The Resilience of Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Some Lessons to be Learned

Surviving as a foreign entrepreneur in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world requires a thorough analysis of immigrant entrepreneurship so as to understand how they cope with an ever-changing business environment. This research aims to explore three aspects: (1) the way immigrant entrepreneurs (IEs) in Canada demonstrated resilience in the face of economic, cultural, and integration barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) the strategies and personal skills that contributed to the resilience of immigrant entrepreneurs; and (3) the lessons to be learned from that experience. The study employs qualitative methodology. A total of 64 IEs engaged in various business activities were interviewed. The empirical data collected were subjected to thematic analysis. The results reveal the ability of IEs to overcome numerous challenges and reconcile multiple identities. Their adaptation strategies in different roles demonstrate the interconnectedness between their entrepreneurial activity and personal and social life. IEs that were resilient during the pandemic developed innovative strategies based on skills such as strategic capacity, adoption of technological innovations in business processes, peculiarity in their marketing activities, well-orchestrated diversity of resource, and use of social networks. Furthermore, to overcome the challenges of adaptation, it is essential to enhance the resilience of families and communities, ecosystems, and the ecosystem services on which these communities depend. Finally, the results highlight a clear tendency to benefit from both the ethnic communities and the mainstream (dominant) market. This finding challenges the commonly accepted assertion in the literature that “the competitive advantage of immigrant entrepreneurs derives from their ability, first, to leverage their community (ethnic enclave strategy), and then, to integrate into the general market of their host country (break-out strategy).” This mix of strategies shows that immigrants develop their strategy through a triple process: analytical (positioning), mental (cognition), and emergent (learning). By studying IEs from this perspective, this work identifies new strategic practices and interactions between social roles. It challenges the traditional understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship, which produces an incomplete view of entrepreneurs based on an “ethnic OR dominant” dichotomy, thereby overlooking the cognitive ability to reconcile “ethnic AND dominant.”