Religion, Migration and Business: Faith, Work And Entrepreneurialism in the UK [1st ed.] 9783030583040, 9783030583057

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Introduction: At the Intersection of Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 1-22
Lived Religion and Migrant Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary (Neoliberal) City (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 23-36
Conceptualising Religion in Relation to the Drivers and Outcomes of (Migrant) Entrepreneurship (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 37-52
Values and Faith as Drivers of Entrepreneurship: The Trajectories and Practices of Pentecostal Migrant Business Owners (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 53-70
Becoming an Entrepreneur in Church: The Role of Religious Organisations in Supporting Migrants (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 71-94
Conclusions (María Villares-Varela, Olivia Sheringham)....Pages 95-103
Back Matter ....Pages 105-118

Citation preview

Religion, Migration and Business Faith, Work And Entrepreneurialism in the UK María Villares-Varela Olivia Sheringham

Religion and Global Migrations

Series Editors Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh Oxford Department of International Development Oxford, UK Jennifer B Saunders Stamford, CT, USA Susanna Snyder Ripon College Cuddesdon Oxford, UK

As the first series of its kind, Religion and Global Migrations will examine the phenomenon of religion and migration from multiple disciplinary perspectives (e.g., historical, anthropological, sociological, ethical, and theological), in various global locations (including the Americas, Europe, and Asia), and from a range of religious traditions. Monographs and edited volumes in the series explore the intersections of religion and migration from a variety of approaches, including studies of shifting religious practices and ideas in sending and receiving communities, among migrants and also among those who interact with migrants in places of origin and destination; public responses to migration such as religiously informed debates, policies, and activism among migrants and nonmigrants alike; gender dynamics including shifts in gender roles and access to power in sending and receiving sites; identity in relation to religion and migration that include constructive, as well as descriptive, scholarship; empire, from the ancient Mediterranean through the height of European colonization to contemporary relationships between the developing and developed world, and the way it has profoundly affected the movement of people and development of religions; and other topics connecting to the theme of religion and global migrations.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14511

María Villares-Varela · Olivia Sheringham

Religion, Migration and Business Faith, Work And Entrepreneurialism in the UK

María Villares-Varela Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology University of Southampton Southampton, UK

Olivia Sheringham Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies Birkbeck University of London London, UK

Religion and Global Migrations ISBN 978-3-030-58304-0 ISBN 978-3-030-58305-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

At the time of writing, the UK is in the midst of heated discussions on the positive and negative effects of migration against the backdrop of the postBrexit referendum vote and the so-called hostile environment. Migrants are conceptualised in these debates as either important assets for the country’s economy or as a burden on the welfare state and disruptors of social cohesion. Within these debates, the value and contribution of migrant workers are in contention, as is the religious pluralism of new migrants settling in our communities. This book explores the intersections between work and enterprise, and religiosity for migrant communities and seeks to understand the role of religious values and faith in shaping the aspirations of migrant entrepreneurs and the role of churches in addressing the dearth of business support for business owners. But why this research, and why now? Research conducted independently by both authors has looked at two differentiated themes: the labour market incorporation of migrants, particularly as business owners, mostly in Spain and the UK (Villares-Varela), and the role of religion in the everyday lives of migrants in the UK and from a transnational perspective (Sheringham). Villares-Varela’s fieldwork in Spain was mainly focused on data collection amongst Latin American migrants, which constitute the largest community due to postcolonial links between Spain and the region, language and cultural similarities as well as more favourable migration policies towards this migrant community. During her years conducting v

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fieldwork in Spain with business owners, one issue that kept coming up was the role of the church in their spiritual/social lives but also in their working lives, and this was particularly prevalent amongst the Brazilian and Colombian communities. Moreover, some interviews that took place in church premises showed evidence of how Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations seemed to place a strong emphasis on narratives of selfbetterment through individual success, which included access to financial skills and encouragement of entrepreneurship. However, this aspect always remained as an anecdotal account of the fieldwork experiences and never featured in the research analysis, mainly owing to a strong secular perspective on the subject in the fields of Sociology of Work and Enterprise. When doing fieldwork with new migrant entrepreneurs in the UK, in the west Midlands specifically, similar narratives emerged amongst entrepreneurs in relation to the importance of religiosity, the mosque, the temple or the church in providing support. Again, this theme was not the main focus of these past research projects, so the faith, spiritual and religious aspects of work and entrepreneurial activity were, once again, put to one side. Sheringham’s doctoral research focused on the role of religion in the every day and transnational lives of Brazilian migrants in the UK as well as in the context of ‘return’ to Brazil for migrants who had previously lived in the UK. Her decision to focus on religion emerged through similar encounters to those Villares-Varela outlines above. Rather than seeking to research religion per se, religion and spirituality emerged as fundamental to people’s experiences of migration, their identities, and their senses of belonging. For example, during earlier fieldwork conducted amongst Brazilian migrants living in the small Irish town of Gort, Ireland—in which the focus was on integration and placemaking practices—religion featured centrally in migrants’ narratives, in many cases determining their decision to migrate or return home. Her research highlighted the need to take religion seriously with the social sciences which have often tended to side-line religion as one amongst a series of factors shaping people’s lives rather than deeply intertwined with all aspects. Yet whilst Sheringham’s work sought to foreground religion in migrants’ everyday lives and migration experiences, questions of migrant work and enterprise remained in the background. Whilst working together at Oxford’s International Migration Institute, we began to discuss our overlapping research interests and identified the notable lack of research on the role of religion in relation to the

PREFACE

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workplace and enterprise. Our different disciplinary backgrounds (Sheringham trained in Human Geography and Villares-Varela in Sociology) also shaped the way we approached our research and subsequently this book. Whilst the core scholarship on migration and entrepreneurship has developed within the fields of Entrepreneurship, Management and the Sociology of Work and Employment the field of religion (and migration) has been explored predominantly within Geography and Sociology. Hence we felt that an interdisciplinary project would enable us to bridge some of these fields and find convergences (and divergences) in different ways in which they have approached the role of religiosity in the entrepreneurial endeavours of migrants, whilst also developing new perspectives. We decided to put together our areas of expertise and submitted a proposal to the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust. We chose to focus on a specific form of protestant Christianity, Pentecostalism, which is the fastest growing Christian denomination in the UK, and is particularly popular amongst migrant communities from the Caribbean, African and Latin American countries. This form of Christianity is guided by the direct experience of God’s presence by the believer, faith is lived as a strongly experiential process and it emphasises the promise of prosperity. Hence, our research design sought to explore churches of different sizes, denominations (within the Pentecostal stream) and origins (migrant/nonmigrant) to gain a broad perspective on the narratives of pastors and congregants who are business owners. The recruitment of business owners was more challenging than expected: the intersection of the variables (business ownership/self-employed, born abroad and congregant of a Pentecostal church) that made up our criteria meant that finding participants was a lengthy process. We were supported, however, by research assistants who had connections to some of the communities and allowed us to establish relationships of trust and familiarity within several church networks. This small-scale project has allowed us to see how Pentecostalism—as lived and practised by migrant entrepreneurs and their leaders—is closely intertwined with the world of work and enterprise. We do so by showing how the emergence of these churches in our urban spaces, goes hand in hand with the rise of neoliberal subjectivities and discourses, including those surrounding the hostile environment in the UK. We hope that the reader gets a sense of how some of these accounts of lived religion within the migration trajectories of individual migrants, their aspirations for individual self-betterment through establishing their own businesses, and

