Family ties: Migrant female business owners doing identity work on the public–private divide

Data collection and data analysis: The life-narrative approach

In keeping with McAdams’s (1997) life-narrative approach, 20 women of Turkish or Moroccan descent, who were starting or running enterprises, were interviewed. The first author – a female Dutch academic who has distant Turkish ancestry – conducted these 20 interviews. This sample was established following a snowball sample method. ‘Snowballing involves recruiting individuals to collect data from other individuals whom they think meet certain inclusion criterion defined by the researcher’ (McGee et al., 2009: 974), and has been proven to be a useful technique when dealing with populations that are difficult to identify. The snowball technique is relevant here, because female business owners of Turkish and Moroccan descent are unseen groups as the Chamber of Commerce does not register ethnicity.

McAdams’s life-narrative approach is a specific form of the narrative approach that is gaining widespread recognition in organization studies (see, for instance, Boje, 2008; Clandinin and Connelly, 2000), as well as in small business studies (see also Gartner, 2007, 2010; Hamilton, 2006; Larty and Hamilton, 2011). The life-narrative approach concerns an ordering of life events in so-called ‘chapters’ by the interviewee which enables the narrator to express his/her identity more clearly (McAdams, 1997). McAdams defines identity as ‘the internalized and evolving story that results from a person’s selective appropriation of past, present and future’ (McAdams 1997: 71). Despite the fact that the narrative approach is criticized for over-emphasizing the interviewees’ stories, this approach effectively highlights the micro-politics of identity construction (Siebers, 2009). We consider the life-narrative approach an appropriate one to understand the relationship between business ownership identity work and the identity regulations that stem from family environments. We asked the female business owners to consider their lives as a book, to select the most important life chapters and, by telling their stories, to reflect on their own identities and on the messages they received from family members and peers. The narratives we collected provide insight in the way these women experience their business ownership and how they create the reality of their business (see Gartner, 2007) in relationship to their identities (Down, 2006) and their actions (Gartner, 2010).

The collected narratives were written out verbatim and analyzed, using McAdams’s technique of narrative analysis. In our case, narrative analysis took place in the ‘context of discovery’ (McAdams, 2012: 16), as a qualitative method to understand and uncover how the narrators make sense of what happened in their lives. We explored the loosely structured life stories, searching for patterns and themes that would tell us more about the subject of our study. How do migrant female business owners deal with the conflicting roles of being a good woman in private and a successful business woman in public, and how do they make sense of their lives and capture agency within a traditional patriarchal setting?

First, all 20 narratives were carefully analyzed. In line with McAdams’s approach, the research process was mainly inductive. By thoroughly reading and re-reading the life narratives, and by making a selection of relevant excerpts and textual phrases, the first author gradually developed a set of themes and insights that would enlighten the regulations these women were confronted with and the different ways they coped with these regulations. Subsequently, all three researchers discussed the results of the first analysis, and re-read and re-studied the narratives. Step by step and from the bottom up, we formulated two relevant sets of identity regulations and a variety of different forms of identity work, which we present and discuss in the remainder of this article. As we intend to interpret these themes in the light of the context which emerged from the business owners’ narratives, we took an interpretative, in-depth stance and did not strive for generalizations.

Data presentation: Short story writing

We developed the genre of short story writing in order to present the variety of identity work of the migrant female business owners in our study. The technique of short story writing entails that short stories are created by the researcher, who regroups relevant excerpts from verbatim transcripts in a comprehensive plot to present findings in a more dramatic way, while using original quotes to illustrate the plot. Short story writing is a way of presentation (see also Boje, 2008) that enables a more holistic analysis of the narratives in their context. It is a creative expression that captures the dynamic co-construction of the narratives by interviewer and interviewee and goes beyond the quotes to interpret the perspective and the agency of the storyteller. Short story writing is quite new in entrepreneurship and business owner studies. Smith (2009) argues that this technique is an interesting space which should be explored further, and Gartner (2010) states that textual interpretations presented in concrete ways may provide a richer understanding of the life narratives. It is important to acknowledge that the writing of short stories by the researcher does indeed affect both the content and the interpretation of the narratives (Gartner, 2010: 230). Nevertheless, applying the short story writing technique allowed us to process our line of argumentation in a convincing and plausible manner.

