455
4.185
0.804
0.291
0.349
1.170
0.677
0.650
0.675
0.553
1.000
Table 1: Analysis of hazard ratios by sector and ethnicity
The Albanian businesses, unclassified in this table, are more oriented toward sectors such as
services- mainly maintenance and restaurants, construction, commerce and tourism.
Meanwhile they have established safe business ties with sectors oriented toward such
directions and with associations of these sector categories (business organizations,
chamber of commerce).
Another very important indicator of emigration and ethnic communities in foreign
countries is also the social capital created among them, as a result of integration of their
economies and modern societies in which they live. This is as a result of the fact that they
have mainly emigrated in high developed countries compared to the domestic country.
We notice this in the moderated behaviour they show in front of different social, political
and legal phenomena, in their demand for public goods related with their living as well as
with businesses they inspire to build, so with a higher confidence level from the
community which is stimulated mainly within in their enclaves or from interpersonal
commonly related to their first moments of emigration. In this aspect their expectation
for development is significantly high and different from that of their co-nationals that live
in the countries of origin. This indicates an easier access that they are inclined to have in
highly developed markets and regulated ones concerning their function as well as legal
aspect, like one of EU or other countries outside it.
They are introduced as a formed mechanism to create and maintain the connection
between home country and countries and environments where they live and practice their
26
activity. They are the holders of a different culture, more open, intercommunicative that
convert most of the rules and norms that would hamper the communication and exchange
in general among organizations and individuals from their country in those with modern
environment in which they live. They bring in home countries new behavioural and
communication standards which influence significantly the behaviour and quality of
many communication elements and of the way of offering the services and products to
the consumer of the home country. The differences take place at the countries of origin
where cultural standards of countries, where they usually work and live are imposed as
well as universal cultural standards. This indirectly strengthens the possibilities for
organizations and individuals in these countries to change their view toward
internationalization. A typical example of such behaviour is Albania and Albanians
which have been much influenced from the great flux of changes that Albanian
immigrants have brought and offered in the market, but also in the whole social process,
political and more. These are appeared in the form of cultural, economical, educational
ties as well as commercial exchanges established from organizations and Albanians with
partners and individuals of countries where Albanians have emigrated.
2.4.1 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING CHANNELS
Nowadays, it is evaluated to have a considerably increase in the number of emigrants
officialised as such in EU. They occupy about 6.5% of the total population in UK, about
18% in Germany, 12% in Italy and more considerable numbers in Belgium, Netherlands,
Greece and Spain. This proves the existence of a considerable “ethnic market” which has
faced different development forms though years. Today, it is appreciated as very
attractive related to integrated consumers but also to those with deeply ethnic basis. Such
evidence is not noticed from the economical information channels of host countries who
price the importance of this part of population i their economical success. If twenty years
ago, we could count only eight articles which discussed about ethnic markets and ethnic
entrepreneurship, today there are more than two hundred articles between research papers
and journals as well as we can find about sixty television channels and twelve radio
stations that target this audience.
“Ethnic markets have a huge spending power, particularly in the African and Caribbean
and Asian markets” Western Union’s marketing executive, Bienose Ebite, says. “By not
tapping into the ethnic markets, companies are missing out on great opportunities”.
Ethnic marketing concept is nowadays very familiar for the international marketing
environment. Harry Singh, the managing director of TME says: “We’re extremely happy
to have won the Strathmore account on the strength of our marketing campaigns. Our
results driven marketing is being increasingly noticed by mainstream brands which we
welcome, as it helps prove the case for investing in ethnic marketing.” this shows not
only that we have a very well elaborated view toward this concept in the market, but it
already has an importance and this channel are really an important bridge, for
communication and promoting of products and services with the specification of
“genuine ethnic” in countries where this groups live, as well as help in the
internationalization of services and products from the country of origin to this markets.
Even more we notice international product and service distribution businesses that are
oriented toward employing in their structure minority personnel
27
Immigrant entrepreneurship as an invisible advantage
The concept middleman or transnational is already known for the possibilities they create
concerning the building of the bridges of exchange between companies of the home
country and markets where this immigrant entrepreneurs or businesses operate. The case
of Chinese for example, is very popular to demonstrate the important role they play in the
process of internationalization. In a study and preview about Chinese ethnic
entrepreneurship, TIE (Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurship) found that about 42%
of the Chinese-Canadian entrepreneurs are transnational8. They build businesses mainly
in trading goods, technology, IT, services and culture as well as spectacle products which
enable exchanges between the parent country and the foreign country.
Increased migratory population in EU countries but also in other countries are no longer a
secret and unknown phenomenon for the researchers in the field of economy and its
internationalization, but is also viewed as a real and very important asset for the countries
where they exert their activity and above all for the home countries which see in these
businesses the bridges through which they can move their economies and home
businesses toward EU and other developed economies. It is true that there exists a
positive relationship between migration flows in foreign countries and bilateral trade
among countries where they are resident and live. The higher the presence of immigrants
in these countries, the more and stronger are the bilateral relations between these
countries. In case of China, it is observed that about 14% of the export and import
volume with other countries is achieved through the transnational Chinese businesses in
the countries where they operate. The latter in many cases is proved that they import and
export more than domestic businesses on both sides. International trade accounts for
more than 30% of the total income of transnational enterprises compared to about 3-5%
realized by domestic businesses.
Significant barriers for firms that want to internationalize are the lacks abou culture,
politics, and markets in the foreign countries. From the interviews conducted with the
immigrant entrepreneurs is resulted that they have both the sedire and the capacity to
built bridges, to organize meetings or mediate between foreign countries where they
operate and are registered and the country of origin and its businesses. Tacit immigrant
entrepreneurs’ knowledge about the way business is done in the countries of origin often
serves as “antennas”, sources of information, or intermediaries for foreign firms to shift
to the domestic market of their countries of origin. Compared to immigrant entrepreneurs
in both sides (countries), transnational ethnic entrepreneurs are distinctly more active in
mediation and the building of bridges for international cooperation. In the case of Albania
8
Immigrant entrepreneurs that do international business between the home country dhe host country. Doing
Business at Home and Away, Wenhong Chen and Barry Wellman, University of Toronto, Asia Pacific
Foundation of Canada, April 2007
28
it is quite evident that they build the first bridges of cooperation between local businesses
and those of the countries where they have emigrated. At the beginning, this was worthy
for the building of the bridges of cooperation between European firms and moreover also
local firms enabling so a quick entrance of foreign capital in the country.
On the other hand, their wider integration in the environment of the countries where they
have migrated recently has started to serve for many businesses to extend their businesses
in the EU countries in particular, avoiding in this way existing bureaucratic barriers still
quite connected with their free movement toward EU countries. They also have made it
possible in many cases to achieve penetration of local businesses and their products into
the EU market and international market. The relationship is reciprocal and transnational,
in the sense that they mediate the alleviation of social and cultural barriers, but also of the
standards required for internationalization. This has often led to significant changes in the
organizational structure of local businesses, the change of capital structure and its growth
towards automated systems, the introduction of new technologies, the application of
systems in modern communication and marketing, the application of new models for
their products that respond to consumer international standards (ISO), as well as the
formalization of international exchanges and make full use of international financial
channels to finance their transactions.
2.5 INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
The development and the integration of the Albanian immigrant community, in the places
where they are settled mainly around the 90’s, can be divided into three main phases. His
first phase served as an adaption to more developed environments from the socioeconomic point of view and for a gradual integration to the society of these countries.
Alike to the experiences in the other countries and other migratory communities, the
movements of the Albanian immigrants during this period are being characterized by a
constant orientation and support by the Albanian enclaves, which are created before in
large urban centers.
These enclaves provide to the emigrants the basic elements of surviving and at the
same time housing and employment assistance. This solidified the relation between the
members of the Albanian immigrant communities and at the same time created an
opportunity of raising the informal networks of exchange to a higher level of trust. This
confidence level represented a fairly low level of social capital, which didn’t yet create
premises or incitement to Albanian ethnic entrepreneurship. This social capital was
enough only to create mutual aid systems among the members. First aid consisted mainly
of employment, housing, basic sanitation, and sometimes in case of support by the
entrepreneurial initiative, consisted of basic services.
His second phase shows a significant change of ethnic communities, especially in
the relations with the mother country, where we can observe a noticeable grouth of
29
emigrant remittances towards the mother country. This period also shows an economic
consolidation of this community, an increase in the quality of life, higher education,
human resources with a higher quality and competitive in the labor market, not only
because of the price, but due to its quality and qualification. A wider range of cultural
integration of the Albanian migratory communities in the societies of their host countries,
played an important role in these changes. We notice social organizations and
institutionalization among migratory communities, which cover a considerable extent of
services to these communities. We notice serious efforts in mother tongue education of
these communities and a restoration of the institutional relationships with the respective
public institutions from the mother country. Also, we observe an increase in the quality of
human resources and at the same time difficulties in employment in the economy and
business sectors, where the competition with the local labor is quite sharp. Racial
discrimination and constant pressure by the foreign companies towards the migratory
community, despite the policies of these countries to facilitate the integration of
Albanians and other communities in these societies, is still evident and important. It is
exactly this moment in time that coincides with the end of the 90’s and the beginning of
the new millennium, when Albanians begin to engage in ethnic enterprise. We notice the
first successful efforts in the construction sector, food and services, technical and
engineering services, sanitary maintenance, and transnational activities and middleman
roles in their traditional form like in the cases of other ethnic minorities. The importance
of these is evidently very high in comparison to the other forms of entrepreneurship. Its
first guidelines towards the mother country in many cases are stimulated by the local
businesses, which are interested to jump to the Albanian market, aiming to establish
bridges of cooperation with local businesses. The use of the Albanian ethnic
entrepreneurships for this initiative is connected to the fact that they are more reliable and
are able to “translate” well enough the objectives of foreign businesses to the ethics and
to the quite chaotic Albanian market conditions. We note many initiatives which start and
many others which fail, reflecting so the economic situation in Albania, but also the
ongoing administrative and bureaucratic destabilization of Albania, as well as its
democratic de stability.
The third phase and the one of the ethnic entrepreneurship phenomenon consolidation
among the Albanian migrant communities, belongs to the beginning of the new
millennium and to the current decade. Albanian ethnic entrepreneurship is also extended
to other sectors, but the transnational and middleman one remains dominant with more
than 40% of it. The table below shows an Albanian migration business structure-ethnic
entrepreneurship in Greece.
30
Business Category
Retail &Wholesale
Manufacturing &
Construction
Food Service
Support Service
Health Care
Professional Services
Financial Services
Frequency
33
12
Percentage
44%
16%
11
10
4
3
2
15%
13%
5%
4%
3%
44%
16%
15%
13%
Other 12 %
Table 2: The state of the Albanian ethnic entrepreneurship in Greece. 9
Nowadays, Albanian ethnic entrepreneurship is being worthily represented in the
developed European markets and beyond, facing global competition, but at the same time
supporting an important part of its entrepreneurship in the Albanian enclaves in these
markets, which offer warranty and durability for the development of these businesses. It
is still oriented towards the tacit and implicit ways of innovation and development in
general, but it is an important network for the facilitation of the exchanges and ties
between local businesses and the ones of the mother country.
Meanwhile, it has already created and it is using the integrated marketing communication
to approach to the market, but also to enhance its competitiveness in the market using
communication channels and different promotion tools. This shows not only an increase
in its new level, but ethnic entrepreneurship has its products which carry the prestige,
both in terms of quality, as well as in terms of the efficiency in relation to the market
competition. The table below shows its structure of the communication channels and
communication tools used in Greece.
Promotion Strategy
Word of mouth only
Newspapers and magazines
Flyers
None
TV and radio ( 3+2 =)
Internet
Door to door
Frequency
19
14
13
8
5
5
1
Percentage
40%
30%
28%
17%
11%
11%
0%
Table 3: The profiles of promotion strategies10
9
Halkias, D., Harkiolakis, N., Abadir, S., Thurman, P., Akrivos, D., Caracatsanis, S. (2007),
“Characteristics and Business Profiles of Immigrant-Owned Small Firms: The Case of Albanian Immigrant
Entrepreneurs in Greece”, paper presented at the “Oxford Business and Economics Research Conference”,
Oxford, 24-26 June 2007
31
Compared to the other migratory communities, Albanian ethnic entrepreneurship is still
far behind and less developed. However, considering that its transnational form of
business makes it very important as a bridge and distribution channel to facilitate the
movement of the goods and services in both directions between the two countries. The
sectors where it is engaged, like services, agricultural and livestock products, consumer
goods, commercial mediation in the food industry, international transportation etc., are a
significant advantage for the mother land businesses to internationalize in these markets
with Albanian products and brands. Also we notice that taking into account the
demographic of the employers in the Albanian ethnic entrepreneurships, where the
biggest part is again Albanian that obeys to the strong ethnic rules and norms, in the
market pace, they are oriented toward a heterogeneous consumer, not necessarily ethnic
one. They are open to customers without an ethnic color. This helps the Albanian brand
in service, image, business model, ethnic marketing, but it also helps the ethnic product to
be known in the international market and specifically in the markets where ethnic
Albanian enterprises operate successfully.
Meanwhile, they are still very connected in supplying their businesses with local firms up
to 88%, in the case of Greece over 90% and only 8% of them are being supplied by the
Albanian channels from the mother land or joint-ventures with local businesses.11 This
still shows that ethnic Albanian entrepreneurship is still unused and unknown as a gold
opportunity in the international market for the Albanian businesses, so they can
internationalize avoiding the risk that this market carries, but also increasing the speed of
action in it, the standard of operating in the market and reducing the costs through a less
expensive mediation.
Concerning to financing their businesses, the Albanian ethnic entrepreneurs use almost in
the half of the cases their savings and their friends savings and the other half they use
financing from banks and other financial institutions. It still shows a very strong and
consistent relation with their ethnic migratory community.
Meanwhile, the Albanian ethnic entrepreneur is among the most active in Greece, where
in relation to other migratory communities it is in the first place with 33.7% of ethnic
enterprises and 62.6% of self-employed professionals. In 2007, in Greece, 2.1% of the
10
11
32
members of the Chamber of Commerce of Greece were ethnic entrepreneurs from the
migratory communities, where Albanians remain in the first place with the half. 12
Among the Albanian transnational ethnic entrepreneurships with significant capacities
and expansion in the european market we can mention those that operate in Greece,
Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, Netherlands and Austria. Finally, the ethnic minority
entrepreneurship represented by the Kosovo’s ethnic communities in the former
Yugoslavia is also an important source of competitive advantage for businesses that come
from the mother land to penetrate these countries.
