Between unemployment and entrepreneurship: The liminal transitions of EU necessity entrepreneurs

Between unemployment and entrepreneurship: The liminal transitions of EU necessity entrepreneurs
We focus on situated entrepreneurial stories from Spain, Ireland and the UK drawn from ethnographic research. While governments and institutions, along with the media, promote a particular narrative –the empowered individual who ‘puts an innovative product in the market’– to encourage people out of unemployment by becoming more entrepreneurial, our interviewees do not recognize themselves in this institutionalised narrative. It is necessity, rather than opportunity (Hessels et al, 2008), that is pushing, rather than pulling (Amit and Muller, 1995; Gilad and Levine, 1986; Storey, 1982), them to become self-employed. The process is also experienced as more fragmented and fraught with difficulties than the official narrative outlines. Forced to create their own paid employment, they are ‘necessity entrepreneurs’ who wished they had the option of secure employment. We make explicit their liminal experiences in the transitory state between employment, unemployment and entrepreneurship. By engaging with these alternative experiences of the entrepreneurship process, we hope to: “access deeper organiz[ing] realities, closely linked to [people’s] experiences” (Gabriel, 1999: 270); complement the dominant understanding of entrepreneurship present in most research, institutional and media contexts (Jones and Spicer, 2005; Kenny and Scriver, 2012); and expand our understanding of entrepreneurship as a critical process with implications for social change and innovation (Dey and Steyaert, 2010, 2012).



9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies
Stream: Critical Entrepreneurship Studies
University of Leicester, UK, 8-10 July 2015

The liminal transitions of Irish and Spanish necessity entrepreneurs

The liminal transitions of Irish and Spanish necessity entrepreneurs.
Lucia García-Lorenzo, Lucia Sell-Trujillo, Paul Donnelly. Paper presented at the 9th Annual Ethnography symposium (2014).

This paper explores the transition between unemployment, employment and entrepreneurship of
Spanish and Irish necessity entrepreneurs to better understand the process of becoming an
entrepreneur. Working with narratives, media articles, and policy documents, we illustrate how
necessity entrepreneurs do not recognize themselves in the institutionalized entrepreneur narrative
as empowered, creative and independent individuals. It is necessity, not opportunity that is pushing,
not pulling, them to become entrepreneurial. The transition process is also experienced as more
fragmented than official narratives outline. In exposing these liminal stories, the paper aims to
expand our understanding of entrepreneurship, presenting a more nuanced view of both
entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process.

'I just want a job: The untold stories of entrepreneurship'
Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Sell-Trujillo, L., and Donnelly, P. (2014)

In: Izak, M, Hitchen, L. and Anderson, D. (Eds.) Untold Stories in
Organisations. London: Taylor and Francis. Pp 143-167.

In this chapter, we explore the untold stories of Spanish and Irish necessity entrepreneurs to better understand the process of becoming an entrepreneur. We illustrate how necessity entrepreneurs don't recognize themselves in the institutionalized entrepreneur narrative as empowered, creative and independent individuals since it is necessity, not opportunity that pushes them to become entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurship in times of crisis: 
Exploring ‘necessity’ entrepreneurs’ experiences in Ireland, UK and Spain.
Dr. Lucia García, Dr. Lucia Sell-Trujillo, Dr. Paul Donnelly, Dr Miguel Imas

“I just want a job”: Untold stories of entrepreneurship.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP & PRECARIOUS CONDITIONS
Paper presented at the Storytelling Conference at Lincoln Business School, University of Lincoln, UK, on 13-14 June, 2013.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION