El emprendimiento social¿un mecanismo de integración de la población inmigrante?

Zusammenfassung

Social enterpreneurship allows us to conceive of immigrant collectives as social key players, able to build mechanisms to ensure their integration, from their own social experience. However, this is only considered a priority in very few countries when addressing social integration policies. Therefore, this research is aimed at analysing the effects of social enterpreneurship in the process of immigrant integration. The assessment is focused on three relevant variables concerning integration: educational level, labour market access and social participation. We can confirm that the targetted objective has largely been achieved, enabling Public Administration and other entities to obtain relevant findings and conclusions in social integration policies. Additionally, the theoretical value of the reviewed literature and the empirical value of the social enterpreneurship case studies, justify the importance of this very timely research. Methodologically, this research has been tackled from a qualitative prospective, supported by an ample theoretical international framework regarding ethnic and social enterpreneurship. Field work has focused on the completion of in-depth interviews with 101 immigrant and Spanish social entrepreneurs and 13 experts, residing in the Community of Madrid. The immigrant collective was made up of: Ecuadorians, Colombians, Peruvians, Venezuelans and Dominicans. Like immigration, social enterpreneurship is a selective process. Factors such as: social participation (social and relational capital), high educational level, ICT skills and economic resources, increase the possibility of success in social enterpreneurship. Moreover, such factors also profit from the enterpreneurial initiative, creating a ¿virtuous circle¿ which increases the capacity of the enterpreneurs in with regards to the aformentioned factors. This research concludes that through social enterpreneurship and from their own experience, the immigrant collective combines their aspirations and abilities to facilitate their integration, in a society which is not prepared to include them and would otherwise leave them out of the system. In this regard, immigrant association capacity is essential to undertake social enterpreneurship. Immigrants must have access to social enterpreneurship, not as an option of self-employment to face a precarious context, but as a provision which fosters their human development. Key words: social enterpreneurship, ethnic enterpreneurship, cultural diversity, social innovation, immigrants, social integration.