In relation to the opportunities that the businesses from the mother land have in
negotiating with the businesses and european market and the international market in
general, and also in relation to the local businesses in the markets where the ethnic
entrepreneurs operate, they have an affinity of building bridges of cooperation within
businessis of respective countries, and also the frequncy of trannacional mediation is
several times higher.
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
Below I will provide the conceptual model together with a detailed plan and outline of
the research methodology used at each stage of Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship
research.
The stages where the research went through were four.
The first stage which I name here as the secondary database analysis is the stage where I
did a well comprehensive review of the entire available database related to Albanian
immigrant entrepreneurship. This analysis was done in collaboration with specialist from
the Chamber of Commerce of the Province of Milan, Italy.
The second phase was the qualitative research phase, where individual reviews were
conducted in order to in depth analyze the issues related to the Albanians who had their
entrepreneurships in Milan and the stages the passed through until the building of a
successful business. In total 25 individuals were interviewed and out of them only 5
cases in different business sectors where identified to be shown in the appendix of this
work as most successful cases and representatives of the typical Albanian immigrant
business.
The third phase was the online survey involving a very well defined sample of n=25 of
entrepreneurs. This phase first was thought to be the last because after the completion of
the first 25 interviews we would add other representatives but it was not successful in
terms of response rate.
12
HATZIPROKOPIOU, “Migrant entrepreneurship in Greece”, in OLIVEIRA, Catarina
Reis and RATH, Jan (eds.), Migrações Journal - Special Issue on Immigrant Entrepreneurship,
October 2008, n. 3, Lisbon: ACIDI, pp. 73-84, Panos 2008
33
The fourth and last phase was personal questionnaire completion. We employed this
method of personally filling the questionnaires in order to avoid any possible mistake of
some other persona rather than the owned will fill them. Most of the questionnaires were
filled via mobile.
Methodology Used/Sample




Detailed analysis of Chamber of
Commerce database of businesses owned
by Albanian who had more than 2
employees/ n=204
Personal interviews representing
different industry sectors / n=25
An online survey for a very well pre
selected sample of entrepreneurs from
different sectors / n=25
Questionnaire composed from 47
questions, for different aspects of the
business in order to build a database of
information on Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurship in the Province of
Milan / n=61
Stage
1) Secondary Database Analysis
2) Qualitative Research
3) Online Survey
4) Quantitative Database/Questionnaire
Table 4: Stages and methodology used for the research.
34
3.2 CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Internationalization of
Albanian Economy
International Market Demand
Import
Market Penetration –
Cost/Price Approach
Market Penetration – NonPrice Option Approach
Domestic Consumption
of Foreign Gusto
Weak Ties with Alters in the
Foreign Market
International Competition
Immigrant Enclaves of
Consumption – Double
Oriented
Traditional Consumption
Market
Consumption Education
of Domestic Market
through Immigrant
Consumption Experience
Abroad
International
Standardization of
Consumption in the
Domestic Market
Figure 2: Logical
Export – Traditional
International Marketing
Channels
Domestic
Production
Standardized
New
Technology
Export – Transnational
Bridging through Immigrant
Entrepreneurship
Genuine Products
/ Genuine Gusto
Innovation through
Tacit and Implicit
ways
Scheme of the internationalization of the Albanian Economy
35
Raw Materials and
Unprocessed
Products of
Albanian Origin
The core concepts in the scheme relate as follow:
The Internationalization of the Albanian Economy is perceived in two main dimensions;
Imports and Exports. In both cases the increase of these volumes internationalizes our
economy. First, through imports internationalizes the domestic consumption toward
foreign gusto of consumption and standards. Second, through exports it goes through a
long process of first, emerging of interest for Albanian products – goods and services, by
being the most interesting offer (original products or raw materials requested because of
the insufficiency of these resources to fulfill the global international demand, or the best
price for this offer), or by increase of preference for the Albanian gusto internationally.
The process which takes place first in the case of import is the education of the domestic
demand for consumption according to the international gusto and standards. It can be
done in two ways:
Traditional way of education of consumption on the domestic market according to the
foreign gusto and standards. It goes through increase of consumption of imported
products and induction of this gusto in the domestic consumption culture by conventional
and long channels as media, fashion, events, consumption technology, schools,
consumer’s education and counseling, etc.
Spread of consumption experience by the immigrant community in their home country
through visits home, or exchange of experience with their parents, or foreign
consumption while visiting their home country. They have double orientation of
consumption – native one and host country one due to their routine living in the host
country.
The education converges to the spread throughout the home country (domestic market) of
the international standards of consumption. These newly established standards of
consumption induce the start of production based on international market standards,
already educated to the domestic consumption. The process asks for new technology in
order to meet these standards. The increased implementation of international standards
and new technology foster innovation through tacit and implicit ways in the case of
Albania, as it is already impossible to initiate and complete pure innovation
internationally. These standards can be imposed even directly by the international
demand spontaneously. As it is also possible that the new Albanian products, genuine or
not, can be requested spontaneously by the international market demand.
The concept of raw material and unprocessed products to be exported is not new. It has
been present always due to the limited resources globally for those, or the interesting
price we may still have to sell those abroad (the interrupted blue two-orientation arrows).
They, Albanian products and raw materials or unprocessed products can be exported
through traditional marketing channels as the most interesting offer due to certain
international market circumstances, facing international competition in a traditional way,
mostly penetrating in the international market through a cost/price based approach (to be
proved later on in this dissertation) (the red line path).
36
While, following other international and worldwide experiences, these can follow another
way to be internationalized, non-cost approach of internationalization, through immigrant
transnational bridging for international marketing channels avoiding more than
considerably international competition, getting use of the immigrant enclaves of
consumption abroad and their weak ties with alters in the international market, common
for their living as they cooperate to manage their social status and businesses too abroad.
This is a shorter way, or marketing channel to be established, and with lower costs of
marketing too. This community can help both, for increasing international consumption
standards home, as well as providing a new different gusto of internationally standardized
genuine Albanian products to the international demand for consumption. It may be
considered as the seventh way of facing competition abroad, or a very important niche
market segment to foster first, the latent Albanian exports (they represent more than 1/3
of all the Albanian citizens, too much more of what Chinese or other immigrant
communities represent in front of their home citizens), and then to increase international
demand for Albanian products through spreading out in the international market using
their ties with alters in that market. This is also to be proved as the main hypothesis in
this dissertation later on (the green line path).
3.3 RESEARCH DESIGN
3.3.1 SECONDARY DATABASE ANALYSIS
In starting the work about this project as in any other research work the plan of the steps
to follow in started with the analysis of the sources of the existing data, literature and
database for the ethnic or immigrant entrepreneurship. In the Province of Milan, and Italy
there were a lot of studies done for the immigrant entrepreneurs because the effects of
this kind of entrepreneur in the Italian economy was very significant. One very recent
work was on the national profile of immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy; “Il profilo nazionale
degli immigrati impreditori in Italia”, from CNEL, The National Council of Work and
Economy in November 2011. The analysis of the report done on this issue resulted to
have a lack of understanding of the phenomenon when it comes to immigrants such as
Albanians. The studies and reports on other immigrant groups were very complete not
only in the province level but also in the national level. Mainly these studies, which were
subject of detailed reviews from my side, were done from the national and official offices
of ministries but other were also form associations.
Based on this very first step of the work, the focus was thought to be on the Chamber of
Commerce of Milan as the office and authority which posses the key resources and
database for all business in the Province but also and mainly the ones I was interested in
that is the database of the kind of businesses owned by Albanians.
The review, analysis and outcome from the Chamber of Commerce would give us a very
clear information and idea on what path to follow in order to identify our future sample.
37
In order to understand and show how good we consulted to the secondary database below
there is a table that summarizes the elements which the Chamber of Commerce in Milan
provided to us.13
SECTOR
START DATE
DEPENDENTS
INDEPENDET
NS
FISCAL CODE
Figure 3: Elements of secondary database from Chamber of Commerce in the Province of Milan.
3.3.2 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
A very important part of our study on Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship was the
designing and the application of the personal interview phase. We designed and built this
phase, after the identification of the target group of our study related to sector and
location. Since our population was 204 Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs, we have to
prepare the way we would get the information from them. So, following this logic, we
designed a set of questions related to their activity and personal information. The
philosophy of identifying the people to be interviewed was the so called “snowball”
philosophy, conditioned by the situation and the fact that the territory where they were
placed was not very familiar for us. Therefore, the interviews started by identifying the
13
Look at a picture for the request done to the Chamber of Commerce and some demonstration of some
part of the database in the appendix.
38
first successful cases of entrepreneurship and the first cases provided evidence and
information for the third one and the fourth and so on. From a number of interviews we
have selected to bring here, in the appendix of this study only 5 of them which we
identified as most representative and successful ones which also have still strong
connections and ties with their country of origin.
As was proved, the phase of personal interviews, gave a lot of feedback for the next
phase of the study that was that of the designing of our questionnaire. The personal
interviews helped to understand the nature of such businesses, the environment in which
they work, the challenges they handle while running a business in a foreign country and
as a consequence the interviews one by one added value to the final idea on what to ask,
how to address the questions and how to communicate with the other part of Albanian
immigrant entrepreneurs
The selected interviews are from construction sector mainly and also restaurant owners
and administrators and one from the cleaning services sector. The selected cases follow
the same distribution in general of the Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs in sectors where
they operate. We can generally state that the profile of the Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurs and the history of their successful entrepreneurship is almost the same in
all cases. They all immigrated to Italy in order to have a better life, challenge themselves
and the country where they were born for the scope of finding a better place to work for
and to validate their capabilities.
The way we thought to use the personal interviews is to have a very complete picture of
the profile of the Albanian immigrant entrepreneur, to promote some of the businesses
which we consider successful cases in the sectors they operate and also for the reason of a
more complete study of our topic.
What is interesting fact for the Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs personally interviewed
is that they have all the same age range from 38-40 years old, which immigrated in Italy
almost 18-20 years ago, and their business activity is around 12-16 years old. This
implies, that these success entrepreneurs once arrived to Italy, where first employed in
the Italian working force and than after some 4-6 years become entrepreneurs. When it
comes to difficulties and also the corresponded reasons why they engaged in
entrepreneurship there is no distinction among sectors, they all engage in opening their
own business because the Italian environment did provide them with the knowhow and
the experience and confidence of taking such step. What is interesting and important to
highlight, as shown in the interview in the appendix of this study they did not engage in
entrepreneurship because of bad condition mainly, but because they had the opportunity
and desire to do that. Most difficulties they faced were during the first year of
immigration which for all cases was a year of extreme sacrifices; “The only need I had
was the need to survive” F.S.; “I had a cousin of mine here in Milan, but when I came
here no one was expecting for me and even more I did not know any Italian words. I
spent the first days sleeping in the stadium.” A.B. ; “ I had to do two jobs, to maintain
myself, my wife and daughters, so I employed during the day and late afternoon, I had to
sleep in the metro when I switch from one work to the other” V.B.
39
Now that they are integrated and have their own business, the challenges of being an
immigrant are not those of surviving but being successful in the host society through the
activities they do in their business and the goods and services they provide. Being a
successful entrepreneur implies increase and better integration in the social context of the
host society.
The overall idea of the successful entrepreneurs is that competing and being successful as
an immigrant is a tough task but not impossible especially when you devote your time
and mind into the business and also when you use your family ties to handle it. The
success cases we have selected are mostly dependent on their family ties in the daily
activities of their entrepreneurship and all of them have employed Albanian workers as
well as Italian and other national immigrants. “Yes. I did employ Albanians because of
the nationality. I wanted to be helpful by giving them the opportunity to work in my
company.”F.S. This is what Fredi stated during the interview which strengthens the idea
that these successful entrepreneurs are very conscious that part of their success is not only
being successful for their own but also contributing to the increase of social status of
other immigrants of the same nationality. This is not just so straight forward, but is also
supported by strong evidence on the way Albanians live and devote to work; “…it is
more comfortable to work with them in terms of working hours. They need to work more
than Italians do and they are available to work even on Saturdays and Sundays and are
really hard working and devoted to what they do. Albanians are not just present to work,
but they do really work” F.S. The above statement provides an evidence of a possible
hypothesis, that even in the sectors such as construction, being an immigrant from
Albania means providing a service to others different from Italians themselves or other
immigrant groups.
Now a day, we are very conscious that above all, knowing your competitors and having
clear strategies how to compete them is very important, and this point becomes crucial in
the case of immigrant entrepreneurs because they are competing in an environment which
can also be not so familiar for them. When it comes to competition, our success cases
state that they are not so afraid from competition and they do know very well their
competitors, their target market, target prices and quality. What they are afraid of is the
“unfair competition” that means being competed from other immigrant groups on terms
of bad quality and informality; “What I am afraid from, are Rumanian and Arabic people,
this is due to the fact that for them the only important thing is to work, without
considering the quality. I can also claim that for me and other Albanians it is very
important to integrate into the Italian society, so we do care about social ties with Italians,
living in better social and home conditions, while for them this is not that important.
They just get the money, if not convenient, they go back to their country and do not care
about anything.” E.B.
3.3.3 ONLINE SURVEY
The online survey was designed at the first step for a very well pre defined sample o
entrepreneurs. It was a very simple survey to be completed which was available online
for the entrepreneurs to fulfill. We administered the survey in two steps. At first, we
called the selected entrepreneurs and notified them that we wanted them to fulfill the
survey. This step was done also to monitor ourselves and be sure that we had the right
email addresses of our sample. After that, we sent an email that contained the possible
40
explanations of the research and also the link where they could click and fill it in.
Obsurvey14 was the free online site which provided us and easy and quick survey creation
and also with the link where it was available. After every fill of the survey form any
entrepreneur with an ID and password we monitor the number of the ones who fill it and
also the application has the facility and provided us with a resume of the answers in total.
So Obsurvey, collected the answers and analyzed them and also provided with another
option of saving and making graphs of them.
