Abstract
Safety or lack of safety surrounds me. Living through the COVID-19 pandemic means seeing the death toll rise daily, visible confrontations of White supremacy in the media and on the street corners in my small town, and economic uncertainty. While these threats to safety are currently at the forefront of my mind, safety and security are ongoing considerations in the lives of women worldwide. Women are taught to fear walking down the street at night, worry about hurting people’s feelings, and being too much or not enough. When thinking about starting something new like a business, these fears are evident, labeled risk aversion, and particularly salient for immigrant women entrepreneurs.
In my recently completed dissertation study, immigrant women entrepreneurs did not use the word fear to describe their experiences. Yet, the lack of safety and the subtle description of discrimination, especially around securing citizenship, persist in my thoughts. The safety of citizenship in the United States has ebbed and flowed since before the inception of the nation, yet the desire of many immigrants to pursue their dreams in the United States remains a dominant idea. Upon arrival in the United States, they find the economic environment and the explicit and nuanced discrimination as something new to navigate but worth the risk.
This reflection provides a space to further think about the experiences of the women who participated in this study and the potential impact of the current social and political environment on their lives. I consider the risk for women starting their own businesses in the United States, the overall safety of citizenship that separates domestic women entrepreneurs from immigrant women entrepreneurs, and the personal and economic safety of such entrepreneurs. Finally, I share implications for adult educators related to the discrimination and safety for immigrant women entrepreneurs as well as their overall contributions to communities.
Worth the Risk
Coming to the United States is risky, and such risk is seen as worth it to many immigrant entrepreneurs. Risk is complex because of the different meanings and conflicting policies related to U.S. immigration status, gender, and employment. These conflicts result from historical policy, legal action, and social adaptations that affect how immigrants live, work, and learn. Learning for immigrant women entrepreneurs is not an end goal but rather a continually evolving, shifting, and sometimes conflicting process (Merriam et al., 2007). In the United States, people have, or had, economic opportunity. For these women, starting their own businesses created economic opportunity but also introduced additional threats to safety through experiences of discrimination.
Immigrant and gendered experiences affect learning and the entrepreneurial efforts of women navigating a new social environment. These learning experiences occur while also dealing with the reality of cultural differences and economic limitations (Wang, 2019). Building a business as an immigrant woman entrepreneur depends on the circumstances and context of migration within the confines of American neoliberal policies. These policies favor traditional ideas of family and do not address inequity in the labor market. The ability of immigrant women entrepreneurs to fully access the opportunities of domestic entrepreneurs is not a reality. Despite inequitable access to resources, immigrant women entrepreneurs benefit from cultural knowledge and willingness to take risks. Starting a business requires creating new meaning for a person’s life and career. Creating new meaning is part of the immigration experience as well . . . leaving what was known and entering the unknown.
Safety of Citizenship
As a prevailing difference, safety of citizenship separates domestic women entrepreneurs from immigrant women entrepreneurs. Possessing legal documentation to live or work in the United States may protect immigrants from deportation but not from discrimination. The former presents another dimension of unguaranteed safety, one not easily recognized by someone unfamiliar with systematic racism.
Power and personal privilege can shift based on physical and social location. In the United States, economic opportunity comes with risk to personal and psychological safety. As a domestic born, White American woman, I connect my personal safety concerns with my gender. For an immigrant woman who is also Tan, Black, or Brown, negotiating safety means disentwining many forms of discrimination. The immigrant women entrepreneurs interviewed for my study found such a challenge. Not having citizenship in a country relegates a person to visitor status. Visitor status means if you are unhappy or treated poorly, a person can leave. So instead of leaving or being told to leave, a person tolerates poor treatment and stays quiet instead of calling attention to discriminatory behavior from others.
Discrimination creates problems for immigrant entrepreneurs while also being a problem for non-White citizens as well. These problems include combating individual acts of aggression or lack of access to systems that provide resources and protection (Knight, 2016; Robertson & Grant, 2016). Discriminatory behavior and racism is fueled, held, and perpetuated by stereotypes especially in Western countries about immigrants from non-Western countries (Barret et al., 1996). Not limited to cultural differences, feelings and acts of discrimination, which can also compromise personal safety, are compounded for immigrant women entrepreneurs (Knight, 2016; Naidu & Chand, 2017). The additional lack of safety to immigrant women due to discrimination, gender, and physical risks resulting from the pandemic remain on my mind as a practitioner and scholar.
