Diversity Matters: Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Contribution of Different Forms of Social Integration in Economic Performance of Cities

Download

index.pdf

Date

2010-01-01

Author

Eraydın, Ayda
Vranken, Jan

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

113
views

220
downloads

While it is quite common in studies of diversity to focus on its negative aspects, this paper specifically aims to emphasize the contribution of immigrants to the urban economic performance. By exploring different kinds of social integration, this paper discusses how immigrant groups can be important agents of urban economic growth and competitiveness by liberating creative forces and enhancing the competitiveness. Immigrant entrepreneurship is defined as the most important means of social inclusion and sustained economic performance in two different cities, with different features yet hosting considerable number of immigrants with diverse characteristics, namely Antwerp (Belgium) and Izmir (Turkey). The findings of our two case studies reveal that different kinds of diversity play an important role in urban economic performance. Immigrants contribute to the growth of different forms of production and services, not only because of their talents and skills, but also because of their social connections. Social capital enables immigrants to survive in a recipient country, and integrate into an economy as active agents. They can fill the gaps in an economy as entrepreneurs or the skilled labour, which are the most important assets for the cities aiming sustained economic growth in volatile economic conditions.

Subject Keywords

Innovation, Cohesion, Competitiveness, Neighborhoods, Governance, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, City

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/32025

Journal

EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/09654311003593556

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Governing Urban Diversity: Creating Social Cohesion, Social Mobility and Economic Performance in Today's Hyper-diversified Cities (DIVERCITIES) Eraydın, Ayda(2017-1-28) The central hypothesis of this project is that socio-economic, socio-demographic, ethnic and cultural diversity can positively affect social cohesion, economic performance and social mobility of individuals and groups. A better social cohesion, higher economic performance and increased chances for social mobility will make European cities more liveable and more competitive. In this period of long-term economic downturn (or sometimes even crisis) and increasing competition from countries elsewhere in the wor...
Cosmopolitanism and nationalism in a globalized world Yegenoglu, M (Informa UK Limited, 2005-01-01) The disenfranchised subaltern groups of the South disappear from the current Anglo-American cultural studies discourse on globalization as their conditions are made synonymous with the diasporas in the First World centres. However, if we do not take the metropolitan situation as the sole important site of transnationality, but turn our attention to the lives of subaltern groups in the South we will gather a different picture of globalization. The essay discusses the various ways in which cosmopolitanism is ...
Cultural production and urban locality in the fields of jazz and fashion design İlkuçan, Altan; Rittersberger Tılıç, Helga İda; Department of Sociology (2013) This study aims to analyze the relationship between cultural producers in Istanbul and the wider processes of neoliberal urban restructuring that takes in their surroundings. The study uses a Bourdieusian framework to uncover such relationships between cultural producers and external influences on their respective fields. By focusing on the case of two fields (jazz and fashion design) as located in Kuledibi, Galata, the study aims to establish a localized perspective to the relationship between the cultural...
Changing Istanbul City Region Dynamics: Re-regulations to Challenge the Consequences of Uneven Development and Inequality Eraydın, Ayda (2011-01-01) In this paper, it is claimed that the dynamics that enabled the emergence of city regions as new places of globalization brought about significant changes and restructuring in these areas in the early years of neo-liberal policies. Subsequently, from the 1990s onwards a new neo-liberalist agenda, in reply to the problems of the early period of globalization, defined new relations and new dynamics for city regions. The aim of this paper, with the help of earlier Istanbul case studies, is to discuss the chang...
Diversity in times of economic crises: changing discourses and policies on diversity in European countries and Turkey Güngördü, Feriha Nazda; Eraydın, Ayda; Department of City and Regional Planning (2015) Over the course of thirty years, urban diversity has become one of the most much-debated discourses in the urban agenda with the increasing dominancy of neoliberal policies in cities. In neoliberal era, diversity in cities has been associated with economic growth and development scenarios which aim to benefit from the positive contributions of diverse identities to the economy. However, diversity has not always been valued or enhanced in cities. Especially in economic crises periods, diversity in cities is ...

Citation Formats

A. Eraydın and J. Vranken, “Diversity Matters: Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Contribution of Different Forms of Social Integration in Economic Performance of Cities,” EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES, pp. 521–543, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/32025.