3.3.4 THE QUESTIONAIRE
Designing the questionnaire for us was the most challenging task, taking into
consideration the fact that the questionnaire is one of the most vital parts of a research.
We were very attentive in building the different sections and questions of it. Before
having the final draft of our questionnaire we had a predesigned phase which is divided
into two parts. First, we considered the literature about questionnaires that used the same
vocabulary and studied the same topics but in a more broad way. The second pre phase
part was the personal structured interviews which helped us with more ideas of the type
of questions we had to include in order to receive the best of results. After all this
preparatory phase we had the final version of our questionnaire. The questionnaire we
have built has 47 questions in total which are grouped into 3 main sections. The first
section on entrepreneurial activity and business includes questions from 1 to 14, the
second on business strategy with questions from number 15 to 33 and the last socio anagraphic profile including questions 34 to 47.
The questionnaire is built based on the following types of questions:
- Closed Format Questions (Leading, Dichotomous, Multiple Choice, Rating Scale using
Likert Scale)
-Open Format Questions (Description and Opinions)
About 77% of our respondents were subject to telephone-administered questionnaires.
This is because of two main reasons. First, is related to the time spent on doing and
meeting the respondent. Our questionnaire was targeted to a group of people who were
entrepreneurs and the places where they work were far and distant from each other, so
within a day you can hardly reach just one or two of them. Second, is related to their
time. Although the first attempt was to push them to complete the questionnaire via
internet only 23% of them did it. The rest did not have time or they just asked their
collaborators to fill it in. So, after attempting to fill the questionnaires online we switch to
the telephone interview. The telephone –administered questionnaire resulted efficient in
cost and speed especially in this case where as stated above the sample was
geographically dispersed and in this case the respondents were more comfortable
working and also responding to the question of the questionnaire. Another advantage of
this way of conducting the questionnaire was also the fact that we were 100% sure that
14
Look at the Appendix for a picture of the online survey and the website of Obsurvey.
41
the respondent was the person we were looking for to answer the questions and not any
other collaborative or assistant of him.
Our questionnaire was built for respondents who were identified to live and work within
the Province of Milan.
3.4 MODEL AND ESTIMATION DISCUSSION
3.4.1 PRICE OPTION APPROACH
This approach can be based in two main directions: factors’ low cost and high production
yields reducing costs per unit in products and services. Analyzing the first possibility we
can find that Albania is not any longer the most or between attractive countries regarding
the low costs of labor and other factors. There are other countries as well equalizing or
being more attractive than we do regarding these costs around the world and in the area
(Mediterranean and Balkan), but offering in the same time better possibilities to do and
develop business (Monte Negro, FYROM, Serbia, Romania, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey
etc)15.
Figure 4: Labor Costs: significantly lower than the rest of Europe but higher than fast-growing
Asia.16
We are not even a factor driven economy but already classified at the group of efficiency
driven economies. Even considering the domestic market demand in Albania, our
economy does not promise for economies of scale and low costs of products and services.
While, compared to the Efficiency Enhancer Economies and advanced countries toward
Innovation and Sophistication, we are far of being competitive focusing or being oriented
in high production yields. We have low scores on efficiency and innovation closing up
the bottom of the third group, that of efficiency enhancers.
15
WEF Global Competitiveness Index Report 2011-2012, Table 3, pp. 15-17, (Subindexes: Basic
Requirements: 71, Efficiency Enhancers 82, Innovation and Sophistication factors 102)
16
Investing in Albania, Ellen Goldsein, WB Southeast Europe Office, Vienna, 12 May 2014
42
Compared to EU, the Fast Growing Asia, and the Mediterranean/Balkan area too, exports
still result to be weakly contributing to the national income, sharing low rates on GDP17.
The high level of the problematic loan/credit for the banks of the second level, more than
21% declared on the end 2013, the increase in unemployment with more than 16% on
2013, the continuous negative growth in consumption mounting more than “-18%” on
2012 compared to the same period on 201118, show for still hard times even on the near
future for the growth in exports based in cost and price factors.
Figure 5: Exports of goods and services (% of GDP)
We still share e negative trade balance with exports sharing 32% on 2013 for the total
goods circulation in the foreign trade19. Albania is ranking in the mediocre middle of the
global rankings on competitiveness considering most of the cost based factors of
economy, as well as other elements and pillars related to high productivity. Albania
scores with less than half of the GDP per capita compared to Central and Eastern Europe
countries, and it ranks under the average of the efficiency-driven economies in most of
the competitiveness pillars (infrastructure, institutions functioning, innovation, business
sophistication, financial market development), as well as it is facing a strong reduction in
GDP growth during the last five years, 2009-2013, with a light recover on the first
semester 2014.
GDP
Growth
2009
3.4
2010
3.7
2011
2.5%
17
2012
1.6
2013
1.422
World Bank, Doing Business project (http://www.doingbusiness.org/). Catalog Sources World
Development Indicators: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.EXP.COST.CD
18
Bank of Albania 2012
19
INSTAT Statistic 2014
20
First semester 2014, Bank of Albania, Monetary Policy Report 2014 Q2, pp. 16
43
201420
1.65
(%)21
In these terms, cost based competitiveness of the Albanian economy; we can raise the
following hypothesis:
The null hypothesis H0 - There is no value added in the internationalization of the homecountries’ economies and businesses through the involvement in this process of
immigrant entrepreneurship and their higher social integration in countries they live and
work.

Growing economically by increasing revenues from international Albanian
exports, reducing and managing production and transaction costs in order to
increase and gather competitive advantage internationally,
Referring to the above arguments, in order to prove that this hypothesis fails to be true, as
well as is no longer feasible, nor a smart way to gather competitive advantage in the
international trade, I got reference to time series data on Albanian exports and cost or
productivity factors to support their increase. I considered Albanian exports growth
(RGE) as dependent variable to measure our international trade performance
(internationalization of the Albanian products and services), and a set of cost or
productivity regressors (independent variables) - export costs (ExCt), inflation on export
prices (InOEP), average structure of capital (AvSC), interest rate of credit (IntRC), index
of product prices (InPP) and public debt cost (PDC), unit cost labor (UCL), inflation rate
of economy (InfRE), average monthly wage (AvMW). The values for the time series on
the variables are as follow:
Year ExCt23
2003 850.0
2004 845.0
2005 818.0
2006 818.0
2007 745.0
2008 770.0
2009 725.0
2010 725.0
2011 745.0
2012 745.0
InOEP
%
AvSC24
2.4
5.41
3.2
4.81
2.4
5.06
2.5
3.81
2.9
3.72
3.4
2.47
2.2
2.95
3.6
4.85
3.5
3.93
2.1
4.32
IntRC
%
13.13
13.64
13.86
13.61
13.57
12.82
13.59
12.59
11.94
11.01
InPP
%
85.9
95.2
100.0
100.1
100.2
111.1
109.2
109.5
112.4
113.7
22
Bank of Albania, Monetary Policy Report 2014 Q2, pp. 16
INSTAT Statistic 2014
23
Export Cost measured as cost per container in US$
24
Capex/Opex index (coefficient)
25
Index (coefficient)
26
Index (coefficient)
21
44
PDC
%
7.20
6.24
5.59
5.17
6.02
6.01
6.16
5.64
5.44
5.36
UCL25
0.98
0.95
0.92
0.97
1.07
1.16
1.23
1.32
1.30
1.35
InfRE
%
2.37
2.87
2.37
2.38
2.94
3.36
2.28
3.55
3.45
2.04
AvMW
Lek
RGE26
18522
1.00
19039
1.26
19993
1.28
21842
1.18
27350
1.17
34277
1.78
36075
0.78
34767
1.48
36482
1.26
37305
1.08
2013 745.0
1.7
4.11 10.32
Table 5: Times series data for Albania
113.2
4.80
1.41
1.94
38838
1.10
I run a regression and I eliminated for insignificance, autocorrelation and multicolinearity three independent variables - UCL, InfRE and AvMW. The statistical data for
the new regression:
Y = β0 + β1ExCt + β2InOEP + β3AvSC + β4IntRC + β5InPP + β6PDC + u
(1)
were tested under 95% confidence interval, df=4, n=11 resulting with the following
statistical data:
R²
Adjusted R²
R
0.687
0.216
0.829
Std. Error
0.228
n
k
Dep.
Var.
11
6
RGE
and
ANOVA
table
Source
Regression
Residual
Total
Regression output
variables
Coeff.
Intercept -2.5211
ExCt
0.0034
InOEP
0.3189
AvSC -0.0473
IntRC -0.0352
InPP 0.0118
PDC -0.0583
mean
VIF
SS
0.4570
0.2087
0.6657
std. error
6.5172
0.0031
0.1346
0.1228
0.1061
0.0283
0.1912
df
6
4
10
t(df=4)
-0.387
1.097
2.370
-0.385
-0.332
0.417
-0.305
MS
0.0762
0.0522
p-value
.7186
.3341
.0768
.7195
.7565
.6978
.7755
F
1.46
p-value
.3721
confidence interval
95% lower 95% upper
-20.6156
15.5735
-0.0052
0.0119
-0.0547
0.6925
-0.3884
0.2937
-0.3300
0.2595
-0.0667
0.0903
-0.5892
0.4725
std.coeff.
0.000
0.625
0.787
-0.164
-0.161
0.410
-0.146
VIF
4.135
1.408
2.307
3.002
12.307
2.925
4.347
with Durbin-Watson = 2.94. We see a strong correlation between Y (RGE) and the
predictors (R=0.829), normal values of F-test=1.46 and acceptable Durbin-Watson value
for the model. There is weak imperfect multi-collinearity between PDC and IntRC, which
mostly is due to the same trend of growth, as well as the small ‘n’ of the series. We can
distinguish that the favorable values of the predictors during the time period of the series
have had strong impact on the increase of the exports in the same period. InOEP is the
strongest impact price option factor. While IntRC and PDC are cost option factors having
45
considerable influence on the export growth, the structure of capital AvSC which is a
productivity factor is also important on this regard. We can also see from the time series
that the values of the most of the predictors for the last four years have had a stagnation
trend, except for the InOEP strongly reducing. It corresponds to the reduction of the trend
of the growth in exports too. These factors considering also AvSC, weak score in
innovation, technology development, stagnation in the rate of increase of the schooling
years, increase in public debt rate, high rate of the contribution of the service sector in
GDP (59%)27, high loses in electric energy system (45% on 201328), as well as all the
fiscal regime in order in Albania consuming most of its capacities under the actual level
of the use of the efficiency enhancers, are the main reason of the slowdown of the rhythm
of growth in exports and internationalization of the Albanian products and services. The
cost option hypothesis has already shown to be a weakly yielding approach to the
Albanian economic growth as we are not the most attractive cost oriented economy and
products to the international market, both of products and services, as well to the FDI
looking for better production conditions cost oriented.
We have not included the rate of informality of our economy of more than 12-15%,
which can provide a worse situation regarding cost and price factors impacting on the
economic growth of Albania (having a negative average acceleration trend of almost 20%
for the last four years), and especially showing for a weakening competitive advantage of
our economy in the international market and on the attraction of FDI. There are not
included in the above mentioned indicators in the table 1 other important facts and
variables like the price of the land and the problems on private property on the land
Albania is facing since 1992, the price of technology per unit of GDP (which in part is
shown as non-attractive one referring to the low structure of capital) and the easiness to
do business in Albania etc, whose weight in the international competitiveness of our
products deepen the negative impact and reduces the chances and opportunities to gather
advantage, ore finding it very hard being the most cost attractive country in the region. Of
course, this is not an impossible approach, but the hardest one, with a low probability to
be achieved.
Arguing as above, referring to the principal question related to increased performance in
exports, as the main argument to deny the involvement of other ways to internationalize,
as considered here, through getting use of our immigrant community and
entrepreneurship abroad, in EU and other foreign countries, induces us to think seriously
about non-price option factors and paths to improve our performance internationally
through further increase in Albanian exports.
27
28
INSTAT 2012
WB 2014
46
3.4.2 NON-PRICE OPTION APPROACH
At this reasoning end on the above matter, the non-price approach emerges to be the
largest one in chances and opportunities for success. These variables (factors) are hardly
depreciative and consumable, furthermore full of potentialities and variability, giving
large spaces and different ways to move successfully in the international market. They
relate to functionality, performance, durability, design, style, reliability, competence,
responsibility, customer relations management, courtesy, D.O.C. (denomination of origin
controlled), authenticity, as well as use of non-cost options of distribution related to
cultural affinity, ethnicity, tolerance and accountability, etc.
The hypotheses I raise are:
H1 -




H2 -
Immigrant entrepreneurship will enhance Albanian products and services to be
increasingly exported in the Italian market reducing costs, time and getting use of
non-price option factors.
IE can introduce EU standards of consumption in the Albanian genuine products
and services
IE will speed up innovation in the Albanian production
IE will introduce the application of the best practice in marketing channels
bridging transnational between Albania and Italy
IE success is related to the degree of their international market ties and networks
(Italians and other immigrant communities)
Immigrant minorities can gain higher social and professional status in the host
countries through entrepreneurship increasing image of their home country
abroad.
Inducing our economy to be oriented in creating genuine Albanian products and services
focusing in standards of quality, communication, courtesy, as well as Albanian immigrant
enclaves, in order to facilitate and foster the entrance in the international market ensuring
increased economic value added to our economy through increased exports regionally
and internationally.
The hypothesis is a non-price/cost one gathering the impact of all the image building and
cultural factors as independent variables to measure the growth in exports and the reduce
of the negative score in trade balance, directly impacting on the economic growth of
Albania.