In the following empirical section, we present short story excerpts based on the life narratives of four female entrepreneurs which we considered to be the most illustrative and contrasting ones amongst all 20. These stories best characterize the different ways in which the respondents experience familial identity regulation and pursue their identity work as female migrant business owners. After the empirical section, we connect our empirical findings with existing theoretical notions regarding identity work and identity regulations.

Sourya (1) Protecting the family name

At age sixteen Sourya wants to play soccer instead of kneading bread. But her father tells her she cannot; she cannot join school trips and even going outside the house is difficult. ‘Why can’t I just play outside like my brother?’ she asks. To mislead her father, Sourya tells him she is with girlfriends. But then something happens: a broadcasting company comes along to film the soccer team. Imagine the reactions of her father’s friends after they see her in short trousers on television! The telephone is constantly ringing: ‘What’s that, you don’t have a son, do you, but a daughter!?’ And so again she has to quit, just when she is asked to join the city soccer team.

‘Do you know what the problem is with Moroccan people?’ Sourya explains during her interview. ‘They think: What will people say? They don’t think: How does my daughter feel? Is she happy?’ As a reaction to this control, she says that she starts thinking about setting up her own company to be more independent. She is eager to do ‘what I want … my own little shop, despite that my parents are uncomfortable with my free spirit. But I just don’t care a hoot about that.’

This story illustrates how Sourya’s upbringing is mainly aimed at training her to be a ‘good Moroccan woman’, which refers to domestic activities. Apparently, Sourya’s family does not allow her to go outside, let alone to play soccer, as this does not correspond with their norms on femininity. This story indicates that from her youth onwards, public activities with masculine connotations (such as soccer) attract Sourya much more than private household activities (such as making bread). Because she does not want to withdraw from the public sphere, Sourya first maneuvers herself in a position to be able to play soccer without telling her family. Therefore, she constantly needs to shade and spin around the truth, by telling white lies. Then, her secret behavior comes out into the open, and even on TV! By playing in short trousers on television – one cannot imagine a more public exposure – she even brings more shame to the family (‘you don’t have a son, do you?’). In the midst of the strong pressures her family puts on her to quit soccer, Sourya has to determine how she will respond to this form of family control. Now, Sourya’s identity work no longer shows an inclination to avoid conflicts in order to accomplish the things she wants to do. Sourya actively stands up for what she wants to be and how she wants to behave. In this way, she rebels, resisting the narrow norms for appropriate femininity by taking care of herself.

Mouria (1) Threats of being married off

Daughters in Moroccan and Turkish communities seem to be introduced to the topic of marriage at a very early age. It is the social standard and ideal to get married as early as possible, as ‘… women … need to be protected against their own desires in order to retain the family honor’ (Buskens, 1999: 373). To be married off is therefore still a common practice among Moroccan and Turkish people and marriage is conceived of as a family matter (Lievens, 1999: 719). Yet, the following story shows the ambiguous norms during Mouria’s upbringing:

Mouria’s mother teaches her daughters to behave properly when strangers are around, and when they receive visitors they have to do the cooking. But on other occasions, contrastingly, Mouria’s parents warn her and her sisters: ‘Remember, not only boys are capable, girls are too! And do not think about quitting school earlier, for otherwise you might get married off!!’ Mouria is glad that her parents encouraged her to finish school, despite the fact that people use to say, ‘woman is woman, and man is man.’ Mouria underlines her satisfaction with her parents’ attitude by saying: ‘That is fortunately something we got in our upbringing, and I still have the urge to achieve something without having a man around!’

Mouria’s parents deploy a very unorthodox tactic to stimulate their daughters’ independence: they threaten their daughters by saying they ‘might get married off’ if they would quit school too soon. In this respect, they act in a strategic way: they ironically use the traditional practice of marrying-off and the traditional gendered public–private divide to accomplish a less traditional practice, that of female autonomy. Mouria has taken over this philosophy of female autonomy, as she still wants to prove she can ‘achieve something, without having a man around’, which her business ownership enables perfectly.

Mouria reacts to her parents’ directing guidance in a strategic way. Mouria seems to be able to fulfill her goal for autonomy by selectively filtering those suggestions that suit her intentions, while more or less ignoring the messages that she does not want to hear. Hence, she embraces her parents’ statement that girls, too, need education, while at the same time closing her eyes to their educational efforts to raise their daughters to become good women and wives. Below, we will see how she has adjusted this strategic maneuvering within her identity work to resist patriarchal elements in her relationship with her husband.