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the community-based support provided by churches, speak to some of the broader processes of the effects of neoliberalism on migrant communities in Britain. The book shows that Pentecostal churches simultaneously provide cultural legitimacy in the formation of neoliberal subjectivities whilst counterbalancing the effects of neoliberalism in relation to the erosion of community and family lives. We hope the book appeals to a wide and interdisciplinary academic audience in the fields of Sociology, Geography, Work and Employment, Religious Studies, Business/Entrepreneurship. Yet we also hope that the findings are insightful for business support providers and religious organisations supporting migrants, given that it provides an overview of the ways in which these institutions are actually making an impact on the trajectories of migrants. Southampton, UK London, UK April 2020

María Villares-Varela Olivia Sheringham

Acknowledgements

This project has been funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, Small Grants scheme (Project title ‘Religion, migration and entrepreneurship: The impact of transnational Pentecostalism in migrant entrepreneurship in the UK’; Reference: SG160477). We are indebted to the funder for their financial support and for the broader emphasis on supporting research within the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The project has allowed us to produce this monograph, two policy briefs and a workshop that brought together specialists in the fields of migration, religion and entrepreneurship. More information about the project and other outputs can be found in the project website https://www.southampton.ac.uk/soc iology/research/projects/religion-migration-and-entrepreneurship.page. We are thankful to our project participants who have generously shared their time and experiences with us so this book could materialise. The execution of the project was possible thanks to the support in various capacities of research assistants who helped with some of the desk research, recruitment of participants and conducting interviews, amongst other tasks. We are extremely grateful to Nathaniel Telemaque, James Lukano Omunson, Ana França Ferreira, Lakshmi Nair and Satomi Oya for the contributions. We are also grateful to the speakers and participants of the workshop held on the 8th of May 2019 at Queen Mary University of London, in particular to Dr. Andrew Davies, Dr. Scott Taylor, Dr. Bindi Shah, Dr. Natalia Vershinina, Dr. Anabelle Wilkins and Dr. William Monteith. Our

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discussions helped us to advance our analysis of the project findings. We would also like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their insightful comments. Finally, we are indebted to our institutions for their support to complete this project (University of Southampton and Queen Mary University of London and Birbeck University of London).

About This Book

The book is structured in six chapters. Chapter 1 ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship’ introduces the rationale for the study, the academic debates the book is speaking to and defines key terms used in this monograph such as migrant entrepreneurs and the use of religion and spirituality. We introduce in this chapter the specificities of Pentecostalism, and provide an account of the research design, methods, data collection and analysis. Chapter 2 ‘Lived Religion and Migrant Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary (Neoliberal) City’ engages with some of the debates around secularisation, postsecular urbanism and the complex relationships between religion and neoliberalism. It critically engages with work on migration and religion, paying particular attention to discussions of ‘lived’ or everyday religion. The chapter develops a conceptual framework through which to consider how migrants’ work and entrepreneurial practices shape, and are shaped by, everyday and institutional forms of religious practice. Chapter 3 ‘Conceptualising Religion in the Drivers and Outcomes of (Migrant) Entrepreneurship’ reviews the main debates in the field of (migrant) entrepreneurship and religion by critically engaging with accounts that have situated religiosity as part of the group characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs and advocates for placing it within the enabling and constraining effects of structural factors.

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Chapter 4 ‘Values and Faith as Drivers of Entrepreneurship: The Trajectories and Practices of Pentecostal Migrant Business Owners’ constitutes our first empirical chapter by providing an account of the ways in which religion is intertwined with the trajectories and practices of migrant business owners. The chapter analyses how business owners relate to their religion and churches as part of their migration trajectories before and during opening their own businesses. Chapter 5 ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur in Church: The Role of Religious Organizations in Supporting Migrants’ explores the role of churches in providing business support for migrant entrepreneurs by focusing on how pastors see their role in assisting their members in the world of work and how entrepreneurs perceive the access to these resources. We highlight here how entrepreneurs gain financial skills, mentoring and coaching, pastoral and spiritual care and access to networks of suppliers and customers. Chapter 6 ‘Conclusions’ brings together the main findings of the book by highlighting the core theoretical contribution the book is making, signalling future avenues for research and providing some policy recommendations for churches and business support agencies.

Contents

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2

3

Introduction: At the Intersection of Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship 1 Introduction 2 Situating the Debates on Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship 3 Research Design, Methods and Data 4 The Book’s Contribution References

5 11 17 18

Lived Religion and Migrant Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary (Neoliberal) City 1 Introduction 2 From Secularisation to the Postsecular 3 New Religious Spatialities 4 Religion, Embodiment and Everyday Life 5 Conclusions References

23 23 25 26 29 31 32

Conceptualising Religion in Relation to the Drivers and Outcomes of (Migrant) Entrepreneurship 1 Introduction 2 Ethnic Minority and Migrant Entrepreneurship: The Emergence and Consolidation of the Field

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3 Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship 4 Pentecostalism, Migration and Enterprise 5 Conclusion References 4

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Values and Faith as Drivers of Entrepreneurship: The Trajectories and Practices of Pentecostal Migrant Business Owners 1 Introduction 2 Religion and the Migration Trajectories of Business Owners 2.1 Exclusion in the Labour Market and Developing Self-belief to Become an Entrepreneur 3 Lived Religion in Business Decisions and Trajectories 4 Conclusions References Becoming an Entrepreneur in Church: The Role of Religious Organisations in Supporting Migrants 1 Introduction 2 Church as a Place for Spiritual Growth 3 ‘ We Are a Family, We Are a Community’: Church as a Social Space 4 ‘ You Can Become Employers, You Don’t Have to Be Employed by Anyone’: Church as a Space for Professional and Business Learning and Growth 5 Conclusions References Conclusions 1 Main Findings and Contributions 2 Avenues for Future Research 3 Policy Recommendations 3.1 Recommendations for Business Support Providers 3.2 Recommendations for Churches and FBOs References