I considered the data collected through questionnaires interviewed to a total of 61
interviewees (n = 61) representing a population of 204 selected Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurs in the province of Milan, Italy on 2013-2014. The analysis is based on
cross section data, making reference of a set of independent variables, non-price ones, to
47
measure the international performance (Yi) as a dependent variable “Turnover of the
activity in the host country”. In the first identification I listed as independent variables,
running a multiple linear regression, influencing the dependent variable Y as follows:
X1 = Number of Albanian costumers
X2 = Use of communication marketing tools
X3 = Marketing mix choice
X4 = Market competitiveness
X5 = Immigrant enclave market size
X6 = Shorter international marketing channels
X7 = Relations with alters to the immigrant enclaves
X8 = Importance of strong ties with Egos of the immigrant enclaves
X9 = Relations with partners from home-country
X10 = Knowledge of foreign language
Y1 = Immigrants social status = α0 + α1S1 + α2S2 + α3S3 + εi
(3.6.2 – 0)
Where:
S1 = Italian society distrust
S2 = Expected status of the second immigrant generation (expected number of the
children inheriting the parents profession and business)
S3 = Women involvement in the immigrant’s businesses
S4 = Involvement in cultural and social organizations
The regression I run is:
Y = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3 + β4X4 + β5X5 + β6X6 + β7X7 + β8X8 + β9X9 + β10X10 +
Y1(Si) + ui
(3.6.2 – 1)
Through the independent variables I included a variable function to a set of other
independent variables, Y1(Si) – Immigrant social status, representing the inclusion of the
H2 result within the H1 to be considered here.
In order to better define the model, and to exclude from the equation insignificant
regressors, I used AIC – Akaike Information Criterion and SIC – Schwarz Information
48
Criterion, resulting with minimal values of this two criteria, and arriving in a new
regression/model with k=8 independent variables as follow:
X1 = Marketing mix choice
X2 = Market competitiveness
X3 = Immigrant enclave market size
X4 = Shorter international marketing channels
X5 = Relations with alters to the immigrant enclaves
Y1 = Immigrants social status
X6 = Relations with partners from home-country
X7 = Knowledge of foreign language
Yi = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3 + β4X4 + β5X5 + β6X6 + β7X7 + Y1(Si) + ui
(3.6.2 – 2)
and
Y1 = Immigrants social status = α0 + α1S1 + α2S2 + α3S3 + εi
(3.6.2 – 3)
Where, while testing for significance the Si independent variables included in the second
regression are:
S1 = Italian society distrust
S2 = Expected status of the second immigrant generation (expected number of the
children inheriting the parents profession and business)
S3 = Involvement in cultural and social organizations
with df=53, level of significance α=0.005 or confidence interval 95%, testing then the
determination of the independent variables through 2-T test and for F=1.58, resulted with
R2=0.74 and adjusted R2=0.578 showing for a strong relation between the dependent
variable Yi and the set of regressors. The model tested for autocorrelation and multi-colinearity resulted eligible. While testing for determination Si-s and the Y1, under df=57,
α=0.005, F=1.56, resulted R12 = 0.57 and adjusted R12= 0.49, considerably strong. The
determination coefficients show for high potential of increase, while taking into account
the still low percentage of some of the independent variables compared to the orientation
versus the international marketing and trade, and still the low involvement of the
immigrants in transnational marketing bridging for channels with the home country
products and services. It is also noted that immigrant entrepreneurs do consider other
career opportunities for their children, and higher social inclusion for the second
49
immigrant generation in the countries they live and work. It was not the same with the
price-option variables whose impact on exports is more and more reducing. The nonprice hypothesis is considerably proved to satisfying and winning as well. It shows that
the new possibility to bridge internationally for marketing channels is importantly
significant and of high determinacy, representing thus a new way to move toward
internationalization of the Albanian products and services, and to the internationalization
of the Albanian economy as a whole as well.
This analysis hinders us to think that only having low prices and being the lower cost
option in the international market can provide strategic success in international trade.
Furthermore, it fosters the new approach that getting use of the already existing reality of
the Albanian immigrant entrepreneurship abroad, in our case in Italy, also taking into
consideration their increasing trend to international trade, and being based in other factors
then cost or price-option, but in non-price-option variables here above measured and
calculated in the two equations in this section represents a secure path to international
market and a more promising future to the internationalization of the Albanian products
and economy.
The graphs below show and foster yet the above approach, as we can easily distinguish
the increased entrepreneurial activity of the Albanian immigrant community in Italy.
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
2012
2011
2009
2010
2008
2007
2005
2006
2003
2004
2002
2000
2001
1997
1999
1996
1992
1995
1991
1985
1987
0
Figure 6: Entrepreneurship birth by year
In order to complete the view of our Albanian entrepreneurs the last two tables help to
show the division of these businesses based on their fiscal code. As shown below these
businesses are registered to the chamber of commerce as personal business which means
they have used their personal fiscal codes with numbers and letter and the other part is
registered as a business, with a business type fiscal code. The table helps to create an idea
50
about these details taking into consideration the sector. From both tables we notice that
out of 204 businesses, 57 of them are registered with a personal fiscal code and 157 of
them as businesses.
Business enterprise
60
50
40
30
20
10
Business enterprise
0
Figure 7: Entrepreneurship by business fiscal code
51
Personal enterprise
25
20
15
10
5
Personal…
0
Figure 8: Entrepreneurship by personal fiscal code
Figure 5 on business enterprise shows that the largest number of such businesses is
concentrated in construction, restaurant and services industry while figure 6 shows that
personal enterprises are as well concentrated in construction, restaurant and services but
also trade and transport services industry.
52
4. FINDINGS AND OUTCOME ANALYSIS
4.1 EVIDENCE OF THE ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ITALY
The history of relationships between Italy and Albania has showed a very intense
interaction between the two countries concerning economic, cultural and political
exchange since the middle of the early years of nineties. The above is also supported and
explained by the geographical proximity between the two countries. Since 1990, after the
collapse of the communist regime in Albania which was as a result of the collapse of the
same regimes in all Central and Eastern Europe, the Albanians who left their country
during 1990-1991 were almost the quarter of the total population. A considerable mass of
20,000 of them cross the Adriatic Sea by boat and immigrated to Italy. Then, the second
phase of mass immigration was register during 1996-1997 at the times of “pyramid
schemes” which derived from the political regime of the 1996 elections. In these
schemes, Albanian lost approximately 1.2 billion US dollars, a number equal to half of
the country GDP29. Since then and 20 years after the immigration is one of the most
important economic and social phenomena of the country. This phenomenon is
considered as vital for most of the families who live below the poverty line. Albanian
being one of the poorest countries in Europe finds in immigration the hope of its youth to
access in a better life and possibilities to work. Albania is one of the immigration
countries where “remittances compose the largest source of foreign exchange by
surpassing the value of both foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development
assistance (ODA)” ( IOM, 2008). Taking into consideration the above reasons the
situation today is that we have more than 1.4 million Albanians immigrating mostly in
Europe and USA. The primary and most important destination countries in Europe for
Albanian immigrants are the neighborhoods countries such as Greece and Italy.
According to the Italian Ministry of Work and Social Policies30 in 2012, 1 out of 6
Albanians is immigrant. The Albanian story of immigration which started at the first
middle of nineties is increased and consolidated at almost half a million at the twenties.
ALBANIA
EUROPE
TOTAL
29
IOM, Migration in Albania: A country Profile 2008.
La comunita Albanese in Italia. Rapporto annual sulla presenza degli immigrati-2012. Ministero del Lavoro e delle
Politiche Sociali
30
53
Figure 9: Performance of the presence of citizens of Albanian origin resident in Italy , nonEU citizens of European citizens and non-EU foreigners legally residing in Italy ( a) - Years
1991 / 92-2009
The placement of Albanian immigrant community in numbers compared with other
communities in Italy is very important in order to evaluate the size of the community and
their importance in the host country. The latest reports of 2012 and 2013 came up with
the same conclusion, that Albanian immigrants are placed the second among other
communities in Italy. So, following this, the immigration report of Carritas Italiana in
2014 placed Albanians as the second biggest community in 2013 with Romania being the
first and leaving behind Morocco, China and Ukraine. Previously, the 2012 report on
Albanian immigrants characteristics produced by the Ministry of Work and Social
Policies has prescribed the socio demographic profile of the Albanian community in
Italy. As it is shown, the Albanians represent the second community among regular
immigrant residents in Italy with 483.219 citizens or 14% of the total regular resident
immigrants in Italy.
Table 6: Non – EU citizens legally residing in a single country of citizenship (top 20 countries)
and gender (val. %). Data as of January 1, 2011.
Referring to the territorial distribution, the area of their major concentration is the north
Italy with 61% and the rest to the Center of the country with 27.5%. Among the first five
provinces are Milan, Brescia, Firenze, Roma and Perugia.
Most of them are males 54% but the distribution of ages among Albanian males and
females is almost identical. The age group of 18-34 composes 36% of the total Albanian
community and is the highest compare to other immigrant groups, followed by minors of
18 years old and then the group of 35-49 years old. Family is the principal motivation
and reason of the presence of Albanian in Italy and 53% of Albanians hold a resident
permit because of family reason while 43% because of working reasons.
54
In Italy, in 2011the working age population was 52 million out of which more than two
and half million non EU citizens. This group of non EU citizens is employed in 60%,
searching for a job 8% and non active by 32%.
From 2008 until 2012 the increase in employment for immigrants in Italy is the highest
and unique compare to the other strong European countries (CNA, 2013).
Italy, 133,3
Germany, 113,4
France, 105,2
Spain, 74,5
Figure 10: Immigrant Employment in Europe during Crisis
This increase in immigrant employment has strongly changed the Italian structure of
employment. Without immigrants the loss of job places would be the double of the
current one from -2, 3% to -5.2%. This strengthens the weight of the immigrant
component in the Italian economy which is the second in Europe after Spain concerning
the importance of immigrant employment in its economy.
FOREIGNER
S
ITALIANS
Figure 11: Employment according to nationality in Italy
55
TOTAL
This unusual increase in the employment between immigrants in Italy can hardly be
explained ore result neither due to an increased socio-political integration of immigrants,
nor due to more integration to the labor market too. We can notice that:
-
-
In fact, in time of crisis, immigrants are ready and apt to accept any kind of work,
compared to Italians
The above result of more or increased employment in immigrants can be affected
from the retarded statistical effect of the new techniques and rules entered in
common use recently.
The fact is that referring to other data and evidence the immigrant employment
rate is lower than the demographic increase in labor power between immigrants.
Regarding employment, the report of the Italian Ministry of Work and Social Policies,
states that Albanian community is ranked the first among other non EU communities
depending on the number of employees. Adding to this, 52% of Albanian population is
employed while unemployment rate is equal to 15%. The employment rate though is
below compared to that of non EU communities (59%) while inactive rates and those
searching for a job are higher compared to other components as shown in the report.
Figure 12: Employed (15 years old and others) per citizenship and economic activity sector (v. %)31.
31
Source: CNA
56
In 2012 the reports on Albanian immigrants regarding working as dependents resulted in
a number of 190 thousand out of which the quote of self employed owners in sole
proprietorships are about 30 thousand and it is very significant with a percentage of 11%
over the total non community origin business owners. During 2011 there was a positive
net of 3,200 units of activated employment relationships for citizen with Albanian origin.
The new jobs initiated during 2011 belong to the activities in the services sector (47%)
industrial sector composed of industry in strict sense and construction (37%) and
agriculture (21%).
Industry
Total
CITIZENSHIP Agriculture
from which
Total
Services
Albania
21.0
36.6
Industry
in strict
sense
26.7
Construction
10.7
47.4
93.767
Europe non
communitarian
Total Non
communitarian
country
15.1
25.5
17.3
8.7
63.0
258.210
15.1
24.7
10.9
14.2
64.4
786.034
Table 7: Foreign employees with non – EU citizenship least affected by activatin of job relation by sector of
economic activity.
4.2 THE AVERAGE ALBANIAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEUR
PROFILE
According to Carritas Italiana during 2012 more than 3% of the world population lives as
immigrants in another country while Europe and Asia host the majority of them with
approximately 2/3 of the total. At the beginning of 2011 within the European Union, fifty
million foreigners were residents mostly within five countries such as Spain, Germany,
Great Britain, France and Italy. According to the Italian Ministry of Work and Social
Policies in 2012, the last country, Italy, with 7.5% has lately seen an increase of
immigrants mainly distributed at the north part of it with almost 61% and central part
with 25%. This “growing of Italy thanks to foreigners” in 2013 is reported to be almost
8.2% more in 2013 compared to the previous year and they mostly come from Romania,
Albania, Morocco, China and Ukraine ( Carritas Italiana, 2014). This increase is observed
and monitored also in the context of dynamics of labor market where more than 2 million
foreign workers compose about 10% of the total employers and promote 7% of the total
enterprises.
57
Referring to the latest report of the National Confederate of Artisans and Small and
Medium Enterprise in Italy presented in 2013, the territorial distribution of enterprises
owned by immigrants in Italy is concentrated in the regions by 76.7% from which only
Lombardy 22.9%. This is explained by the fact that the concentration of the immigrant
entrepreneurships is related with the concentration of the immigrant population. An
important factor to this distribution is also the regional development map of Italy, where
Lombardy is the on the largest industrialized regions, and where the service sector is
largely development and with easier access to immigrant entrepreneurship.
Figure 13: The presence of immigrant enterprises in Italian Regions (Distribution in % over the
total immigrant enterprises)32
It is very important to know also the distribution of the nationalities of these
entrepreneurs. As shown from the graph below African immigrants from Morocco,
European immigrants from Romania and Asian immigrants from China are the first three
immigrant groups with the highest percentages of entrepreneurship. Albania, with 10.3%
is the fourth important immigrant entrepreneurship nationality followed by other
countries in less than 5 %.
32
CNA
58
Figure 14: Immigrant Enterprises present in Italy. Distribution in % according to the nationality
of the Immigrant
Referring to the above situation of the general view of immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy
and based on the statistical data of the concentration of Albanians mainly in the region of
Lombardy and Milan we decided to research on the profile f the average Albanian
immigrant entrepreneur in Milan. From the chamber of commerce of the province of
Milan we selected a population of Albanian entrepreneurs that had one main criterion
which fulfilled the needs for hypotheses test of our study. So, from the large number of
Albanian entrepreneurs we selected to research only on those who had 2 or more
employees. The total number of entrepreneurs coming out from the list of the chamber of
commerce taking into consideration the above criteria was composed by 204 businesses.
Because of many study restrictions and problems which will be stated in another chapter
of this study we reached and succeed in the completion of only 61 distributed among 61
Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs.