Mouria (2) Lobbying for more autonomy and support

When Moroccan or Turkish women get married, they are generally expected to fulfill a central position in the family and to be a housewife only. As such, they are often supervised by their husbands, and their freedom of action is considerably decreased in order to protect the gender-segregated social order (Buitelaar, 2002). Despite these expectations, the interviewed female business owners’ ambition is to be a rather independent business owner.

At the age of seventeen, Mouria imagines how her life will evolve if she stays in Morocco. She is afraid that if she marries and has children she will have to stay at home. That is not what she wants in life! Mouria emigrates to the Netherlands. However, at first it seems like hell. She marries a man she hardly knows, and after two weeks they are already quarrelling. Mouria wants to have her own beauty salon, but from the beginning she really had to fight to accomplish this, she says. As she feels dependent on her husband, she decides to be clever: ‘Sometimes you beg a bit, or you just tell things at pleasant moments.’ So to persuade him to let her set up her own company, she argues: ‘Some things would be better for us if I am off for a while.’ She is so eager to have her own company that she says: ‘I am even willing to risk a divorce for it!’ She succeeds because her husband is fed up with the fights, but definitely wants to avoid a divorce.

Mouria is struggling with her husband all the time. But she is not easily daunted, and so she more or less manipulates her husband in order to become her own boss instead of being bossed around. She displays a different pattern of strategic maneuvering in her identity work compared to the one she developed in her youth towards her parents (see above) in order to achieve female autonomy and to resist patriarchy. Mouria deliberately uses the unwritten rule of ‘marriage is sacred, divorce is no option’, in order to create her freedom to be a small business owner. When being confronted with her husband, sometimes she butters him up and explicates a win–win situation (saying ‘sometimes things would be better for us if I am off for a while’) and thus strengthens the ties while securing her married status, and at other times she provokes the family honor by stating she is ‘willing to risk a divorce for it’ to show her determination to keep her business.

Gülin (1) Pater familias

Gülin shows another way of strategic maneuvering in her lobby for support:

Gülin puts her husband under pressure when she starts her own company: ‘Listen, I did not make these children alone, they are yours too, just take a few days off and take care of them. If you agree, great, if not, I will call your father and tell him his son is coming and that he can prepare the divorce papers.’ This really scares her husband, and his fear becomes reality when his father calls him three days later. Gülin’s husband asks her: ‘So Gülin, did you really call my father in Turkey?’ Gülin: ‘Yes, I did. I don’t like it, but I want to save my marriage. … take a day or two off a week, and take care of your children … .’ And so he agrees.

Gülin is fed up with her husband, who hardly takes care of their children. And so Gülin does not recoil from involving her father-in-law in her scheme. Since her husband’s father, although he lives in Turkey, is still the pater familias, she turns to him to include him in her plot when she is at her wits’ end. Divorce would imply a shame for the whole family, and thus the father is forced to tell his son to conform to his daughter-in-law’s wishes.

Compared to Mouria, Gülin appears to apply a more strict manifestation of strategic maneuvering in her identity work. She does not resist the familial norms and rules, nor does she fully apply them. In a very suggestive way, she makes use of the strong family rules regarding marriage and divorce. Calling the pater familias and involving him, she blackmails her husband by ‘making him an offer he cannot refuse.’ The mere fact that her husband knows that she called his father is enough to make him accept her wishes. However, Gülin’s story also shows a different form of agency.

Gülin (2) Don’t interfere!

Gülin does not hesitate to include her husband’s father in Turkey in her strategy. However, towards her own family in the Netherlands, Gülin maintains strong control when performing her business.

Since Gülin is so afraid that her family members will divert her from her own business ideas, Gülin refrains from asking her family to support her. Even worse, she wants them to stay out! She warns them: ‘This is my shop, everyone has his own business, end of discussion!’

Interestingly, Gülin’s identity work in relation to her own family is aimed at keeping her distance and is appealing to a more individualistic attitude towards doing business by saying ‘everyone has his own business.’ Hence, she rejects the habit of many migrant business owners to mix family and business. She is afraid that involving her family might imply a loss of her autonomy and possibly the end of her business career. Thus, when it comes to family involvement, Gülin slaloms. Sometimes, she deliberately appeals to her migrant background and applies familiness to sustain her business, yet on other occasions she leaves her family out of her company to maintain her business ownership autonomy.