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53 54 55 57 61 68 69

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81 92 93 95 95 99 100 101 101 103

References

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Index

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List of Tables

Chapter 1 Table 1

Table 2 Table 3

Summary of participants: pastors and members of other support organisations by location and size of the congregation Summary of activities offered at some of the participant churches by category Summary of participants: business owners by country of origin, gender, location and type of business

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: At the Intersection of Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship

Abstract This chapter introduces the rationale for the study, the academic debates the book is speaking to, and defines some of the key terms used (e.g. migrant entrepreneurs, religion, spirituality). It provides a brief introduction to Christian Pentecostalism as well as a detailed account of the methodology, the socio-demographic characteristics of interviewees and the analytical process. It outlines the core arguments of the book and its theoretical contribution. Keywords Religion · Migration · Entrepreneurship · Pentecostalism · Neoliberalism · UK · Methodology

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Introduction

We are currently living in an era of increased mobility identified as the ‘age of migration’ (Castles, De Haas, & Miller, 2014) where migration has accelerated from countries in the global South to countries in the global North. In the last decades, the UK has received new waves of migrants who break with an earlier pattern of traditional postcolonial migration, now originating from myriad locations and characterised by extensive differentiation in terms of migration history, legal status as well as social, linguistic, religious, educational and occupational backgrounds, © The Author(s) 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7_1

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as highlighted in the debates around superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007; see also Wessendorf, 2014). New migrants are integral to our contemporary urban spaces and contribute in a variety of ways to our economies and social worlds. At the time of writing, the UK is experiencing a climate of anti-migrant hostility with particular consequences in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum and the context of the so-called ‘hostile environment’ (Redclift & Rajina, 2019) initiated by Theresa May during her tenure as Home Secretary (2010–2016). These processes have transformed the political economy of the UK, including measures to expand border control, which have included outsourcing it to other institutions such as the NHS, universities, letting agencies and banks (Lewis, Waite, & Hodkinson, 2017; see also Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, & Cassidy, 2019). Whilst existing research overwhelmingly highlights the benefits of migration to the societies in which migrants settle (Dustmann & Frattini, 2013; Jones, Ram, & Villares-Varela, 2019; Lee & Nathan, 2010), political and media discourses generally portray migrants as a burden on welfare provision, a threat to local workers and a disruption to social cohesion. It is within this context that the ‘value’ of migrants is discussed (Kofman, 2014). The so-called ‘highly-skilled’ appear as the only tolerable category the country can shoulder within its borders, together with those who are self-sufficient and/or generate employment for the local population. Within such discourses, migrant entrepreneurs feature as potentially overcoming the burden narrative put forward in this neoliberal setting, with narratives depicting successful migrant entrepreneurs as heroic in the midst of negative portrayals of newcomers (Ram, Jones, & Villares-Varela, 2017; Williams & Nadin, 2013). These processes of alternative labour incorporation for migrant entrepreneurs are reflected through the considerable contribution of migrants to the British business landscape. Foreign-born entrepreneurs in the UK own approximately 14 per cent of companies, with 1 in 7 new start-ups opened by migrants (Centre for Entrepreneurs/Duedil, 2014). It is also widely recognised that migrant entrepreneurs create employment opportunities (1.8 jobs created per migrant entrepreneur on average) in the countries where they settle (OECD, 2011). Moreover, existing research highlights some of the ways in which migrant businesses provide other important social contributions that go far beyond financial dividends or job creation, such as catering for low-income communities, providing training and skills for other migrants and fostering social integration (Jones et al., 2019).

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Despite their crucial, though largely unrecognised, contributions to society, migrants face vital challenges in their entrepreneurial endeavours with very little support from mainstream providers (Ram et al., 2017). This has been well documented in the literature on ethnic minority and migrant entrepreneurship which highlights how persistent challenges for these entrepreneurs mainly relate to issues such as difficulties in access to finance, the nature of the markets in which they are embedded and their lack of formal and applied management skills (Carter, Mwaura, Ram, Trehan, & Jones, 2015). Scholars have highlighted how these barriers have different causes ranging from racialised discrimination in access to finance and business support (Carter et al., 2015; Ram, Smallbone, & Deakins, 2002); disconnection from mainstream support providers (Villares-Varela, Ram, Jones, & Doldor, 2017) and the fact that policy initiatives are mainly focused on individual capabilities rather than addressing structural factors that overwhelmingly disadvantage and further marginalise migrant communities (Rath & Swagerman, 2016). In ‘post-austerity’ Britain, access to support has also been affected by measures to curtail investment in important sources of information and networks for entrepreneurs, which has led to new forms of business support outside formal avenues. It is within such a context that new social actors shaping the lives, occupational and entrepreneurial aspirations of migrants have emerged, including faith-based organisations (FBOs) and churches, which are an important focus of this book. However, as we argue below, the role of religious organisations in supporting, promoting and even funding migrants’ entrepreneurial activities has been largely overlooked. In parallel to the burgeoning literature on migrant labour and entrepreneurship, including discussions of the consequences of increased marginalisation of migrants in contexts of austerity and hostility (Humphris, 2019), there exists a growing body of work on the relationship between religion and migration across a range of disciplines. This includes work on the ways in which religious and spiritual practices shape and are shaped by mobility (e.g. Levitt, 2007); the formation of transnational religious networks (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2002) and the growing visibility of diasporic religious identities in urban spaces (Garbin, 2013; Garnett & Harris, 2013). The notion of ‘postsecular cities’ has emerged in urban scholarship to denote the ways in which ‘religion, faith communities and spiritual values’ have re-emerged at the centre of urban public life, occupying spaces and taking on roles otherwise occupied by secular