59
Figure 15: Albanian Immigrant Entrepreneurship based on dependents number
As shown in the above figure, the greatest share of the pie chart are the 22.22%, 16.67%
and the two other of 11.11% which respectively indicate the highest share of businesses
based on their numbers of dependents respectively 2, 0, 1 and 3.
The classification of Albanian immigrant business based on EU classification of
businesses
Class
Dependents number
Albanian Enterprises in %
Individual enterprises
0
16.7
Micro enterprises
<10
66.6
Small enterprises
10-49
14.8
Medium enterprises
50-249
1.9
Table 8: Classification of Albanian immigrants’ enterprises.
After having completed the 61 questionnaires from the population of our study we will
now present what we name as the average profile of the Albanian immigrant
entrepreneur. This profile is designed based on the data we summarized from the
questionnaires and then elaborated through SPSS in descriptive by creating frequency
60
tables. The average profile is in fact the life and business history of the Albanian
immigrant entrepreneur in the province of Milan built upon the response outcomes of the
entrepreneur himself.
The Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs in the province of Milan are almost males by
(92.7%) who born on average in 1972.
Gender
Percentage
Male
92.5
Female
7.5
Table 9: Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs by gender.
They were mainly born in big cities of the country mostly concentrated in central part of
Albania such as; Elbasan (9.8%), Durres ( 9.8%),Tirana (7.8%) and Kavaje (7.4%) and
southern west part of Albania in cities such as; Fier (7.8%), Lushnje (7.4%) and Vlora
(5.9%) and just a few, from northern Albania in cities of Shkoder (7.8%) and Kukes
(5.9%).
61
Figure 16: Territorial distribution of the city of birth.
Immigrants coming from western territories, as well as the north-western ones have had,
even in the past, good knowledge of Italian language and somehow culture, due to the
continuous contact they have had through Italian radio and TV media. The knowledge on
the language has helped them to choose Italy as the place of immigration, and further, has
helped them to integrate in the Italian labor market, and entrepreneurship too. This is
shown to be a strong factor in the trend immigrants have to choose the country to
immigrate. They have had no relatives there, nor have costs of immigrating been the main
factor for their choice. In case considering costs, Greece has been their main option.
Another factor has been the higher reimbursement on the work done in the Italian market,
rather than other neighbor countries. It is also proved by Albanian statistics that the
north-eastern part of the country, as well as the eastern and central one
The average Albanian immigrant entrepreneur in total has twelve (12) years of education
(46.7%) and also granted a diploma for that mainly in the capital, Tirana. He is married
and has children (76.6%) while his partner nationality is Albanian (88.6%).
62
Figure 17: Education Level of Albanian Entrepreneurs
When they were fourteen, they used to live in families with 4 members (32.4%) and 6 or
8 (33.3%). The family economic conditions were more or less the same (55.6%) compare
to the others in the city,
The years of arrival in Italy are 1991-1993 (25.5%) and 1997-1998 (24.5%) when he was
around twenty and had a job in the country of origin (44.4%) but the greater opportunities
to finding a better job attracted him to immigrate to Italy. The ones who have been in age
of labor, have been mostly suffering unemployment in Albania, or being employed and
suffering low salaries and incomes from their work done.
Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs were employed in the host country (83.3%) at the
moment before initiating their private entrepreneurship and mostly opened their own
enterprises in 2007 (11.3%) being employed as employees for more than 10 years,
accumulating experience and education necessary to open their own enterprises, by
founding it on their own initiative ( 79.2%) and using their personal capital (70.5%) for
the following reasons; to earn more (29.1%), valorize their capacities (23.6%) and having
a regular job (15.5%).
63
According to CNA report there is a strong concentration of almost 72.2% of all
immigrant enterprises in Italy in two main sectors; construction sector (37.2%) and trade
(35%). The high rate of concentration in commercial sector shows for high inclusion of
the immigrant entrepreneurship in the international trade and, considering the data on the
other immigrant ethnic groups, and the questionaries’ on the Albanian one, they clearly
show for high potential to transnational marketing channels establishment first of all with
Albania, and other countries as well.
Figure 18: Distribution of immigrant entrepreneurs according to activity sectors
The situation seems different compared to the Albanian immigrant entrepreneur group.
The average Albanian entrepreneur is engaged in activities within the construction sector
mainly (40.4%) and also services (17.3%) and restaurants (13.5%) with 2 or 3 dependents
and collaborators. Working in these sectors, mostly in construction, does not imply
imports from Albania, but they can be still consider as an enclave of consumption
assuming that they mostly hire Albanian employees.
64
Figure 19: Business Sector Concentration
The economic and financial crisis has significantly affected the Italian economy. It
entered in a new recession which is proved by the following numbers from 2011 to 2012.
Overall, 102,000 Italians lost their job places and almost 27.296 small business units
declared their failure. From the individual enterprises the most affected particularly were
those owned by immigrants by - 6.7% (CNA, 2013).
Individual
Enterprises with
Foreign Owner
Total Individual
Enterprises
Figure 20: Crisis impact over the Enterprises in 2012
65
Artisan
Enterprises
Total
Enterprises
During 2012 the decrease in enterprises number is spread in all the Italian territory with
Lombardy, Lazio and Campania taking the first three places. This decrease also happened
in each of the sectors by affecting more the trade, construction and services industry.
TRADE
CONSTRUCTION
OTHER ACTIVITIES
RESTAURANTS
OFFICE SERVICES
PERSON SERVICES
TEXTILES
TRANSPORT&COMMUNIC
Figure 21: The Decrease of Immigrant Enterprises in the Sectors
Very reflective is also the situation with the Albanian entrepreneurs.
They have declared that their number of depended and independents is decreased to the
last three years of their operation. This decrease is accompanied also by a decrease in the
turnover during the last 3 years (42%), being strongly affected by the crisis.
Dependent Percent
Valid
Missing
Turnover Percent
Increased
24.1
38.9
Decreased
35.2
16.7
Constant
31.5
37.0
Total
90.7
92.6
9.3
7.4
100.0
100.0
99
Total
Table 10: Dependent and Turnover trends the last three years.
Their market segment is concentrated in the province where they mostly sell their
products or services (34%) where 6-10 clients are business clients and have Italian origin
(66.7%) while suppliers can be both from the province or region (38%) and have Italian
origin (84.4%), too. In cases when there are suppliers from Albania the percentage of
purchases over the total is 2-5 %( 93%).
66
Typically the Albanian immigrant entrepreneur is not afraid by a particular competitor or
when it is the case mostly it comes from other non national immigrants. They believe that
making their enterprise more competitive they probably would need but are not very
secure if it will help, more professional dependents, or a better accounting and fiscal
consultancy, or someone to assist him in the relationship with staying permits and other
authorization documents, or investing more in publicity, or shorter internationalization
channels. He agrees on the other side that better access to credit will help them being
more competitive as well as increase the range of their products and services. Last, he
does not believe that competitiveness will be increased if they geographically move to
another province or area, or by employing more Italians.
Albanian entrepreneur do believe that relations with Italians (51.9%), as well as with
other immigrant non familiar co nationals (50%), relationship with other immigrants non
conational (50%) and family relations (40.7%) are very useful in managing their
entrepreneurship. On the other hand they are not sure if connections with Albanian
association in Italy or Albania or just Italian ones do influence their activity.
When searching for a collaborator or a dependent, the entrepreneur typically does not ask
or directs to another specific person for advices, neither does this for business consulting
purposes (62%). From the business experience they have accumulated until now, they
would agree or strongly agree that aspects such as; the desire to work, the
professionalism and experience, familiarity with Italians, professional experience and
traditions of their family and knowledge of Italian language are important aspects in
successfully managing their enterprise.
Valid
Percent
The desire to work
The professionalism and experience
Knowledge of Italian
85.9
84
Traditions and professional
experience of the family
77.6
55.3
The knowledge of the Italian
language
53.8
Table 11: Frequency table for influencing factors in enterprise management.
On the other side, the below listed aspects such as; possession of other foreign languages,
the support of conational group or associations, the support of local Italian associations
67
and institutions, connections with Albania, initial capital, family support, and instruction
are non-influencing or important factors in the managing their enterprise.
Valid
Percent
Knowledge of other languages
75.8
The help of associations or groups of
fellow
The help of associations or local Italian
institutions
Ties with Albania
71.3
68.5
68.4
54.1
The initial capital
55.3
The support of family
Education
54.1
Table 12: Frequency table for non influencing factors in enterprise management.
They have relations with other Albanian and Italian entrepreneurs in Italy but no relations
with Albanian entrepreneurs in home country (87.8%). Those who have do this for
buying and selling of products and services.
Concerning their family and children they actually do not prefer to inherit their business
activity to them rather than want the second generation to find a job different from theirs
thanks to a good education and diploma.
The people they mostly meet in the province they lived are Italians 55%.
Communication method with the clients is oriented mostly toward email communication
so no any marketing or other strategy is planned or implemented. They evaluate the
quality of their products or services or the good reputation as strengths for their business.
The following business activities and services such as: accounting, fiscal obligations,
information and technology assistance, and other are mainly done by the Italian
consultants.
68
Valid
Percent
Accounting
47.6
Tax obligations
44.7
Informatics assistance
42.7
Payroll and contributions
40.8
Rules on safety, hygiene
40.3
Other
2.9
Table 13: Frequency table for Italian consultant.
The study from National Federate is interesting the fact that from 2007 until 2013 there is
a positive and impressive increase in the total number of enterprises owned by
immigrants (39.2%)
Figure 22: Stock Increase in Enterprises of Immigrants in the Years of Crisis
Related to the economic crisis and the effects it has now and will have in the future the
entrepreneurs predict that it is improbable that they will close the business and sell it to
other, or close it to avoid other losses. They neither believes that after crisis the company
will not be strengthen but they will not sell their business to third parties nor close it
down. Albanian emigrant entrepreneurs think that it will not be probable to continue the
activity in another sector and not leave the management to their children.
69
Statistics
N
Probable
The company will be strengthened
Will sell the company to third parties
Close the company to avoid further losses
Close this company, but will open another
Activity will continue, but in a different sector
Find a better job as an employee
Give the management to the children
Other
Improbable
Missing
27.8
57.4
14.8
5.6
59.3
35.2
18.5
48.1
33.3
13.6
22.8
63.6
18.5
46.3
35.2
22.2
37
40.7
11.1
50.0
38.9
1.9
0
98.1
Table 14: Crisis Effect
As shown below, construction sector which has the greater concentration has also
experienced a higher decrease in turnover, followed by services sector. Some of
immigrant entrepreneurs have stated that their turnover has remained the same especially
those in constructions and commerce. This implies that the construction sectors during
the last three years has mainly had a decrease in turnover or the same amount while
services sectors mostly has experienced a decrease which means that is affected by the
financial and economical crisis of Italy.
Figure 23: Turnover effect based on sector
70
4.3 CHARACHTERISTICS OF FIRMS
Considering the topic of this study it is evident that our population is defined as Albanian
immigrant entrepreneurs who live and work in the province of Milan and who have
employed more than five people in their business. The initial data we gathered from the
Chamber of Commerce in Milan showed us a list of 204 Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurs which have their activity there. This number was not conditioned by the
number of employees. Out of this, those who had employed five people or more were a
number of 110 businesses which had a more integrated activity.
In order to have a clear view about the profile of the Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurship the data from Chamber of Commerce in Milan helped us to built tables
and graphs depending on different attributes and characteristics such as the sector of the
business, number of dependents and independents, fiscal code and the time being into
business. We will analyze below one by one each of these characteristics.
First, we start with the industry and the sector. For our study, it is very challenging to find
the data of the industry and the sector in which Albanians operate. For this reason, when
asking the Chamber of Commerce to provide us with information, the title of the business
and the description of the type of activity helped us to divide the industries and the
sectors for each and every of the 204 businesses. The table below shows the above
information.
Number
1
Sector
Beauty
Services
Cleaning
Services
Business Number
27,184,163,
Total
3
%
1.5%
4,9,43,49,55,56,93,112,124,125,126,132,187,149,
14
6.9%
3
Construction
Industry
1,2,6,8,11,18,21,22,23,24,25,30,31,34,35,38,42,48,51,
53,57,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,72,74,75,81,83,85,88,8
9,90,91,92,94,95,103,106,110,111,113,115,116,117,1
29,138,141,143,145,146,147,150,151,156,157,158,16
8,169,170,172,186,193,201,202,140,142,161,188,190,
75
36.8%
4
Insurance
28,
1
0.5%
5
Restaurants
3,7,17,19,20,29,36,39,50,68,79,84,87,96,97,100,102,1
09,119,121,128,131,134,136,144,153,154,155,159,16
0,175,177,178,181,182,189,196,198,128,173,148,195,
42
20.6%
6
Services
6,13,14,15,26,41,45,52,58,67,70,98,99,104,105,107,1
33,137,139,164,165,174,176,179,185,191,
26
12.7%
7
Trade
12,16,32,33,40,73,76,82,101,108,122,183,192,204,19
9,
15
7.4%
2
71
8
Standardizatio
n Services
5,10,
2
1.0%
9
Auto Services
37,86,167,
3
1.5%
10
Transport
Service
44,46,71,78,114,118,123,166,171,194,197,162,
12
5.9%
11
Tailoring
47,
1
0.5%
12
Mechanical
Engineering
69,77
2
1.0%
13
Furniture
Industry
80,
1
0.5%
14
Gardening
54,120,
1
0.5%
15
Other
Manufacture
127,200,
2
1.0%
16
Other Industry
130,
1
0.5%
17
Immobiliary
135,
1
0.5%
18
Dentist
152,
1
0.5%
19
Security
Services
203,
1
0.5%
204
100.0
TOTAL
Table 15: Immigrant Entrepreneurship by Sector
As detected from the table in total we have found nineteen different sectors and for each
of them we have noted the column business number which indicates the number of
business according to the list from the chamber of commerce and then in the next column
the total number of business for each sector. We have concluded this table by calculating
in the last column the percentages of the business in each sector. From the numbers above
it is easily noted that the construction sector, restaurant sector and services sector are the
ones with the highest total number of businesses and respectively have the highest
percentages.
More visually they are shown in the pie chart below. So to conclude, Albanian
entrepreneurship is composed by businesses which mostly operate in construction
industry with 36.76%, restaurant sector with 20.59% and services sector 12.75%.
