Abstract
Objective
The aim was to examine how intergenerational family relations shape entrepreneurial identity in migrant households in Italy.
Background
Economic approaches to migrant entrepreneurship often overlook intra-family identity work and moral negotiation. This study interprets intergenerational tensions through Rindova et al.’s (2009) “entrepreneuring as emancipation” and Kulshrestha et al.’s (2024) typology of cause−/effect-driven and sameness/otherness-oriented identities.
Method
A narrative-comparative design was employed in six Italian cities, involving 27 participants from 11 countries, with data collected through repeated individual and joint parent–child interviews and analyzed using thematic and narrative identity approaches.
Results
First-generation entrepreneurs construct legitimacy through legality, stability, and incremental provision for kin, framing small business ownership as a redemptive escape from precarity. Second-generation actors partially recast entrepreneurship around aspiration, autonomy, managerial control, and sectoral rupture; some normalize informal or illicit circuits as strategic adaptation to exclusion. Legitimacy and risk are negotiated within parent–child interactions and further racialized in external labor markets and regulatory arenas.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurial identity in migrant families constitutes a contested moral field produced through intergenerational negotiation rather than a linear pathway to integration.