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actors, including public service provision and social and financial support (Beaumont & Baker, 2011, p. 1). Several scholars have explored, in different ways, the relationships between the increased visibility of religion in cities and wider structural changes associated with neoliberalism and the retrenchment of the state (Beaumont, 2008). Moving beyond a focus on practices that are tied to religious institutions, other scholars have called for more attention to be paid to the embodied aspects of religious experience and instead drawn attention to ‘everyday’ or ‘lived’ religion to examine how religion, spirituality and everyday life are deeply intertwined (Ammerman, 2007; McGuire, 2008; Sheringham, 2013). Despite this acknowledgement, however, there remain few examples of research that explores the ways in which religious faith and spirituality permeate people’s working lives and entrepreneurial practices. Seeking to address the gaps identified above, this book brings together the findings of a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust funded project on ‘Religion, migration and entrepreneurship: The impact of transnational Pentecostalism on migrant entrepreneurship in the UK ’ (SG160477). It critically engages with the role of religion—which we understand as lived, practised and experienced at the level of everyday life as well as within the congregation—in the practices of migrant entrepreneurs against the backdrop of neoliberal Britain. We define migrant entrepreneurs as those who are foreign-born (outside the UK) and who are business owners or selfemployed. Situating our research within wider debates around religion and migration, we focus specifically on Pentecostalism, a form of Christianity that has widespread appeal amongst migrants in the UK. The book draws on primary qualitative data collected amongst Pentecostal migrants and church leaders. We examine the ways in which Pentecostal beliefs and values influence the aspirations and practices of migrant entrepreneurs and the role of Pentecostal churches in supporting entrepreneurial activities amongst migrant communities. This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective spanning sociology, geography and entrepreneurship to examine how values and faith networks shape migrants’ everyday life, work and entrepreneurial practices. Our findings show that affiliation to churches and religious values have an important role for migrants in accessing resources (e.g. knowledge exchange networks, capital, mentoring) and resilience when confronting business challenges. These challenges take place within a context of the dismantling of mainstream business support services and a wider ‘hostile environment’ for migrants in recent years. Whilst we

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draw on personal stories and experiences, our approach is attentive to the wider contexts and structural factors that shape and are shaped by these individual narratives and practices (Kloosterman et al., 1999; Welter, 2011). The book builds on and advances existing debates on religion and enterprise through drawing out (i) the significance of the neoliberal context within which these entrepreneurs are working/setting up their businesses; (ii) the ways in which the retrenchment of the state in recent decades has left important spaces in the market for business support abandoned which are being filled by churches and FBOs; and (iii) the ways in which processes of exclusion for these entrepreneurs from the mainstream world of work are cushioned by the services that churches provide for their businesses and beyond as well as their everyday lived experiences of faith which, we argue, need to be more widely acknowledged.

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Situating the Debates on Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship

Despite predictions to the contrary, it is now widely recognised that modernity and the expansion of capitalism have not led to the disappearance of religion in public or private spheres. Widespread theories of secularisation that prevailed during the 1960s were based on hypotheses that modernity would lead to the weakening of religion’s importance, or at least its withdrawal from the public realm (Casanova, 1994). A reappraisal of such theories and the emergence of notions of ‘desecularistion’ (Berger, 2002), or ‘deprivatisation’ (Casanova, 1994) reflects the acknowledgement of the widespread (re)appearance of diverse forms of religious expression across different scales: a process increasingly evidenced in contemporary urban spaces (Baker, 2009). Whilst, for some, the emergence of multiple new religions suggests that the secularisation thesis is no longer viable, others hold that a more nuanced, fluid, understanding of the concept is required, whereby secularisation and new forms of religious and spiritual expression exist and are often closely intertwined (Baker, 2009; Wilford, 2009; see also Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016). Inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas, urban scholars have used the term ‘postsecular’ to theorise how ‘religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance and social identity’ (Beaumont & Baker, 2011, p. 1).

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Yet although the postsecular approach is useful for exploring the relationships between religion and urbanism, including the ‘rapprochement’ between religious and secular institutions in the regulation of social life and welfare provision, critiques have revolved around its tendency to see religion as reacting, or adapting, to neoliberal models of urbanism, rather than as ‘a constitutive force of capitalism in the modern city’ (Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016, p. 495; see also Bartolini, Chris, MacKian, & Pile, 2017). For others, postsecular perspectives have tended to foreground large religious denominations—in particular Christianity and Islam—and struggles for space in the modern city—rather than examine the ‘many new forms of spirituality’ at work in contemporary urban spaces (Bartolini et al., 2017, p. 344). In this book we focus specifically on Pentecostalism—a form of Charismatic Christianity which emphasises a personal relationship with God where mind, spirit and body are embedded into one by providing what has been referred to as a holistic experience of religiosity (Poewe, 1994). We recognise that Pentecostalism is an internally heterogeneous and diverse movement in terms of beliefs as well as organisational style, encompassing more rigid and well-established denominations alongside those that are more fluid and ad hoc. It is beyond the scope of our book to closely attend to these internal denominational differences so our focus is broadly on churches and congregants who self-identify as Pentecostal. Moreover, although we take Pentecostalism—and Pentecostal pastors and congregants—as our primary focus, our approach is informed by perspectives that are attuned to the multiple ways in which religion and spirituality can be lived, practised and experienced within and across different scales (Ammerman, 2007), including more recent work which foregrounds the emergence of ‘new spiritualities’ and the ways in which these are ‘part and parcel of modernity’ rather than separate from it (Bartolini, MacKian, & Pile, 2018). We understand religion and spirituality as overlapping but with important differences. Our use of the terms draws on Bartolini et al. (2018, p. 6) who see religion as ‘a form through which spirituality is expressed, performed and experienced’, but not its only form as spirituality can also be ‘experienced in a wide variety of religious and non-religious forms’ (ibid., p. 4). Our decision to focus on Pentecostalism stems, in part, from its proliferation in countries in the ‘global South’—notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America—and subsequent spread to, and significant growth within, cities in the global North (Anderson, 2013; Meyer, 2004; Miller