72
Figure 24: Immigrant Entrepreneurship by Sector
Depend
ent
0
Business Number
Tot
al
26
Percenta
ges
12.75%
31
15.20%
40
19.61%
24
11.76%
12
5.88%
4
9,12,27,35,47,67,81,84,96,98,107,116,121,128,132,136,145,147,156,1
84,202,204,128,164,173,148,
4,13,14,18,29,33,52,68,69,74,80,86,89,95,101,104,110,117,120,125,12
6,150,153,168,175,193,127,133,140,142,195,
7,15,17,23,24,28,37,40,48,51,60,72,77,80,82,87,88,93,99,105,111,112,
113,114,115,119,123,129,134,138,151,154,172,178,182,192,196,201,1
76,200,
5,11,26,41,61,63,75,76,78,92,97,102,122,160,170,181,183,186,189,13
9,161,188,191,163,
6,16,25,42,53,59,70,73,85,141,157,152,
5
20,30,36,79,90,169,
6
8.70%
3,38,143,135,185,
1,103,118,144,194,
8,54,109,197,
9,47,64,179,
19,21,45,100,108,146,137,
50,106,155,177,203,
34,65,94,
187,
39,131,
5
5
4
4
7
5
3
1
2
2.45%
2.45%
1.96%
1.96%
3.43%
2.45%
1.47%
0.49%
0.98%
1
2
3
6
7
8
9
10
11
13
14
16
73
17
18
19
20
22
23
26
27
32
34
45
46
47
54
58
62
63
70
71
73
78
80
93
94
95
174
195
TOTAL
31,124,
83,
46,
190,
166,
32,58,
71,198,
62,
43,
162,
44,
165,
199,
57,
91,
56,
149,
158,
116,
49,
130,
55,
159,
66,
22,171,
167,
174,
2
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
204
0.98%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.98%
0.98%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.49%
0.98%
0.49%
0.49%
100.00%
Table 16: Entrepreneurship and Dependents
The next table gives evidence about the size of the companies defined from the number
of dependents. This characteristic was very significant or us to understand the importance
of the business for our study. From the table below we can easily take information about
the specific number of employees that any of the 204 business has.
To make this information useful its form in a chart gives feedback about the percentages
that all business within each category starting from 0 to 195 dependents have over the
total. As it is shown the bottom part of the chart has the longest lines which indicate that
firms with 0 to 6 dependents compose most of the part of this picture of 204 businesses.
74
95
80
71
62
47
34
26
20
17
13
9
6
3
0
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
Figure 25: Entrepreneurship and Dependents
Another indicator, part of our study, to complete the view of Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurship, is also the number of depends. This was also one of other information
we could initially gather from the list of the chamber of commerce. From the chart above
we can notice one very interesting fact. Almost half of the businesses have zero
independents and a significant number of them have just one.
4
0.52%
3
4.19%
2
19.37%
1
30.89%
0
0.00%
10.00%
45.03%
20.00%
30.00%
Figure 26: Entrepreneurship and Independents
75
40.00%
50.00%
Another information for our interest was the starting year of their activity. In general,
because the history of Albanian immigrants in Italy is closely related to the political
happenings in Albanian these mean that these years are the expected ones for
entrepreneurship. As noted from the chart above the overall outcome is that the trend is
increased, so the number of entrepreneurship is increased mainly starting from 1999.
Figure number 4 showing entrepreneurship birth by year has 2 axes; the horizontal one
showing the years starting from 1985 with only 2 businesses and then until 2012 and the
vertical axis showing the number of business that were founded in that year in different
sectors. The year 2008 has the maximum number of 35 businesses which mainly operate
in the transport service industry.
76
5. CONCLUSION, POLICY RECOMANDATION AND FUTURE
RESEARCH
Albanian immigrants in the province of Milan, Italy strongly think their involvement in
entrepreneurship can improve their social inclusion and status among local community.
Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs largely think their involvement in entrepreneurial
sector can have a strong impact in their increase in human capital, and in their social
inclusion and integration too.
They find that not just cost control can be their key for the success in their
entrepreneurship. Increasing skills and quality, as well as being informed and updated to
the new initiatives and generally to innovation are strong points of force in their
perspective success.
They are well orientated to social, professional and category networks other than of
Albanian ethnicity, looking for other standards than former Albanian ones on skills and
consumption they had.
They strongly believe that their attractiveness will increase based on their professional
progress and experience, and on their education as well.
They emphasize their important role in spreading out foreign standards of consumption in
their home country by transferring those to their parents, as well as during their visits in
the home country, asking very often for consumptions according to the foreign gusto and
standards.
They still are fare of thinking to bridge transnational and to benefit from this, even they
claim for shorter international marketing channels while talking about goods and services
supplies, operating with lower tariffs for intermediation and for lower costs of operation.
This could still help them to penetrate into the international market faster and with lower
prices.
They are open to modern society and foreign business, and their success is not oriented to
just Albanian ethnic enclaves of consumption. They emphasize as a very strong
advantage their weak ties with alters out of the Albanian enclaves.
They think their welfare and competitiveness can be strongly increased and improved,
being increasingly involved in entrepreneurial activities and being integrated to the
international market and to the modern society in the province of Milan.
Respecting international standards on quality, security, hygiene, health, process and
accountability can guarantee more competitive advantage for the Albanian products and
services.
Using also, as non-price factors, the marketing performance indicators in order to
internationalize more efficiently and faster too, are also prerogatives rising in front of the
Albanian companies and economy as whole.
The use of the Albanian immigrants and ethnic enclaves, both as consumers and
entrepreneurs, as a first step to going international with our “made in Albania” products
and services, can be a new challenge to be considered having present all the advantages
this can offer, which are already explored in other ethnic minorities cases worldwide.
This is also important when we consider that more than 1/3 of the Albanian citizens are
immigrants throughout Europe, which is too much higher than the immigrant enclaves of
other nationality even in the best cases of getting use of them in order to increase
internationalization of the home country products and services.
Furthermore, in order to give a complete meaning to the findings above, I emphasize that
77
going international does not mean being the cheaper one, but different, diverse and
variable, as well as with a granted origin, that “Made in Albania”.
EU standards implication for the Albanian economy is still an unused area to be
developed in order to move to international market with our Albanian brands, other than
price-option strategies.
The progress toward EU will no longer be just political and reformative for Albania, as it
has been mostly recently for the others in this process. It will be strongly focused on
several commitments, especially related to economic and market standards. This enforces
the idea of the use of other tools to this goal, like standardization of every element of our
economy and market, but in the fastest way possible, which implies for the immigrant
entrepreneurs’ experience through holistic and heuristic models.
Structural reforms to foster this new possibility for the Albanian economic
internationalization are necessary to take place in Albania. Those must aim the increase
of the immigrant investments in the home country and the establishment of transnational
marketing bridges increasing international exchanges with the foreign market. Fostering
these initiatives and investments with different facilities and policies of easy-to-dobusiness is very important to attract them to this process.
Even the immigrant entrepreneurs present important limitations in their perspective to
bridge transnational on this regard, they represent still a very important potential to the
process of EU integration by e devolutionary perspective. They are important
spontaneous ambassadors and intermediates to this perspective. While limitations are
related to their constant difficulty to be integrated abroad, sometimes to lack of business
and marketing skills due to their somehow weak education on market economies, foreign
competition directed to them as host country domestic businesses, their low social
inclusion and status abroad and their distance to home country as well.
The last crisis has increased their perspective of bridging transnational for the Albanian
brands, as they are facing difficulties doing the same duties till now to face their living
abroad. This is not just e possibility for the Albanian economy, but for them too.
This new role the IE can undertake could strongly improve their status of social inclusion
and their socials status too in the host countries they live and militate. Indirectly it could
increase Albanian products’ image and positioning to the international consumers.
Referring to organization in community or club level, Albanian immigrants recently are
also opted to network institutionalization, not very much ethnically oriented or focused,
as they still strongly evaluate weak ties with alters instead of strong Albanian enclave
based ties. They are often members of ethnic cultural organizations, but they rather prefer
strongly being part or member to non-ethnical business organizations. These are some
very important and clearly open-minded viewed efforts toward business networking
inclusion. They still have to develop and reinforce business ties with their home country
economy and bridge transnational in order to increase their role and attractiveness in the
international market through some bilateral faster opening between the two countries.
They have to increase their capacities in other managerial skills necessary for the
development of their businesses in order to standardize their businesses to the
international market.
Reinforcing enclaves in consumption increasing native brands and products introduction
into Italian market will increase their attractiveness in services and products to the
78
regional and local market using their large number of ties with alters to their immigrant
Albanian consumption enclaves.
Increased social and political activities by the Albanian government, institutions and
businesses involving immigrant community and businesses would also increase their
image abroad and reinforce their intermediation role in several international activities.
Albania have a quite full and rich package of regulation to increase foreign direct
investments home, but it still do not have such a package to attract Albanian immigrant
entrepreneurship investment and contribution to work on behalf of their home country, to
get use of our natural resources and genuine products and services to market those
abroad.
Albania must increase it commercial representativeness abroad in their diplomatic bodies
hiring representatives from the IE in the host countries. They will make it possible to
move faster in the foreign market with Albanian offers, and this will increase their social
and professional status abroad too.
International training and coaching bodies must be established and fostered by the
Albanian government attached to Albanian immigrant business enclaves and networks in
order to increase their professional capabilities in international marketing activities, and
other organizational and management issues as well.
For future research it should be considered that this thesis had also some limitations.
These limitations are principally related to the sample, aspect of formalization of
Albanian IE in Milan and Italy and poor information related to their status in Albania (
INSTAT or others).
79
APPENDIX
A.1 LIST OF ABREVIATIONS
Abbreviation
IE
MM
EE
SC
RGE
ExCT
InOEP
AvSC
IntRC
InPP
PDC
UCL
InfRE
AvMW
Explanation
Immigrant Entrepreneurship
Middleman Minority
Ethnic Entrepreneurship
Social Capital
Rate of Growth Exports
Export Costs
Inflation on Export Prices
Average Structure of Capital
Interest Rate of Credit
Index of Product Prices
Public Debt Cost
Unit Cost Labor
Inflation Rate of Economy
Average Monthly Wage
A.2. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AND GRAPHS TO THE PRICEOPTION APPROACH TO INTERNATIONALIZATION
Variables Entered/Removed
Model
Variables
Variables
Entered
Removed
EXPORTCOST
1
a
Method
. Enter
S, InOEP, PDC,
AvSC, IntRC,
InPP
b
a. Dependent Variable: RGE
b. All requested variables entered.
80
b
Model Summary
Model
R
1
.826
R Square
a
Adjusted R
Std. Error of the
Square
Estimate
.683
.207
Durbin-Watson
.23020
2.946
a. Predictors: (Constant), EXPORTCOSTS, InOEP, PDC, AvSC, IntRC, InPP
b. Dependent Variable: RGE
a
ANOVA
Model
1
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
Regression
.456
6
.076
Residual
.212
4
.053
Total
.668
10
F
Sig.
1.434
.379
b
b. Predictors: (Constant), EXPORTCOSTS, InOEP, PDC, AvSC, IntRC, InPP
Coefficients
Model
a
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized
t
Sig.
Coefficients
B
(Constant)
1
Std. Error
-2.483
6.527
IntRC
-.036
.107
InPP
.012
.028
81
Beta
-.380
.723
-.164
-.336
.754
.410
.417
.698
InOEP
.318
.136
.784
2.347
.079
AvSC
-.047
.124
-.164
-.383
.721
PDC
-.058
.192
-.145
-.301
.778
.003
.003
.617
1.083
.340
EXPORTCOSTS
Coefficients
Model
a
95.0% Confidence Interval for B
Lower Bound
(Constant)
1
Collinearity Statistics
Upper Bound
Tolerance
VIF
-20.604
15.638
IntRC
-.333
.261
.333
3.001
InPP
-.067
.090
.082
12.176
InOEP
-.058
.695
.711
1.407
AvSC
-.391
.296
.434
2.304
PDC
-.592
.477
.344
2.911
EXPORTCOSTS
-.005
.012
.245
4.088
Collinearity Diagnostics
Model
Dimension
Eigenvalue
a
Condition Index
Variance Proportions
(Constant)
IntRC
InPP
InOEP
1
6.900
1.000
.00
.00
.00
.00
2
.050
11.755
.00
.00
.00
.34
1
82
3
.029
15.547
.00
.00
.00
.40
4
.015
21.172
.00
.03
.01
.04
5
.004
40.278
.00
.24
.00
.00
6
.002
64.267
.00
.38
.02
.10
7
8.586E-005
283.483
1.00
.34
.96
.13
Collinearity Diagnostics
Model
Dimension
Variance Proportions
AvSC
1
a
PDC
EXPORTCOSTS
1
.00
.00
.00
2
.16
.00
.00
3
.18
.00
.00
4
.10
.08
.00
5
.00
.45
.01
6
.26
.02
.33
7
.30
.45
.65
Residuals Statistics
Minimum
Predicted Value
Residual
Maximum
a
Mean
Std. Deviation
N
.9399
1.5534
1.2155
.21352
11
-.25266
.22656
.00000
.14559
11
83
Std. Predicted Value
-1.290
1.583
.000
1.000
11
Std. Residual
-1.098
.984
.000
.632
11
Charts
84
85
86
A.3 DATASET QUESTIONS OF INTEREST/QUESTIONARE
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE ENTREPRENEURS
Entrepreneurial activity and the business
1. WHEN YOU DECIDED TO OPEN THIS BUSINESS WHAT DID YOU DO?
□ studied/housewife
□ were in search of an employment
□ worked
2. WHAT YEAR DID YOU STARTED THE ACTIVITY IN THIS BUSINESS? /__/__/
3. FOR WHAT REASONS DID YOU DECIDED TO START THIS ACTIVITY? (Put in
order the three most important reasons)
/__/ to earn more
/__/ to have a more regular work
/__/ to have a higher social status
/__/ to be independent without leaders
/__/ to enhance my skills
/__/ to enhance my knowledge in the field
/__/ because it was recommended to me by the previous employer
/__/ to be able to hire my family
/__/ I didn’t find another job
/__/ self-employment puts away racism and mistrust
/__/ to follow the family traditions
/__/ Other, please specify:
……………………………………………………………………………
4. HOW DID YOU START THE ACTIVITY IN THIS BUSINESS?
□ I founded
□ I detected by purchasing it from other
□ I inherited from a family member
5. TO FOUND THE COMPANY YOU USED MOSTLY (INDICATE 2 RESPONSES
MAX):
□ own capital
□ capital of family members and parents
□ loans from family and parents
□ loans from friends and compatriots
□ loans to banks
□ other sources (specify): __________________________________________________
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6. DESCRIBE THE TYPE OF ACTIVITY YOU SPECIFICALLY DO IN YOUR
COMPANY: (describe the processes for trade show retail, wholesale, import / export)
………………………………………………………………………………………………
…….
