Navigating an Environment Lacking Supportive Policies: The Case of Migrant Entrepreneurs in Ghana

Current research suggests that effective and favourable policies in host countries are an important driver of migrant entrepreneurial activities. However, there is a dearth of knowledge about how migrants enact entrepreneurship in host countries where formal migrant entrepreneurship support is lacking. In this regard, we explore how migrant entrepreneurs navigate the lack of institutional support in host countries, with specific emphasis on the coping strategies they use. Leveraging the new institutional economics perspective and building on interviews with migrant entrepreneurs in Ghana, we unpack three phenomena that underlie the conceptualisation of weak institutional support (i.e. policy voids, nationalistic policy support, and anti-immigration sentiment) two main sources of migrant entrepreneurial apprehension (social risk and political risk) and four coping strategies for addressing apprehension (localisation, political connections, social ties and spiritualism). Our findings make important contributions to the migrant entrepreneurship literature and generate valuable implications for policy and practice.