From Researcher: The Resources of Diaspora Networks Should Be Utilised

​Diaspora networks are often unofficial, ethnic and social networks where the members’ common denominators are home country, culture, language or tradition. Personal diaspora differs from the migrant or immigrant concepts in that it does not only refer to the person’s official status in the country of origin and in the new home country but also takes into account the person’s identity and the sociocultural aspects in the continuum of generations. The diaspora networks often include immigrants in many generations and extend to several different countries.

There is a great deal of different forms of entrepreneurship within the diaspora networks, which have not been much researched in Finland. In Finland and in many other countries as well, the picture of the immigrants’ businesses is often very one-sided and entrepreneurship is thought to be almost forced. It is true that many immigrants become entrepreneurs out of necessity, but the diaspora networks also offer resources for immigrant businesses which the original population does not necessarily have.

A successful diaspora entrepreneur usually has a strong international network and, among other things, opportunities for information retrieval, financing and receiving support as well as channels for export and import that cannot be seen from outside the diaspora. In addition, the value, moral and religious systems can offer a kind of an express lane especially for international business by speeding up the establishment of trust and the development of business contacts. If the diaspora networks and their influence are not researched, many mechanisms that could be used more widely in the economy are left undetected.

Bringing the operations of the diaspora networks to light would also offer new points of view to the often heated discussion on immigrant entrepreneurship. For example, in Germany, where many lines of business would face great difficulties without the resources of the diaspora networks, the populist debate promotes the accumulation of social tension and, in its part, impedes the alleviation of the labour shortage in the economy. In Finland as well, many cleaning, restaurant and building companies are dependent on the diaspora resources. At the same time, the lack of understanding also leads to misspending the resources: the expertise found in the diaspora networks is often unused which is troublesome for the individual but also to the economy.

In international business, ethnocentrism is still a big problem. We should take into account in global competition what the emigrants, immigrants and their networks can offer for the Finnish business life. One example is that the Finnish companies do not utilise the expertise of the Finnish emigrants in their business abroad. In export, the companies should invest in the understanding of the needs and methods of their clients. Both industry and trade should take notice of the richness and the management of their networks in different countries.

The writer works as Post-Doctoral Researcher of International Business at Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. Elo coordinates an international research project, Diaspora Networks in International Business, which includes several different research projects and researchers from Israel, Greece, Germany, China, the United States and Uzbekistan. The subprojects of the research study, among other things, the different types of diaspora entrepreneurship, the dynamics of the countries of origin and the new home country in the developing markets, high-growth entrepreneurship in the diaspora networks, the mechanisms of the family and the sociocultural relationships, ethnicity and the influence of identity, as well as the negative implications of the diaspora networks within the framework of illegal business. In addition to producing new information, the goal is to advance decision making and business know-how.

Maria Elo has lived for a long time in Belgium, Greece and Germany, participated in different kinds of diaspora networks, and been actively involved in international trade and consulting.

Photograph: tryingmyhardest