7. HOW MANY DEPENDENTS AND COLLABORATORS ACTUALLY WORK IN
YOUR COMPANY /__/__/
Of which:
family and
relatives
conationals
other foreigners
Italians
Permanent
employees
/__/__/
Occasional
collaborators
/__/__/
/__/__/
/__/__/
/__/__/
/__/__/
/__/__/
/__/__/
7a. If Italians 0: HAVE YOU EVER EMPLOYED ITALIANS? □ NO □ YES, IF YES
HOW MUCH IN TOTAL? /__/
8. COMPARED TO THREE YEAS AGO (OR THE BEGGINING OF THE ACITIVITY
IF THE COMPANY HAS LESS THAN 3 YEARS), THE NUMBER OF YOUR
DEPENDENTS/COLLABORATORS IS:
□ increased
□ decreased □ remained constant
9. COMPARED TO THREE YEAS AGO (OR THE BEGGINING OF THE ACITIVITY
IF THE COMPANY HAS LESS THAN 3 YEARS), THE TURNOVER THIS YEAR
WILL BE: □ lower □ greater □ more or less the same
10. WHERE DO YOU MOSTLY SELL THE PRODUCTS/SERVICES OF YOUR
COMPANY?
□ in the municipality / district
□ in the province
□ in the region
□ in more regions
□ abroad
□ mostly abroad (in which country? ____________________________)
11. CURRENTLY YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE MOSTLY (maximum two choices):
□ Italians □ foreigners of various nationalities □ countrymen □ Italians and foreigners
in the same way
12. FOR HOW MANY CUSTOMERS (BUSINESS) ARE YOU CURRENTLY
WORKING?
□1
□ 2-5
□ 6-10
□ 11-20
□ 21-50
□ 50-100
□ >100
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13. CURRENTLY YOUR MAIN SUPPLIERS ARE MAINLY (maximum of two
choices):
□ Italians □ Foreigners of various nationalities □ conational □ Italians and foreigners in
the same way
14. WHERE DO YOU USUALLY GET SUPPLIED?
□ in the municipality / district
□ in the province
□ in the region
□ in more regions: ___________________________________________)
□ in Albania
□ abroad
□ mostly abroad (in which country? ____________________________)
14a. IN CASE YOU PURCHASE GOODS FROM ALBANIA, WHAT IS THE % OF
ALBANIAN PRODUCTS OVER THE TOTAL?
□ 2%< □ 2-5%
□ 5-10%
□ 10-15%
□ 15-25%
□ > 25%
Company Strategies
15. IN YOUR COMPANY ACTIVITY YOU MOSTLY USE: (multiple choice)
□ e-mail
□ website
□ publicity
□ a brand that emphasizes your nationality
16. TO WHOM YOU DIRECT FOR THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITES?
Accounting
Wages and
contributions
Tax obligations
IT Support
Rules on safety,
hygiene, etc ..
Others: ____________
Yourself,
or
employee
□
□
Italian
consultant
Foreign
consultant
Trade
association
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
□
17. FACED WITH THE CURRENT CRISIS, WHAT WOULD BE THE STRONG
POINTS OF YOUR COMPANY? (multiple choice)
□ low prices
□ the quality of products / services
□ the very good reputation among customers
□ flexibility (ability to vary the pace of work and to follow the customer's requirements)
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□ being able to keep costs low
□ other, please specify:
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………
18. WHICH ARE ON YOUR VIEW THE WEAK POINTS OF YOUR COMPANY?
(Multiple choice)
□ competition from other companies of immigrants working in the same sector
□ the competition of Italian companies operating in the same sector
□ lack of access to credit
□ the lack of knowledge of public administration and of the Italian legislation
□ scarce professional knowledge
□ distrust of Italian society
□ excessive dependence on a limited number of customers
□ other, please specify:
……………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………
19. TODAY, WHO ARE THE COMPETITORS YOU FEAR THE MOST?
□ no, I do not have any particular problems of competition
□ my own conational
□ other foreign non conational (specify. __________________________________)
□ Italians
20. TO IMPROVE THE COMPETITIVENESS OF YOUR COMPANY, WHAT
ACTIONS YOU BELIEVE ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE?
Totally
agree
(5)
Agree
(4)
my company would
need to staff with an
adequate
professional training
better accounting
and tax consulting
someone to help me
in dealing with the
P.A. (permits,
authorizations, Legal
Compliance)
best channels of
access to credit
invest more in
advertising
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Uncerta Disagree
in
(2)
(3)
Totally
disagree
(1)
move the company
to another area
hire more Italian
increase the range of
items / sets
international
channels of
distribution shorter
Other, please specify: …………………………………………………………………
21. IN GENERAL, WHAT RELATIONS ARE MORE USEFUL IN THE
MANAGEMENT OF YOUR COMPANY?
Totally
agree
(5)
Agree
(4)
Uncerta Disagree
in
(2)
(3)
Totally
disagree
(1)
family relationships
relationships with
other fellow
countrymen (not
relatives)
relations with other
foreign non
countrymen
relations with Italian
relations with
associations of
compatriots
relations with
associations of
Albania
relations with Italian
associations
22. WHEN YOU WANTED TO HIRE, OR EVEN JUST LOOKING FOR A
COLLABORATOR, DID YOU DIRECT TO SOMEONE WHO COULD INDICATE
THE RIGHT PEOPLE?
□ yes □ no
22 a. IF YES, TO WHOM YOU ADDRESSED? (Multiple choice)
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To a family □ yes □ no
To compatriots non-relatives □ yes □ no
To other foreign non conational □ yes
□ no
To Italians □ yes
□ no
23. HAVE YOU EVER NEEDED LOANS? □ yes
□ no
IF YES, TO WHOM YOU ADDRESSED?
To a family □ yes □ no
To compatriots non-relatives □ yes □ no
To other foreign non conational □ yes □ no
To Italians □ yes
□ no
24. IN ADDITION TO THOSE MENTIONED, IS THERE ANY OTHER PERSON
WHO IS, OR HAS BEEN, PARTICULARLY RELEVANT FOR THE
ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY? □ yes □ no
IF YES,
Family □ yes □ no
Compatriots’ non-relatives □ yes □ no
Other foreign not compatriots □ yes □ no
Italians □ yes □ no
25. DO YOU HAVE RELATIONS WITH OTHER CONATIONAL
ENTREPRENEURS?
□ yes □ no
25 a. IF YES, HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE THESE RELATIONS?
□ predominantly of competition
□ predominantly of collaboration
26. DO YOU HAVE RELATIONS WITH ITALIAN ENTREPRENEURS?
□ yes
□ no
26 a. IF YES, HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE THESE RELATIONS?
□ predominantly of competition
□ predominantly collaboration
27. IN THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR BUSINESS ACTIVITIES, DO YOU
ENTERTAIN BUSINESS RELATIONS WITH COMPANIES IN YOUR COUNTRY
OF ORIGIN? □yes
□ no
IF YES, FOR WHAT REASONS? (Multiple choice)
□ to market goods / services
□ to acquire products / services
□ to commission the manufacture of finished products for sale in Italy
□ to acquire part time employers
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□ to obtain loans
□ to make investments
□ enterprise management (eg. partners, consultants, lenders: specify: _____________
□ other reasons: specify
______________________________________________________
28. ARE YOU ENROLLED IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ASSOCIATIONS?
□ association of fellow entrepreneurs, Name: __________________________
□ other body of compatriots (cultural, religious, recreational, etc.), Name_____________
□ association of Italian entrepreneurs, Name: _______________________________
□ other association of Italian (cultural, religious, recreational, etc.), Name:
__________________
To conclude, I would like your opinions on your business and prospective.
29. THINKING ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE, HOW IMPORTANT WERE THE
FOLLOWING ASPECTS IN STARTING AND MANAGING YOUR COMPANY?
Very much
Enough
(5)
(4)
instructions
the initial capital
knowledge of the
Italian language
knowledge of other
foreign languages
knowledge of Italian
family support
ties with Albania
traditions and
professional
experience of the
family
the desire to work
the professionalism
and experience
the help of
associations or local
institutions Italian
the help of
associations or
groups of fellow
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Don’t
know
(3)
A little
Not at all
(2)
(1)
30. ACCORDING TO YOUR OPINION WHAT WILL BE THE CONSEQUENCES OF
THE CRISIS ON YOUR COMPANY? WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR THE NEAR
FUTURE?
probably
improbable
The company will be strengthened
□
□
Divest the company to a third party
□
□
To close the company to avoid further losses
□
□
To close this company, but it will open another
□
□
Continue the activity, but in another sector
□
□
Find a better job as an employee
□
□
Will pass the management to the children
□
□
others: ………………………………………………. □
(This question only for those which have children)
31. THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF YOUR CHILDREN, WOULD YOU
PREFER THAT?
□ they find a job other than yours, thanks to a good degree
□ do experience in the industry and have the desire to manage and enlarge the business
□ turn back to home country and make a position there
□ strengthen the ties with Albania and empower the business and the activity
32. DO YOU THINK THAT THE WOMEN OF YOUR FAMILY MAY HAVE A
ROLE OF RESPONSIBILITY IN THE COMPANY?
□ no
□ yes
□ they already have
33. BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCE, WHAT ARE THE POLICIES AND
INITIATIVES THAT YOU CONSIDER MOST EFFECTIVE TO SUPPORT
IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
SOCIO-ANAGRAFIC PROFILE
34. NAME SURNAME: ……………………........…………
35. NAME OF COMPANY: ………………….....…………….
36. GENDER: (M)
(F)
37. YEAR OF BIRTH: 19/__/__/
38. YEAR OF ARRIVAL IN ITALY /__/__/
39. TITLE OF EDUCATION AWARDED: ……………………….. (Denomination
diploma)
39. a. TOTAL YEARS OF STUDY: /__/__/
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40. PLACE OF ACHIEVEMENT: ………………………….
41. PLACE OF BIRTH: ………………………………
42. HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE ON YOUR FAMILY (THE NUCLEUS OF LIVING
TOGETHER) WHEN YOU HAD 14 YEARS OLD? /__/__/
43. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF YOUR
FAMILY OF ORIGIN COMPARED TO THOSE OF OTHER LOCAL FAMILIES?
□ very good □ good
□ more or less like the others □ bad □ vary bad
44. ARE YOU MARRIED, OR LIVING WITH A PARTNER? □ yes
□ No
IF YES, INDICATE THE NATIONALITY OF THE PARTNER:
□ the same nationality of the respondent □ Italian
45. DO YOU HAVE CHILDREN? □ yes
□ other foreign
□ No
If yes how many? /__/
46. WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE YOU LEAVE YOUR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN?
□ studied
□ looking for a job
□ working
47. WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TOWARD ITALY? (Multiple choice)
□ the presence of parents in Italy
□ the presence of co nationals
□ ease of entry
□ cultural proximity / sympathy, interest in Italy
□ territorial proximity (the distance from your country)
□ opportunities to find a job
□ others (specify) __________________________
48. ALL THE PEOPLE THAT YOU HAVE KNOWN DURING YOUR STAY IN
ITALY IN THE PROVINCES WHERE YOU HAVE LIVED, ARE MOSTLY?
□ Italians □ foreigners of various nationalities □ conational □ Italians and foreigners in
the same way
A.8 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW, SECONDARY
DATABASE, ONLINE SURVEY
The request directed to the Chamber of Commerce in the Province of Milan to provide
and assist our research with the database of businesses located in the province and owned
by Albanians.
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Parts of the database and all the elements within it supplied from the Chamber of
Commerce in the Province of Milan for the Albanian immigrants who had a business in
the province.
97
98
The online survey at Obsurvey available for the Albanian entrepreneurs.
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A.9 SUCCESS CASES
Date 05/10/2012
Time - 11 am
Interviewer Name - Fredi Sota ( Administrator, Owner)
Company Name – K & K Construction
Sector – Construction
Mobile _ +39 39 27 19 36 34
Dependents – 11
My first interviewee was Fredi. I met him in Milan through Dimitra Sota, an Albanian
girl studying Law, whom I got acquainted with at the university residence when I first I
came here.
I first met Fredi 3 weeks ago in my city Elbasan, Albania, before this meeting in Milan.
He had been there together with another Italian investor to invest in a project of
reconstruction of facades of the Albanian mansions.
Fredi is a young businessman, around 40, but very realized and happy with what he had
built in Italy, including his family and business. He started telling me the story of his
immigration to Italy by pointing out the numerous difficulties he had faced at the
beginning, like the need to survive, finding a job and slowly being adapted to the Italian
life. His business was started by 2003, firstly as a personal business, and then after 5
years of continuous progress and success, became a company, named K&K Construction
in 2008, like the first letters of his children names. K & K has 11 dependents, 9 of which
are Albanians and just 2 of them Italians; the technician and his son. I went on with the
interview asking him about these Albanians, whether he did employ them, because of
their nationality or not. He smiled and answered: “Yes. I did employ them because their
nationality. I wanted to be helpful by giving them the opportunity to work in my
company.”
Later on Fredi reinforces this statement by giving arguments that for a company like
K&K, it is more expensive to employ Albanian workers rather than Italian ones, in terms
of salary. “Albanians, as foreigners have more living expenses, because they have to pay
their rents, but it is more comfortable to work with them in terms of working hours. They
need to work more than Italians do and they are available to work even on Saturdays and
Sundays and are really hard working and devoted to what they do. Albanians are not just
present to work, but they do really work”, Fredi concluded. He furthermore mentioned a
case of one of the Albanian workers, who is with physical disabilities, but which doesn’t
impede him from being a devoted worker. Even more, he is working in this company
since 6 years.