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& Yamamori, 2007; Yong, 2005). According to the ‘Mapping Migration, Mapping Churches’ Responses in Europe’ project (Jackson & Passarelli, 2015) there are currently in Europe more migrants with a Christian background than a Muslim one (see also Griera, 2013). Several scholars have drawn attention to the notable divergences between the global spread of Pentecostalism and wider processes of globalisation, referring to processes of ‘globalisation from below’ (Freston, 2001) or ‘reverse missionising’ (Jenkins, 2011) whereby countries in the global South have become central nodes in a ‘new global religious cartography’ (Vásquez & Rocha, 2013, p. 1). For Währisch-Oblau (2009) the mission practices and the social engagement activities of Pentecostal churches represent a channel via which Charismatic migrants from the global South can engage in globalisation processes and define themselves as agents for change in Europe (see also Garbin, 2013). A second motivation for our focus on Pentecostalism is its rapid proliferation in cities in the global North, and its appeal amongst migrants and marginalised groups within those cities. These have been explored from a range of perspectives. For Lanz and Oosterbaan (2016), Pentecostalism is an example of what they refer to as ‘entrepreneurial religions’, which, they argue, are able to flourish in these neoliberal urban contexts and are themselves ‘a constitutive force of contemporary capitalism in the city’ (p. 489). Griera (2013) refers to the Weberian ‘elective affinity’ (p. 226) between being an ethnic minority and being Pentecostal and argues that this affinity ‘can be explained by the adaptation capacity of Pentecostalism to the necessities, the cultural particularities and the structural conditions of ethnic minorities’ (p. 240). Similarly, as Fesenmyer (2018) argues, Pentecostalism ‘encourages an understanding of religion as a personal relationship with God […]; such a relationship takes on added significance in the context of migration, where believers often contend with myriad challenges as they try to build lives in a new setting’ (p. 754). Hence, Pentecostalism seems to emerge as a form of religiosity that to some degree addresses challenges encountered as part of the migration trajectory in the global North. For example, as some have argued, Pentecostalism can be seen to subvert or counter the otherwise marginalised positions that migrants occupy as a consequence of globalisation, providing spaces of empowerment and agency (Griera, 2013). Beyond the ‘functionalist’ notion that Pentecostalism appeals because it responds to and fulfils particular needs in wider structural contexts

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of marginalisation, others have looked more closely at its internal religious characteristics, including the commitment to direct engagement with the Holy Spirit and focus on experience and transformation rather than doctrine (Fesenmyer, 2019).1 For Miller and Yamamori (2007), a tendency to analyse the external contexts within which Pentecostalism acts often overlooks the spiritual dimension: the possibility that ‘individuals within the movement sometimes encounter a reality that is more than compensation for the trials of life or more than the ecstasy of group celebration’ (p. 220, emphasis added). In this book, we are interested in more recent perspectives that take into account both the poetics and politics of Pentecostalism in contemporary cities and the ways in which these are intertwined, allowing for a clearer understanding of ‘the interplay of the structural and phenomenological in religious place-making’ (Fesenmyer, 2019, p. 36). More specifically, we seek to examine the active role of Pentecostal movements within wider processes of neoliberal restructuring and modernity as well as the ways in which Pentecostalism ‘provides a set of values, rituals, structures through which people conduct their everyday lives in the city’ (Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016, p. 496). In other words, our approach is attentive to the ways in which Pentecostalism is practised and experienced not as separate to people’s personal and social lives, but rather as the central framework through which their lives are negotiated and lived (Bartolini et al., 2018; see Chapter 2 for more detail of this). Important here is the consideration of how Pentecostalism can act as an avenue of ‘mediation’ (Meyer, 2014) between the supernatural and the everyday and that believers’ engagement with the supernatural and the sacred can have powerful material consequences for their everyday lives, practices and identities (Vásquez, 2011; see also Lanz & Oosterbaan 2016). The third, and closely related, reason for our focus on Pentecostalism is based on its emphasis on the ‘prosperity gospel’, which signals that ‘God wants all believers to be rich, healthy and successful’ (Hunt, 2000 in 1 The central tenet of Pentecostalism is the Baptism by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost—as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles—during which everyone present was ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’ and ‘began speaking in other tongues’. Pentecostalism’s ‘revival’ in the twentieth century stems from what is regarded as a ‘reoccurrence’ of such an event in 1906 at a house in Azuza Street in Los Angeles, California, led by an African American preacher named William Seymour. It is said that those gathered in the house again felt the presence of the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues and ‘renewed the promise to be Christ’s witnesses’ (Cesar, 2001, p. 24).

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Haynes, 2013, p. 85). This triad of wealth, success and health for believers takes place in exchange for faith and gift giving (Haynes, 2013), and positions practices such as divine healing at the core of religious experiences (Brown, 2011). Drawing out the relations between Pentecostalism, materiality and market exchanges, scholars have studied the ‘morality of money’ (Haynes, 2013, p. 123) and exchanges within Pentecostal values and how it might encourage believers to engage in neoliberal market participation (ibid.) through ‘for example, a church’s encouragement of entrepreneurship amongst its members’ (van de Kamp, 2011 in Haynes, 2013, p. 87) or, as Griera (2013) puts it, ‘through Pentecostalism ethnic minorities are able to re-educate the community to the requirements of capitalism’ (p. 244; see also Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016).2 In light of these internal and external characteristics of Pentecostalism and its appeal amongst migrant communities, our interest lies in the widely overlooked questions of: (i) how Pentecostal churches foster aspirations and support entrepreneurial journeys; and (ii) how migrant entrepreneurs who are congregants of these denominations experience and practise their religion in the realm of work and enterprise. This builds on wider debates on migrant entrepreneurship and conceptualisations of religion and spirituality. Work on entrepreneurship in general has only recently paid heed to themes of spirituality and religiosity, highlighting that religion should be considered a factor shaping the values and mindsets of entrepreneurs (Balog, Baker, & Walker, 2014), and considered as integral to the portfolio of capitals they mobilise in their entrepreneurial endeavours (Neubert, Bradley, Ardianti, & Simiyu, 2017). With regard to migrant entrepreneurship more specifically, scholars have explored the role of variables such as ethnicity, gender, access to finance and support in relation to drivers and outcomes of entrepreneurship (Jones & Ram, 2012; Jones, Ram, Edwards, Kiselinchev, & Muchenje, 2014; Ram & Jones, 2008) but the role of religion in migrant entrepreneurship has been scarcely researched and frequently disconnected from structural factors (see Chapter 3 for further discussions).

2 This connection between Pentecostalism and the functioning of capitalism has also been observed in discussions of the role of religion for development in the global South. This has been particularly significant in relation to the emergence of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches given their focus on self-empowerment, and church-based social missions (see, e.g., Heslam, 2016).

