The Forgotten Enclave Strategy: An Institutional Work Perspective

Immigrant entrepreneurship has garnered global attention as a burgeoning phenomenon. Importantly, recent research portrays micro and small business owners within ethnic enclaves as necessity entrepreneurs constrained by limited growth prospects. This chapter presents the institutional work employed by earlier Taiwanese immigrant entrepreneurs in Sunnybank Brisbane that enabled the achievement and maintenance of incumbency over time in both the ethnic enclave itself and Brisbane more generally. Drawing from interviews, historical data, and secondary sources published on the internet and in chamber yearbooks, this chapter illuminates how the combination of home-host country institutions enabled the transformation of farmland into vibrant ethnic urban residential and commercial hubs that facilitated the generation of financial wealth and political influence of this group of immigrant entrepreneurs. This chapter provides valuable insights into our understanding of ethnic enclave emergence and transformation. Challenging conventional research in this field, it highlights the role of immigrant entrepreneurs as purposeful institutional workers who not only craft their unique paths to prosperity but contribute to the creation of wealth and the configuration of ethnic identity, norms, and culture.