Economic and Personal Safety
Facing the unknown is part of the immigration and entrepreneurial story for the women who participated in the study. I began interviewing women immigrant entrepreneurs in July 2019, during a time of relative economic stability in the United States. Each woman had achieved economic safety by becoming an entrepreneur which also contributed to their personal safety through helping provide for their family. They owned different types of businesses, including photography, personal care services, children’s culinary school, day care, handicrafts, retail, marketing, home health care, cleaning, and commercial driver’s license training. These businesses provided opportunities and stability for each woman.
In retrospect, the time of interviewing feels like the calm before the pandemic storm, and the lives of the women undoubtedly have dramatically changed. Today, their experiences navigating the pandemic could include figuring out how to stay in business. If possible to stay in business, then how to stay in business must be decided while also thinking about personal safety and the safety of their families. A photographer must rethink the physical space and location of sessions. A personal care provider must weigh the risks of a close contact profession with the need to make money. The day care and home health care service provider must navigate the federal and state guidelines while also providing support to parents who are essential workers and elderly people who are at high risk of contracting the virus. Collectively, the women have spouses, partners, children, and family in different countries which experience different degrees of risk from the pandemic as well as social unrest. These new concerns revolve around personal and economic safety not unlike the lack of safety evident without citizenship as an immigrant in the United States.
Final Thoughts and Implications
Thinking is part of the academic job description but thought must connect to actions. These actions must help support and contribute to forward paths for members of marginalized communities, often with invisible safety risks. As an adult educator, I feel particularly compelled to keep issues of economic, physical, and psychological safety in the academic and practical discourse. To do this, I offer two areas for final thoughts. These are discrimination and safety, and contributions and support.
“Actions must help support and contribute to forward paths for members of marginalized communities, often with invisible safety risks.”
Discrimination and Safety
Discrimination and safety must become primary considerations for learning and education. Addressing economic, physical, and psychological safety requires identifying and naming discrimination in communities and labor markets. Thinking about the experiences of discrimination and the compromised safety of marginalized people in the United States threatens economic stability. Businesses offer dwindling protection to workers, and business owners can be the perpetrators of economic violence for immigrant workers.
Becoming an entrepreneur as an immigrant comes with many challenges that offer little economic protection but offers a high return to communities. In addition, the programs that are available may focus too narrowly on a particular skill without considering the added discrimination faced by immigrant women entrepreneurs in the United States. For adult education programs, focusing on education and support for immigrant entrepreneurs is an investment in communities that benefits families and local economic growth, but must incorporate resources about safety and actively advocate against racism. Adult educator’s role in community and economic development is a worthy and necessary investment in people’s safety in their communities.
Support Systems and Future Building
Rethinking the role of social support systems for immigrant women entrepreneurs as spaces of adult education offers value. Such rethinking requires expanding ideas of partnership and advocacy related to support systems. Within the field of adult education, how immigrant women learn to be entrepreneurs, and navigate personal and professional circumstances in the process, is significant in connecting existing adult education research and practice. Lacking support from a traditional workplace and the wider economic environment, immigrant women entrepreneurs in the study, unsurprisingly, identified support systems as valuable while learning to become entrepreneurs. Although varied, their primary support systems helped them fulfill their learning needs encountered as entrepreneurs.
Immigrant women entrepreneurs, within the overarching goals of adult educators and adult education programs, serve the development of individuals and industry within communities. Immigrant women entrepreneurs invest in the areas in which they live and deserve education and economic access and security. They also have a vast wealth of experience and knowledge to share. We must consider and consult immigrant women entrepreneurs when making important decisions in education programming, including small business development centers, women’s entrepreneur groups, non-profit organizations, and workforce centers. These organizations have various levels of local, state, and national government influence and can serve as a bridge to meaningful change for individuals and communities.
Returning to safety during the time of the COVID-19 while also confronting White supremacy may seem like a distant goal. Threats to safety are prevalent in the lives of women worldwide. No doubt there is an opportunity for adult educators to consider their personal role in how our work contributes to the future building that will be necessary after the pandemic is under control. Future building will not be a return to normalcy, but rather an opportunity to think about ways our work should focus on social equity and anti-racism. Future building must also include immigrant women entrepreneurs because new businesses and an investment in businesses is necessary to helping people support their families and rebuild communities.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