Nerli – Relatives: you can’t enterprise with or without them

Nerli is divorced. She eloped to marry a man in order to get more freedom but was emotionally and physically abused by her husband. Fortunately, she could fall back on her family after her divorce, even though initially her family was ashamed and saw her as a ‘fallen woman’. Eventually, her family members support her when she returns home, first by offering jobs in their own companies, and also later when she wants to set up a company for herself.

After her divorce, Nerli has to build up a new life. She enrolls at the police academy to become a policewoman, but also considers doing ‘something with clothes’, as she has always had an interest for fashion. A few weeks later her brother-in-law says: ‘I have a surprise for you. We are going somewhere; you can look at it and then decide about it.’ So they head for the city to check out the interior of a shop. ‘If you agree, I will help you to open a boutique. Otherwise, you may proceed with the police academy, but you know, you have a small child, and as a policewoman you have to go to unexpected places and you will be confronted with dangerous situations, and you would return home late …’ Nerli decides in favor of her own company, yet experiences that it is very difficult to get money from banks. Therefore, her brother-in-law finances it, which she justifies by saying: ‘We do it the Turkish way: first arranging everything, hiring a place, and finally the money. Of course this is not ideal or well sorted out, but hey … it is already difficult enough, being a single mother and an entrepreneur.’

This story demonstrates the positive side of family ties in relation to female migrant business ownership. Although divorce officially implies shame, Nerli’s family overcomes this shame and provides her with all the family support she can use to build up a new life. In addition, Nerli’s relatives try to convince her to become a business owner instead of a policewoman, because being a police officer is a substantial public role for women. Going to unexpected places at late hours is deemed dangerous and shameful for women, and they seem to expect less impact on their family honor when she is a business owner.

This highly appreciated family support also has a reverse. By being involved in her company, Nerli’s relatives are able to control her and to avert the possible shame of a fallen woman in the family. We recognize much paternalism in the controlling way in which the family is willing to finance Nerli’s company (‘the Turkish way’). Apparently, for her there is no other way, because she felt that it is difficult to get the money from the banks. Nerli’s reaction to the family norms concerning gender and ethnicity shows the pragmatism in her identity work. Instead of challenging these forms of paternalism, she loyally resigns herself to these gendered and ethnicized norms, as this leads to her goal of having a fashion shop. Nerli does not want to do this way, ‘but hey … it is already difficult enough …’ She knows that, being a single mother, she can use all the support she needs.

Sourya (2) Us against the rest

The interviewed migrant female business owners do not all experience unambiguous gender inequality in relation to their relatives. The norm that a migrant female business owner always has to be a good woman, housewife, daughter and mother (Gatrell, 2010) does not have the same impact in every family context. This can be observed in the following story of Sourya, who in the end married the man of her dreams.

Sourya is determined to set up her own company. She has to submit a business plan in order to obtain a loan. Her husband helps her with this business plan. They do a lot of nice things together. Yet, many acquaintances and relatives take offence at her husband, because he allows his wife, Sourya, to have an equal position in their marriage. Nevertheless, Sourya dismisses this by saying: ‘Oh well, this is just jealous behavior. And I also will continue to go alone on a business trip to Morocco; although my parents dislike this fact, my family has stopped minding my business as they know I’ve always been that way.’

Sourya and her husband seem to be on the same wavelength. It appears to be ‘them against the rest’, which seems to strengthen their ties. Therefore, Sourya and her husband successfully maneuver themselves in a position beyond family control, and away from the dilemma between conflict and compliance. This approach seems to make Sourya feel confident in her position as an autonomous female business owner.