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Our study seeks to address some of the limitations in existing research in part through foregrounding the social, political and economic contexts within which Pentecostal churches and congregants are situated, and exploring how they shape and are shaped by migrants’ entrepreneurial endeavours (Welter, 2011) and religious lives. In this case, the experiences and practices of religion and enterprise take place in a context shaped by ‘post-austerity’ against a backdrop of neoliberal restructuring in the UK. Neoliberalism can be defined as the ‘agenda of economic and social transformation under the sign of the free market that has come to dominate global politics in the last quarter-century’ (Connell, 2010, p. 22; see also Harvey, 2007). This ideology is characterised by the mercantilisation and privatisation of formerly public services and by the attrition of community and family relationships where markets appears as the optimum form of social organisation (ibid.). In this context, financial and welfare dependency are constructed as non-desirable outcomes of our social lives where, for example, being in debt is seen as stigmatising (Verdouw, 2017) and having money has become a ‘condition of moral health’ (Buchan, 1997, p. 270 in Verdouw, 2017, p. 525). In this context, the focus on individual success makes social actors ‘discursively detached from the structural constraints of society and isolated from contextual and historical conditions’ (Layton, 2010 in Türken, Nafstad, Blakar, & Roen, 2016, p. 34). As we suggested above, the central tenets of neoliberalism provide the perfect staging ground for Pentecostalism to flourish, with its focus on self-betterment, individual trajectories and the ‘Prosperity gospel’ and emphasis on Health/Wealth. Indeed, several scholars have examined the relationships between the two and the emergence of neoliberal subjectivities. However, the social mechanisms underpinning how churches and congregants make sense of these and how they utilise resources have not been sufficiently explored. In addition, the values instilled in the entrepreneurs and the narratives of economic contribution and independence take place alongside contexts of the ‘hostile environment’, the construction of the heroic (migrant) entrepreneur, the erosion of former communities of support and focus on individualised success. And, as we examine in more depth in the forthcoming chapters, Pentecostal churches—the values they instil and the roles that they play—both sustain and unsettle these wider processes of neoliberal restructuring.

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Research Design, Methods and Data

Our research design involved an interpretative epistemology (Bryman, 2016) in order to explore the experiences, meanings and perceptions of lived religion in the entrepreneurial endeavours of migrant business owners. This approach was also used to grasp the perceptions of pastors and other social actors supporting individuals at the workplace and in their business endeavours. Our approach to the research was informed by Bell and Taylor’s (2014) notion of ‘methodological agnosticism’. This was an important issue to reflect upon when collecting and analysing the data, given that both authors self-define as non-religious. Departing from a standpoint of methodological agnosticism was an important position to take since we acknowledge that the consequences of belief are real for the individuals and groups involved in our subject of social research enquiry, but we do not aim to unpack in a scientific way the religious worldviews of participants. As Bell and Taylor (2014) write, ‘agnosticism offers the basis for a fieldwork strategy that avoids both offense and incorporation’ (p. 544; see also Vásquez, 2011). In order to achieve the theoretical goal of gaining a richer understanding of the ways in which religion is lived and manifested in the aspirations and trajectories of Pentecostal business owners, we implemented a qualitative research design based on semi-structured qualitative interviews (Seidman, 2006) conducted between 2018 and 2019 with a total of 26 business owners, 11 pastors and 3 support workers in different organisations working with individuals at the work place and in business support. To establish contact with interviewees, visits to some of the churches took place, where informal observation helped the researchers to gain a better understanding of the context of work and faith for the interviewees. Churches were sampled based on their denomination (Pentecostal, Charismatic), and contacted through formal letters and also using informal contacts from previous fieldwork. Support organisations were also identified via referrals from churches and other business support agencies. Business owners were approached through the pastors in some of the churches included in our sample but also via other informal contacts, beyond the churches included in the study. Our sampling criteria for business owner was based on occupation (business owner/entrepreneur or self-employed), place of birth (outside of the UK) and self-identification as a congregant of a Pentecostal/Charismatic church.

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Interviews took place in London, Birmingham and several locations in Hampshire. This allowed us to have a varied set of contexts, and to move beyond the London-heavy focus of UK migration studies (Jones, Ram, & Villares-Varela, 2018). The inclusion of fieldwork sites in Hampshire complemented the research, allowing for perspectives from a less diverse area (compared both to Birmingham and London), but one in which neoliberal restructuring, ‘post-austerity’ and hostility towards migrants are still at work, albeit in different ways. The data collection was challenging given the narrowness of our sampling criteria. Whilst it would have been easier to access migrant workers who were members of these churches, it was more challenging to find a good number of business owners who were willing to participate. We sought to overcome this limitation with the support of research assistants who had links to some of the communities in which we were working. Using several field workers to access some of the interviewees is qualified as a form of referral sampling including a more diverse range of entry points into the field (Penrod, Preston, Cain, & Starks, 2003). We held frequent debriefing sessions with the research assistants to gain an understanding of their access, positionality and perceptions of the data collection. Interviews with pastors included questions related to the history, mission and size of their congregation, their relations with other churches or organisations in the region and beyond, their core activities, challenges and opportunities for their congregants, the role of values and faith in the professional trajectories of their congregants and support offered for business development, amongst other themes. Interviews with business owners/self-employed migrants included questions related to their migration and occupational trajectories both in the countries of origin and in the UK, church affiliation, religiosity and migration, motivations for entry into business ownership, challenges and opportunities, the role of church, business support available and aspirations for the future, amongst others. We should note that the churches taking part in our research showed a high degree of diversity in relation to the specificities of their denominations within the Pentecostal domain (some, for example, putting more emphasis on Charismatic preaching than others), and in terms of the size of the congregation and the reach and scope of their activities. For example, we engaged with relatively small churches with merely 40 congregants, medium-size churches (between 120 and 400 congregants) and large churches reaching out to 1800 congregants. As expected, these substantial differences have an impact on the type of services they can

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offer to their communities since the resources they have are strongly related to the size of their congregation. For example, several of the largest churches owned the premises in which to deliver their services, whilst other churches had comparatively limited resources, which meant it was sometimes necessary for them to hire spaces in other churches or community centres for ad hoc events (see Table 1 for a summary of our interviews with pastors). The spatial location of the churches was also varied, from very central urban locations for the largest and most affluent churches, to spaces in semi-urban peripheries of the cities for those with fewer resources. Some of these churches were located in warehouses, available spaces in the deteriorated and frequently abandoned industrial states in our cities, and also community centres that are disused due to public funding restrictions. The churches offered a wide range of services to their congregants and communities spanning spiritual, social, entrepreneurial and community spheres. The nature and scope of these services depended on the size of the congregation, the resources available, and the core focus or mission of the church (see Table 2 for a comprehensive list of the services offered in some of the participant churches). Table 1 Summary of participants: pastors and members of other support organisations by location and size of the congregation Label

Type

Location

Pastor 1 Pastor 2 Pastor 3 Pastor 4 Pastor 5 Pastor 6 Pastor 7 Pastor 8 Pastor 9 Pastor 10 Pastor 11 Support worker 1 Support worker 2 Support worker 3

Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Pastor Support worker Support worker Support worker

Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham London London Hampshire Hampshire London Hampshire Birmingham Birmingham Midlands

Approximate size of congregation 50 1800 90 100 50 350 100 60 100 60 100 N/A N/A N/A

Coffee-morning Youth-club

Bible study groups

Wedding services; baby dedication/naming/christening services; funeral services Live stream of services (for housebound congregants and those abroad) Preparation for marriage

Men and women’s groups/Men and women’s ministries Youth ministries

Childminding, ‘parents and toddlers’ club; homework club

Sunday services (multilingual services in some churches)

Referrals to other organisations (counselling, housing, other care)

Hostel facilities/emergency accommodation Counselling

Activities dedicated to children with learning difficulties or disabilities

Toddlers groups (parents attending with children)

Care/support

Connection with business and mentoring networks in the community Communication skills, social skills, etc.