Another part of interest for me was also the kind of services he offered for the clients and
the kind of jobs his employees were specialized in. He answered that K&K offered many
kind of services within the construction service, such as building the structure of the
buildings, repairing the buildings and some other inside house construction services. His
employees were specialized in different working tasks such as mason, iron works, paving
tiles, painter and decorator.
Fredi stated that he also had some other partners whom he worked with, such as
architects and engineers, who were not his employees, but they were collaborating
together in every work.
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Services such as lawyer and economist which he needs for his business were provided by
people who were not his full time employees but whom he contracted every time he
needed their assistance
As competition is a very important part of my interview, I was very interested in what
would his answer be. Fredi claimed that his competitors were firms of the same kind,
owed by Albanians, namely “Drenica Construction SRL” and also firms owed by Italians
and Romanians. According to him, competition was very intense and hard, but when it
comes to Romanians it was harder, because they offered lower prices and probably not
the best quality in their work. The thing that was making him feel sometimes uneasy and
concerned was the informality of other foreign owed firms, which leads to an unfair
competition.
When it comes to clients, he said that the typical way to get clients was by personal
contacts and by working in a good and honest way, so that the word will be spread from
client to client, known as “passaparole” in Italian language. He was mainly working in
areas very next to Milan center, although his company offices were in Arluno, a province
of Milan. His clients were only private, that is companies or people and not governmental
institutions or tenders. “Working for government, means working to fail.” -Fredi said.
The last thing I asked him was about the relationship he had with other Albanians in
Milan, the way he was feeling represented within his community and how he was
involved in the social live of Italian environment with other Albanians. For Fredi, there is
not a “proper Albanian integrated community” and there is a lack of organization of
Albanian entrepreneurs. He stated that he would like to be part of something
institutionalized on behalf of Albanians in Italy.
Last, he mentioned that the only contribution he does, was financially supporting a team
of children with syndrome down on his own personal will.
Date 01/12/2012
Time- 10 am
Interviewer Name – Renato Skenderi (Administrator, Owner)
Company Name – Segrino
Sector – Restaurant Pizzeria
Mobile _ +39 33 98154388
Email – renatoskenderi@libero.it
Dependenti – 11
Renato Skenderi first came to Italy in March 1991, when he was 18.5 years old and
started working in this restaurant since the beginning as a manager of the business. Now
after 18 years, he owns part of the business.
Renator Skenderi, was born in Vlora and lived in Elbasan until he left Albania. He
opened the business on his own name on 6th of October 2009, a business which had been
operating since 40 years from his ex owner and employer. Now it is owed and directed
from Renato and the previous owner’s son.
The restaurant offers Italian food and plates, but not Albanian typical plates and there is
no such plan for it in the future, because of the long tradition of the restaurant.
Concerning to competition, Renato states that his business is facing it a lot, mainly
because of the geographic location of the restaurant, which is positioned in the main
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street, which is full of other restaurants. His strategy to face competition is; a very good
quality of products and service and reasonable prices.
Related to clients, Renato states that his clients are both Italians and Albanians. The
Albanian clients are mainly his friends and relatives from Albania. The number of
Albanian customers compared to Italians is very small though.
He has employed 9 people in his business. Only 2 of them are Albanians, 3 Italians and
the rest from other nationalities such as Chinese or Egyptian. The Egyptian employee is
the one who prepares the pizzas in the restaurant. One of the Albanians employed in the
restaurant is his brother, who came to Italy after Renato did, and he is a cooker.
Concerning to Italian employees, he added that they are responsible for the service in the
restaurant and also very qualified in doing their job.
Renato, looks after the business and manages all the activity. Beside that, he also enjoys
preparing deserts for the clients, a passion learned since many years ago from an Italian
cooker, who made him a specialist in preparing deserts.
While talking about Albania, Renato states that he is very open to the possibility of
turning back some time in the future and he is also attentive to what happens and how is
Albania developing with years. To reinforce this, he also emphasized that he has its own
plans to invest in the near future in the construction sector in Albania, together with some
other Albanian friends of him in the city of Tirana and Elbasan.
Renato, as a representative of his business, is not part of any association of entrepreneurs,
just part of “Albania e Futuro” association, that is more culturally focused, but he is
willing to know if there will be any Albanian organization that will stand for them in the
future.
Date 03/12/2012
Time 11 am
Interviewer Name – Ervin Berberi ( Administrator, Owner)
Company Name – Berberi Ervin
Sector – Edile
Mobile _ +39 335 8765580
Email – ervin.berberi@fastwebnet.it
Ervin.berberi@gmail.com
Dependents – 5
Ervin immigrated to Italy on December 1998, after he gave up his studies at the
University of Tirana, Faculty of Law, because of political and economic reasons. Once he
came here it was difficult to immediately integrate into the working environment and it
was difficult for him to immediately start working full time. Luckily after 1 year of living
in Italy, he started working in the construction sector, which is, doing the same things he
is doing today in his own business.
His activity offers services in the construction sector, which include: processes of
asbestos removal in the buildings, cover installation and building of iron silos.
He had 4 dependents at the moment we were doing the interview, but he mentioned that 6
months ago he had 10. The reason of this reduction was because of the crisis and
considering the non-continuous work, he could not employ them all the time during the
year. It was very surprising for me to learn that he did not have any Albanian employee
and that all of them were from other nationalities.
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The way he finds his clients is through two ways, namely through friendship ties and
through suppliers. He is not involved in any public tender in working for institutional or
governmental sector. In order to have a spread work and clients, his work was not
concentrated only in Milan and regions nearby, but in all Italian cities, France and
Switzerland.
When it comes to competition, Ervin is very clear of his strategy. “Competitors? No, I am
not afraid of them. When they are stronger than me, I try to collaborate and work with
them.” After listening to this sentence, for one moment I was trying to think and clarify
things with myself concerning to the fact that why he said it and why he uses such a kind
of strategy.
Ervin was very straightforward and answered that he really meant to be friend with them,
to present himself and his company, to accept that they are strong competitors, but that in
some cases, they would need his work in order to proceed faster and finish in time.
Rumanian and Arabic originated companies were the strongest competitors according to
him, but because of the irregularities, he faced unfair competition. Meanwhile, Italian and
other Albanian firms were not a threat to him, as he stated previously. “We are working
under the same conditions and I am not afraid of Italian and other Albanian firms. What I
am afraid from, are Rumanian and Arabic people, this is due to the fact that for them the
only important thing is to work, without considering the quality. I can also claim that for
me and other Albanians it is very important to integrate into the Italian society, so we do
care about social ties with Italians, living in better social and home conditions, while for
them this is not that important. They just get the money, if not convenient, they go back
to their country and do not care about anything.” -Ervin said.
Coming to prices, Ervin claims that the price he puts to his service is a combination of the
market prices and his own contribution. What is important for his services, is to perform
a high quality service and be quick. “Time is a very significant element in satisfying my
customers. The quicker you are the more expensive your service will cost.”-he stated.
When it comes to Albania, not alike to my other interviewees, who at some level were
open to the possibility of turning back and investing, Ervin already passed that stage. He
is open to his country of origin and interested in the recent development of it, but not so
enthusiastic that someday the things will function properly. He already did an effort to
invest in Albania some years ago, but was not successful, because of the institutional
bureaucracy and corruption. He does not think to invest anymore.
At the end Ervin gave me his contact details and I suggested him to have a profile of his
company in any social network, or his company webpage for others to find it easier to
contact him. He smiled and told me that he was planning at least to open his own
Facebook page, so he can update and manage it very easily and afterwards to proceed
with a web page. Before leaving, Ervin gave me a gift of a very nice black pen with a
label on which were written all his company contact details. Very happy and also
enthusiastic of his action, we left and agreed to contact again when the time of his uncle
interview will come. While walking across the Duomo, toward the end of the square,
Ervin advised me that next time instead of meeting people one by one, it would be better
to meet in groups of 3 or 4, giving the interviewees the chance to discuss with each other
and so providing more diverse information. I thanked him for his advice and his time and
said goodbye.
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Date 03/12/2012
Time 15 am
Interviewer Name – Arben Bashmeta ( Administrator, Owner)
Company Name – L’Adriatico and Splendido
Sector – Construction and Cleaning
Mobile _ +39 348 3303 101
Email – arben.bashmeta@fastwebnet.it
Web address - http://www.splendidosas.it/
Dependents – 40 and 65
Now let’s pass to the last interview I am going to write for today, but not the least. I am
talking about the businessman Arben Bashmeta, the very nice man I spoke to on the
phone and whom I got acquainted to on Monday around 3 pm. I had to take 3 types of
public transports in order to meet him; one tram and 2 metros of different colors. After
one hour within Milan, when I got out of metro and underground, I was surprised to see
another part of the city, full of life, people, traffic, buildings and still named Milan.
I was trying to get the orientation with two kinds of maps and finally I managed to find
the place. It was with blue railings and in a white advertisement in front of it was written:
“L’Adriatico di Arben Bashmeta”. Arben was out of his office, at the very end of the
road, waiting for me.
The history starts in 1992 when Arben, 20 years old from Kavaja, left his own country
and came to Italy with a boat. “I had a cousin of mine here in Milan, but when I came
here no one was expecting for me and even more I did not know any Italian words. The
first months I lived on the road and after that I started working in a mansion where I got
paid 100,000 Italian Lira (around 50 Euros). It was not enough, but at least they provided
me accommodation, so I had a place to have a shower, live, eat and sleep.” This is how
Arben reminds of his first years here in Milan. He came to Italy after a bad experience of
immigration to Greece. As an answer to my question on why it had been a bad
experience, I got this: “In Greece I found just violence. The police arrested me and they
just violated me, so I turned back from Greece and tried again in Italy. I borrowed the
amount of 380,000 Albanian Lek (around 270 Euros) from my relatives and friends and
came to Italy. My mother and dad did not agree with this and when they learned that I
borrowed money to come to Italy, caused them health problems.”
Arben worked for 4 or 5 years until 1997 in construction industry as a mason and during
5 or 6 months of the year at night as a transporter of back garbage sacks. During the night
job he met a residential building administrator, who first advised him to start the business
of cleaning on his own. Considering his advice, with the help of the Italian administrator
and one economist,
who helped him with administration and institutional documents, within fears of the
challenges of the new business, he opened his own license. “When they told me you
should put a name to your company, I answered: “I will put the name on my own and I
know which one. It will be called “L’Adriatico”, like the sea. It was the Adriatic Sea
which brought me to Italy.””, he said. This is how “L’Adriatico” company was founded
on 15th of September 1998.
Until 2002, L’Adriatico offered only cleaning services for clients, but after this year he
expanded the range of services with restructuring of buildings and apartments. In 2003,
Arben together with his brother Bledar Bashmeta, who later came to Italy because of him,
104
founded Splendido S.A.S, a company only for cleaning and disinfection services.
Nowadays Splendido is owned from both brothers, respectively with 51 and 49%.
Regarded to competition, Arben is very open to say that there are many cleaning
companies, but the only threat comes from Egyptian competitors, who play an unfair
game by putting prices under cost. Nevertheless, he states that his company has an
advantage, because of the long experience in the market, the very good quality of service,
the very reasonable price and also the speed of performing the service for the clients.
L’Adriatico has a 24 hours team for service and a green number, which clients can call
any time and the team goes immediately to solve the problem. This is a very strong
advantage, Arben states that he has, compared to other companies. Almost half of his
employees are Albanians and half are Italians. All of them are qualified in doing their
specific jobs and the specialization is very important in the sector he is operating. “The
Albanian employees I have in my company are all persons I used to know before
employing them, or presented here through another friends of mine and I employed them
to help, but I am also very demanding when it comes to work.”- Arben says.
Related to prices, Arben states that most prices are predetermined from the Chamber of
Commerce and he has only 10% of tolerance to change them. Usually he tries not to be
cheap in his offer, because the cost of material is part of his pricing structure and he has
chosen to collaborate with high quality companies to purchase the raw materials.
“Sometimes the clients are the ones to decide about the price. This is the case when
clients want to restructure the houses and they ask for the most expensive material in the
market. They pay the extra cost for this.”-he said.
Arben mentioned his suppliers as e very important factor of the success of his company.
He operates with an Italian company since 12 or 13 years to purchase the raw materials
and furniture for apartments. He feels very comfortable in working with only one
supplier. Doing this he is being helped in his everyday work by his partnership and given
facilities in paying terms. “I purchase materials every day and I do not need to go on my
own. My employees may purchase anytime the materials are needed and my supplier
gives me the right to pay every 60 or 90 days.”-he said.
“About Albania, if I could I would turn back even tomorrow. Probably I am tired with all
of this, but now I have my family here, my sisters and friends, so I will not turn back.” –
he stated. In Albania he has invested in apartments and is doing a business in renting
apartments in a city like Durres, which is full of tourists, because of the sea. He is
working on that business since 8 or 9 years and it is his father who is looking after the
apartments and rents.
105
Date 08/12/2012
Time 10:52 am
Interviewer Name – Vladimir Bardhi ( Administrator, Owner)
Company Name – Alba 2000 di Vladimir Bardhi and La Bussola di Colombo S.R.L
Sector – Bar, Tavola Calda, Pizzeria and Ristorante Pizzeria
Mobile _ +39 338 6074 588
Email – info@labussoladicolombo.it
Web address - http://www.labussoladicolombo.it
Dependents - 5
Vladimir was the last interviewee I planned to have and one of the most interesting. Mr.
Bardhi founded his business together with his wife Karla. He immigrated to Italy at the
early 90’s. At the beginning he was working day and night to survive. During the days he
used to work in a construction company and at the late evenings in a pizza restaurant,
where he also learned a lot from this business. His long experience in the restaurant
business helped him to develop the idea of opening his own restaurant, the one which
today is called “La Bussola di Colombo”. Mr. Bardhi has 9 full time employees in his
business and all of them are immigrants. His business is a family business, because his
daughter Elda also contributes every day for the maintenance of the restaurant. During
the conversation he told me that the way of surviving in the environment of a strong
competition is being devoted for 16 to 20 hours a day at work. “When it comes to
competition, the combination of many factors such as good service, good quality and
reasonable prices are promising to be successful” Mr. Bardhi states.
106
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