Identity work and identity regulation

Identity and identity formation have been studied in social sciences for a long time (for an overview, see Alvesson et al., 2008; Ybema et al., 2009). Early studies emphasize the social self; someone’s ‘Self’ (Goffman, 1959) develops in social interactions with others, in relationship to reference groups (Merton, 1957) or the so-called Generalized Other (Mead, 1934). Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986) suggests that people’s self-perception arises from identification and comparison with in-groups and out-groups, which offer emotional involvement and self-esteem. Some socialization theories (see also Grusec and Hastings, 2007) point at processes of reproducing, normalizing and internalizing the social and cultural norms of the social context in which individuals live. Swidler (2001: 6–7), however, points out that culture is not just a set of norms and rules, but could also be regarded as a ‘repertoire of meanings’ upon which people draw in constructing lines of action. Culture provides tools for constructing these lines of action, and does not mold people into uniform cultural types. In addition, and within the tradition of the social constructionist perspective on identity, McAdams (1997: 61) conceptualizes multiple identity construction as a reflexive project that people ‘work on’, situated within time and context, and in dialogue with their relevant others (Watson, 2009). Alvesson and Wilmott (2002) developed the concepts of identity regulation and identity work in order to understand processes of identity formation in organizations. These concepts are also very useful for our purpose to understand the influence of the family context on migrant female business owners’ identities. Alvesson and Wilmott (2002) conceptualize identity regulation as a form of organizational control to shape and influence the identities of people at work in line with the cultural norms they are surrounded with. Identity regulation functions in language use, habits, dress codes, rules/arrangements and other symbolic expressions of power (Alvesson and Billing, 2009), that define what is acceptable behavior, what is deviating behavior and who one should be. The concept of identity work refers to how subjects form, maintain, strengthen or revise constructions of self in relation to the claims and demands issued on them by identity regulation. On the one hand, identity work is an activity prompted by identity regulation. Gotsi et al. (2010) and Alvesson and Wilmott (2002) illustrate how identity regulation denotes discursive practices aimed at influencing identity work in directions that support particular goals. On the other hand, identity work simultaneously informs identity regulation. Zanoni and Janssens, for example, contend the identity-regulating discourses of management (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007: 1371–1372) that not only control minority employees both discursively and materially, but also open up opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation. We apply the concepts of identity regulation and identity work to analyze precisely how female business owners of Turkish and Moroccan descent deal with conflicting roles in relation to the regulations stemming from their families.

Gendered and ethnicized identity regulations

The stories of the women interviewed have demonstrated how these female small business owners are regulated by a set of restrictions and norms regarding gender and ethnicity as well as small business ownership. These norms and regulations relate to normative discourses, patriarchal norms and traditional practices that tell them what to do and how to behave. Women are expected to behave in a feminine manner and to adhere to female roles, strongly related to the private sphere, such as motherhood and being a housewife (Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2006). These norms and practices hinder women from stepping outside, into the public domain, as business owners. Two important identity regulations can be discerned which come inductively to the fore in the analysis. The first form concerns ‘the good woman’ and the second one the ambiguities regarding ‘family support’.

We recognize the first form or regulation in the short stories of Sourya (1), Mouria (1), (2), and to some extent Nerli. It is a predominant issue in Turkish and Moroccan migrants’ lives that women behave modestly and decently, and that their bodies and movements are controlled, particularly in the public sphere to avert possible shame of the family (Buitelaar, 2002). Hence, the honorable behavior of girls is a key part in the upbringing of both sexes (Raffaelli and Ontai, 2004). This is underlined by the language the interviewees commonly use to account for bad behavior: ‘this is very shameful’ or ‘this is really haram’. These regulations do not withhold women from getting an education or a job, but they are not expected to prioritize economic productivity, let alone to combine the mother role with the role of a business owner, which is a man’s prerogative. Several authors (Lutz, 1996; Mushaben, 2009; Phalet and Schönpflug, 2001) relate this form of regulation to the patriarchal character of the Turkish and Moroccan migrant communities. Patriarchy is a system of social structures and practices (Grant, 1993) that influences family relations in such a way that traditional gender roles and the subordination of women to men are reproduced. Patriarchy honors and protects women as long as they act as the wife of, the daughter of or the sister of a man (Bruni et al., 2005). We can also relate this form of regulation to ‘the ideology of motherhood’ (Strüder, 2001). Female bodies are inscribed with this ideal and are therefore supposedly charged with the reproduction and continuity of culture, whereas the male body is inscribed with authority, stability and charged with the reproduction of the economy (Strüder, 2001). Hence, reproduction is a mainly female responsibility that should predominate over other responsibilities (Bruni et al., 2005). Gatrell (2010: 6) accordingly notes that, in organizational contexts, the woman’s body stands out from the ‘norms of male embodiment’. In order to fit in with these norms, professional women are generally expected to keep their reproductive characteristics off-stage. Accordingly, within the traditional Turkish and Moroccan migrant communities the discourse on womanhood is in conflict with the discourse on business ownership, and being both a woman and a business owner at the same time seems to be quite difficult.

