Studentships
Business School
The Impact of Racism on Small, Medium, Minority Ethnic Enterprises
Dr Geoffrey Whittam
geoffrey.whittam@uws.ac.uk
Much of the established research into Minority Ethnic Enterprises identifies that racism plays a part in key aspects of these businesses. In particular it is argued that discrimination within the labour market is one of the reasons why a disproportionate number of self-employed and small business owners are from ethnic minority communities. It has been noted that the relatively low up-take of business support, and the lack of utilisation of formal banking services, by minority ethnic businesses may be due to discrimination amongst service providers. However, there has been only a limited attempt to measure the impacts of racism in restricting the growth and development of Small Medium Minority Ethnic Enterprises. Additionally, research to date is limited in investigating minority ethnic business owners in their role as service providers.
The proposed studentship will seek to fill these gaps in our existing knowledge. It is anticipated that a mixed embeddeness approach will be utilised in an attempt to gain a greater understanding of how racism impacts on the development of Small Medium Minority Ethnic Businesses.
Paisley Enterprise Research Centre (PERC) has a strong reputation for research into Minority Ethnic Businesses with several publications by staff associated with PERC. Most recently work by Hussain-Ishaq, Ishaq and Whittam has identified the extent of racism faced by Minority Ethnic Small Retail Businesses but more research needs to be undertaken to identify the detailed impacts of this phenomena.
It is anticipated that the proposed research will add to the existing research base within PERC, existing established research generally and will have far reaching policy implications.