Business prayers

Business mentoring

Food safety and hygiene certificate for catering; First Aid ‘How to set up a business’ workshops; self-employment regulations Leadership skills; ethics and morals of business and leadership

Financial skills/manage your finances/CAP courses

Skills and business

Summary of activities offered at some of the participant churches by category

Spiritual

Table 2

Support of transnational organisations, international churches or Christian charities Activities in collaboration with schools and other organisations in the community Outside visits (prison services, hospital visits) Translation services

Foodbank; breakfast for homeless; lunch clubs for the > 65 Social events (domino nights, dinner/social nights) Fundraising for church and charity

Community/other

14 M. VILLARES-VARELA AND O. SHERINGHAM

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The socio-demographic profile of their congregants was also diverse, although most churches explained that they generally had a higher female presence in the church, particularly in the most active groups or services, and with average ages between 30 and 65, with a good base of children and teenagers. The churches in our study had a very international migrant base, with a mix of ethnic minority settled communities and new migrants. Most had a diverse composition of congregants with African, Caribbean and Latin American origins, and some of the churches have a clear congregant base linked to specific national groups (e.g. Brazilian, Polish), or linked through a common language (e.g. Lusophone). This diversity was also reflected in how some churches had the specific mission of helping newcomers to settle by providing a network of Christian congregants and access to their services. The business owners interviewed (n = 26) included a wide range of countries of origin, with Caribbean and African origins being predominant, and with 17 women and 9 men interviewed. Interviewees were owners of small firms (max. 5 employees), with most of them working alone as self-employed. Most businesses and activities are of small size, in the service sector, with a good representation of those providing care and recruitment services, hairdressing and beauty salons, confirming the findings of previous projects on the nature and composition of the businesses of migrant entrepreneurs (Villares-Varela et al., 2017) (see Table 3 for a summary of the profile of the business owners interviewed). The analysis of the data was thematic, and involved identifying core issues emerging from the interviews and coding these in relation to our theoretical research questions. This was done in an iterative way, by deductively interrogating the narratives of interviewees and then by inductively reorganising the data into the theoretical categories we were looking for as well as allowing the data to develop new ones. Both authors discussed the preliminary findings in relation to the first stages of the analysis. The research project gained ethical approval from the University of Southampton which ensured informed consent and confidentiality. The published data does not include any identifying information for either pastors or business owners. We have also concealed literal mission statements, names and exact locations of churches, to avoid any potential identification of participants or churches.

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Table 3 Summary of participants: business owners by country of origin, gender, location and type of business Label

Location

Country of origin

Gender

Type of business

1 2 3 4

Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham

Jamaica Jamaica Malawi Iran

Female Male Female Female

Entrepreneur 5

Birmingham

Iran

Male

Entrepreneur 6

Birmingham

Ghana

Female

Entrepreneur 7

Birmingham

Nigeria

Male

Entrepreneur 8 Entrepreneur 9

Birmingham Birmingham

Zambia Zimbabwe

Female Female

Entrepreneur 10 Entrepreneur 11 Entrepreneur 12

Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham

Male Female Male

Entrepreneur 13 Entrepreneur 14

London London

Female Female

Recruitment agency Hairdressing

Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

London London London London London London London London London Hampshire Hampshire

Ghana Brazil Trinidad and Tobago Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago Brazil Jamaica Barbados Barbados Brazil Brazil Brazil Brazil Jamaica Zimbabwe Poland

Nursery Nursery Care agency Recovery truck business Recovery truck business Import business Hairdressing salon Automobile buy and sell business; photo studio; business consulting Hair braiding Grocery/mini market Business consulting Beauty salon Café

Male Female Female Male Male Female Female Female Female Female Male

Entrepreneur 26

Hampshire

Brazil

Female

Cleaning business Hairdressing Social enterprise Social enterprise Meat business Cleaning business Cheese business Beautician business Recruitment agency Care agency Construction company Beauty salon

Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Entrepreneur

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The Book’s Contribution

Our aim in this book is to explore the ways in which Pentecostal religious values, beliefs and practices are intertwined with the entrepreneurial practices and values of migrants. Our findings show that their, at times, disadvantageous labour market positions shape the aspirations and capabilities to change their circumstances from a position of Pentecostal faith. These values seem to encompass core elements of neoliberal subjectivities (such as freedom, individual responsibility, high reflexivity, portraying welfare dependency as failure). We argue that the support offered by churches simultaneously complies with and contests the formation of neoliberal subjectivities by providing cultural/ideological legitimacy to the entrepreneurial subject—beyond business ownership—by providing legitimacy to a strong focus on career, personal and professional development and individualised responsibility, agency and empowerment, detached from state constraints. However, we also see how both churches and the community-based networks in which our participants are embedded unsettle the community/family erosion which is characteristic of neoliberalism—particularly in an austerity context—by forging a strong a sense of community and family values. The book is structured as follows. The next two chapters develop the book’s conceptual framework through first, in Chapter 2, critically engaging with debates surrounding religion and migration, postsecularism and ‘lived’ religion, and second, in Chapter 3, conceptualising religion in relation to scholarly debates around migrant entrepreneurship. Chapters 4 and 5 draw on our empirical material to explore in depth some of the ways in which Pentecostal values and faith shape and are shaped by migrants’ entrepreneurial factors. We do this through a focus on the experiences of Pentecostal migrant entrepreneurs (Chapter 4), and through a discussion of the role of churches in the provision of business support (Chapter 5). By way of conclusion, Chapter 6 draws out some of the conceptual and empirical contributions of the study, points to avenues for future research and delineates a series of policy recommendations.