The second form of identity regulation concerns the idea that family members are expected to help each other out at all costs to prevent shame; one should not air one’s ‘dirty laundry’ in public. We recognize this form of regulation in Nerli’s and Gülin’s (1) story. It is highly appreciated when families solve their problems collectively. We notice that several women receive moral, practical and financial help from their families when starting and sustaining their enterprises. We also note a tension between the help for female business owners who are active in the public sphere and the other standards that pertain to women remaining in the private sphere. Yet, providing family support to migrant women once they have crossed the public–private divide can also be understood as a way to control these women’s movements in the public sphere, and to keep them close to the private sphere. Particularly in migrant Turkish and Moroccan communities, the public–private divide concerns a dualism which purportedly is connected with the notion of honor and shame. This notion entails that men’s honor in the family depends on the maintenance of this public–private divide. A woman’s independence can be a threat to a man’s identity and the gendered power relations, especially when she enters the public sphere without a guarding male. Sadiqi and Ennaji (2006) illustrate expressively this process of trespassing the gendered public–private space dichotomy by their Arabic linguistic analysis of the verb xarjat (she went out), which marks the ‘going out’ of a woman as a movement from the private/interior to the public/exterior. Hence, women have to watch how they behave when transgressing the public–private divide; wearing a headscarf in the public sphere would help them to remain symbolically in the private sphere (Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2006). When gender norms are not met, the honor (nefs in Moroccan and namus in Turkish) of the family might be at stake (Pels, 2000). Although some Moroccan and Turkish parents also encourage their daughters to obtain an education and to seek employment, they may simultaneously retain the ideal of the man as the sole breadwinner (Pels, 2000). Whereas this depends on the generation they belong to (Afshar and Maynard, 1994), the region they originate from and the contacts with other ethnic or professional groups (Anthias, 2001), motherhood, virginity and the separation of the sexes appear to remain important values. Hence, the women in our study have to portray themselves carefully to avoid the suggestion that they challenge traditional gender norms radically (Pels, 2000). This is in line with Ufuk and Özgen (2001), who note, with regard to the Turkish context, that female business owners regularly suffer from conflicts between the role of small business owner and the roles of housewife, mother and wife. Entrepreneurially active women of Turkish and Moroccan descent may face a dilemma when crossing the public–private divide, because they threaten the family honor and the motherhood ideology by constructing a deviating identity.

Manifestations of identity work

In this section, we will discuss how female business owners actively engage in identity work while drawing selectively from their cultural repertoires and familiness. From our research, a variety of identity work manifestations emerges, all between conflict and compliance. These manifestations of identity work can be placed in four different positions, the two poles of conflict and compliance, and two more hybrid positions of bending and selecting in between. We also distinguish a fifth manifestation of identity work, which surpasses these poles of conflict and compliance.

We have seen in these stories that the migrant female business owners are trying to find a way to realize positive identities and micro-emancipate within the constraints and opportunities of the contexts they are related to (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). From this perspective, all different manifestations of identity work can be seen as driven by self-determination (Deci and Ryan, 2002). Looking at the different identity work manifestations, we have to bear in mind the dilemmas the migrant female business owners are confronted with. On the one hand, these women are part of the family. Not only do they deeply love their parents, siblings and husbands, but often they also feel themselves strongly committed to the norms they were brought up with – in particular, the norms regarding honor and shame (Buitelaar, 2002). Having solidarity with the family and serving relatives is taught from birth. Therefore the exit-option of leaving their families for more autonomy is difficult to conceive. Nevertheless, they all strongly wish to fulfill their dreams about becoming a successful female business owner. For the majority of the migrant female business owners we interviewed, only a narrow and winding path is available in order to become a business owner without bringing shame to the family. Each of them followed her own path, more or less successfully. In so doing, each of them forms, maintains, strengthens or revises a construction of herself in relation to the claims and demands issued on them. That is what we call identity work of migrant female business owners in the Netherlands.

Conflicting

Most identity work manifestations stay within the conflict–compliance dimension. A first category of manifestations can be found on the conflict pole of the strategic maneuvering continuum. Conflict-oriented identity work is a visible, active, and sometimes aggressive activity. For example, we recognize rebellious behavior in young Sourya’s (1) reaction when she is exposed as a liar who secretly evaded her parents’ ban on playing soccer. In order to get what she wants, she rebels against the family norms and opposes her family members and acquaintances openly, and she ‘doesn’t care a hoot about that.’ Another manifestation of conflict-oriented identity work is the activity we described as blackmail. Blackmail is a form of coercion, through which the blackmailer realizes his or her wishes based on the threat that the worst possible would happen in case the victim does not agree to the demands of the blackmailer. We see this in the case of Gülin (1), who threatened her husband by telling him that she will contact his father, the pater familias.

The conflict-oriented responses operate within the set of family norms. Young Sourya does not question the family norms; she just wants to ignore them. Gülin strategically used the trump card – the family honor – to her own advantage. Neither rebelling nor blackmailing is an easy position, and for both positions female migrant business owners need persistence and a thick skin to convince their relatives that they want to stick to their business owner identity. Such an attitude openly defies the norm that a woman should stay at home and keep a distance from the public sphere.

Bending

Compared with conflict-orientation the category ‘bending’ is characterized by softer and less aggressive interventions. Mouria’s (2) manipulative activities are examples of this approach. Manipulation is a manifestation of identity work which aims at adjusting or bending the environment to someone’s wishes, as we saw in the case of Mouria addressing her husband. Mouria objects to the idea that she ought to perform a subordinate, economically dependent and reproductive role. Nevertheless, she does not speak her mind freely, but appears to be inclined to use more ‘manipulative’ tactics to impress their relatives. Paradoxically, Mouria finds the resources to apply her manipulative strategy successfully in the common family regulations. These resources pertain to various situations, such as her parents’ opinions on gender equality, marrying a man in another country to be able to work, and using their marital status as a source of negotiation to convince her husband. This strategy contains similarities with Ketner et al.’s (2004) strategic use approach, which aims to play people or ideas against each other.

Telling white lies and other forms of secret behavior also belong to the bending approach. Sourya (1) applied this tactic in order to be able to play soccer, before she was unmasked as a liar. We may infer that migrant female business owners are inclined to display secret behavior during their childhood in particular, as it is in this period that they live with their parents and are heavily controlled. When they are adults this secret behavior is less necessary, as they may physically and emotionally distance themselves from this parental control. This part of opposing family members secretly can be recognized in Ketner et al.’s (2004) secret behavior approach regarding the identity strategies among adolescent girls of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands.

Selecting

Compared with conflicting and bending, this category of identity work does not alter the norms. Instead of openly or secretly trying to fight or adjust the effects of the norms and mores of the family, women attempt to realize their wishes by taking very small steps. Selectively, they accentuate those norms or suggestions, which, within the limits of the factual situation they are in, will help them on their paths towards small business ownership. We found several examples of this form of identity work. Mouria (1) filters selectively the suggestions that suit her intentions, such as having a good education, and more or less ignores other suggestions. Gülin, too, picks and chooses what suits her the best. She applies familiness to sustain her small business, whereas on other occasions she keeps her family away from her company in order to preserve her business ownership autonomy.

Complying

Sometimes, the migrant female business owners explain that they had no choice but to accept the rules of the family. Evidently, these women’s identity work invokes pragmatism, which entails seeking female autonomy from their families by pragmatically presenting themselves in relation to the family norms on gender and ethnicity. After her divorce, Nerli returns to her family and accepts her position in the family. As her relatives offer financial support, Nerli avoids carrying things too far and acts low-profile accordingly. To some extent this pragmatic approach echoes Bruni et al.’s (2005) study on Italian female entrepreneurs, in which women as ‘disentrepreneurs’ were found to leave the impression (for clients) that they were secretaries instead of the entrepreneurs.

Beyond family control

Apparently, sometimes it is possible that a migrant female business owner succeeds in extricating herself from the family influence, and thus her identity work surpasses the poles of conflict and compliance. We recognize this in the case of Sourya (2) and her husband, who are each other’s companions on an equal basis and, by so doing, disentangle themselves from all possible forms of identity regulation. A good alliance with her husband enables Sourya to subvert the identity regulation and negotiation process with the rest of her family. Accordingly, such an action does not always result in breaking up with the family. The family might not like it, but sometimes the love and respect for their daughter, sister or wife is stronger than the disappointment that she does not behave completely according to the family norms.

We do not suggest that the overview of identity work we presented is exhaustive, because other narratives may reveal different manifestations. Moreover, the choice for these manifestations does not solely depend on the individual characteristics of the migrant female business owners. Dependent on the situation, time and family relation, each of the manifestations of identity work presented may be practiced easily by one and the same female business owner. Overall, the short stories have shown that, by developing various forms of identity work in response to normative familial standards, the migrant female business owners in our study are able to maintain – within certain limits – the respect of their relatives, the illusion of female modesty and their autonomy at the same time.