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Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024–1054. Villares-Varela, M., Ram, M., Jones, T., & Doldor, S. (2017). Facilitating new migrant business development: A collaborative approach. Birmingham: Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship and Ashley Community Housing. Währisch-Oblau, C. (2009). The missionary self-perception of Pentecostal/Charismatic church leaders from the global south in Europe: Bringing back the gospel. Leiden: Brill. Welter, F. (2011). Contextualizing entrepreneurship—Conceptual challenges and ways forward. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(1), 165–184. Wessendorf, S. (2014). Commonplace diversity: Social relations in a super-diverse context. Palgrave Macmillan. Wilford, J. (2009). Sacred archipelagos: Geographies of secularization. Progress in Human Geography, 34(3), 1–21. Williams, C. C., & Nadin, S. J. (2013). Beyond the entrepreneur as a heroic figurehead of capitalism: Re-representing the lived practices of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25(7–8), 552–568. Yong, A. (2005). The Spirit poured out on all flesh: Pentecostalism and the possibility of global theology. Ada, MI: Baker Academic. Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G., & Cassidy, K. (2019). Bordering. Cambridge: Polity Press.

CHAPTER 2

Lived Religion and Migrant Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary (Neoliberal) City

Abstract This chapter engages with some of the debates around secularisation, postsecular urbanism and the complex relationships between religion and neoliberalism. We examine the burgeoning literature on the intersections between religion and migration, paying particular attention to more recent notions of ‘lived’ or ‘everyday’ religion and spirituality. Critically engaging with this work, the chapter develops a conceptual framework through which to consider how migrants’ work and entrepreneurial practices shape, and are shaped by, everyday and institutional forms of religious practice. Keywords Secularisation · Postsecular urbanism · Lived religion · Migration · Entrepreneurship

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Introduction

As we have seen in Chapter 1, scholars across a range of disciplines have acknowledged the continued importance of religion and spirituality, as well as their (re)emergence within and across different spatial scales. Challenging what has been put forward as a largely ‘antireligious bias’ (Warner & Wittner, 1998, p. 11) across the social sciences, there has been a burgeoning of work that focuses on the significance of religion © The Author(s) 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7_2

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and spirituality in contemporary social life. The intersections between religion and migration have received substantial scholarly attention as scholars have explored the global spread of religious practices and beliefs across borders, both through religious institutions as well as through the everyday practices and experiences of migrants (Hagan, 2008; Levitt, 2007; Sheringham, 2013). Such work has drawn attention to the different spaces and scales upon which religion is experienced and practised, and its permeation into all aspects of the migration process (ibid.). These insights have contributed to a growing, yet still surprisingly sparse, acknowledgement that religion should not be considered as an ‘add-on’—or marginal factor—but rather is deeply intertwined into all aspects of social life (Kong, 2010). In this chapter, we examine some of the ways in which religion has been foregrounded in—or incorporated into—studies of migration across a range of scales, drawing particular attention to how Pentecostalism has been explored through a transnational lens. The chapter also engages with recent work that acknowledges the plurality of ways in which religion is lived or experienced, and the convergences and divergences with notions of faith and spirituality. Whilst we find an ‘everyday’ or ‘lived’ religion (Ammerman, 2007; McGuire, 2008) approach useful for our analysis, we suggest that such perspectives have tended to overlook the myriad ways in which religion permeates people’s working lives or entrepreneurial decision-making. Thus, as well as forming a review and synthesis of debates to which we seek to contribute and build, this chapter develops the book’s conceptual framework for examining how migrants’ work and entrepreneurial practices shape and are shaped by everyday and institutional forms of religious practice. Importantly, we consider how we might explore the entanglement of such practices against a continual backdrop of neoliberalism, austerity and an ongoing ‘hostile’ environment for migrants and refugees (see Chapter 1). If, as Holloway and Valins (2002, p. 2) assert, ‘[r]eligious and spiritual matters form an important context through which the majority of the world’s population live their lives, forge a sense (indeed ethics) of self, and make and perform different geographies’, then, we argue, their relationship with entrepreneurial practices, values and choices needs to be taken seriously.

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From Secularisation to the Postsecular

Until relatively recently, the prevailing hypotheses amongst scholars was that modernity would lead to secularisation and the weakening of religion’s importance, or at least its withdrawal from the public realm (Berger, 1967; Luckman, 1967, c.f. Casanova, 1994). Indeed, according to Casanova (1994, p. 17), the inevitability of secularisation was so widely accepted, that until the 1980s, it was almost ‘taken-for-granted’ that religion’s significance would decline. As Vazquez and Marquardt (2003, p. 4) suggest, ‘[o]perating under Enlightenment-based notions of history and agency, many social scientists have tended to dismiss religion’s capacity to shape social life’. Arguments which suggest that Western societies are ‘relentlessly secularising’ have taken as their evidence the ‘decline both in participation in formal religion such as regular attendance at divine services … and also in people identifying themselves as belonging to a particular religion in census counts’ (Bartolini, MacKian, & Pile, 2018, p. 14). Such contentions have been challenged in several intersecting ways, ranging from work that highlights: the religious dimensions of geopolitics (Dittmar & Sturm, 2010; Holloway, 2018); the ways in which religious—or ‘faith-based’ - organisations work in areas formerly occupied by ‘secular’ elements of the state (Beaumont, 2008); to more recent discussions of the emergence of, and growing interest in, ‘alternative spiritualities’ in the contemporary world (Heelas, 2002; Holloway & Valins, 2002; Mackian, 2012). Within a growing acknowledgement that there are many different ways to ‘be religious’ or to practice one’s faith, a focus on the connections between people’s religious and spiritual lives and their business and work practices has been notably absent. This is a particularly striking omission within work in migration studies that has explored in evergreater depth the intersections between migration and religion (Saunders, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, & Snyder, 2016) as well as relationships between migration and entrepreneurship (Balog, Baker, & Walker, 2014; Henley, 2017). In this book, we are interested in the ways in which Pentecostal values and beliefs intertwine, merge, shape and are shaped by migrant believers’ entrepreneurial actions. Such a focus means unsettling and challenging dichotomies that continue to be held between sacred and profane, religion and modernity, the institutional and the everyday, in order to develop new perspectives in which ‘the religious and the secular

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do not simply compete with one another but also intersect in complex and sometimes contradictory ways’ (Gökarıksel, 2009, p. 658). Growing recognition of the burgeoning—and continued—salience of religion and spirituality has emerged within studies of globalisation and concurrent processes of human (im)mobility across borders. Although, as Rudolph (1997) comments, religious communities are ‘among the oldest transnationals’—spreading globally through processes of conquest, colonisation and often taking on new hybrid forms in different contexts (Vasquez & Rocha, 2013)—work on more recent phases of transnationalism has been slower to pick up on the religious and spiritual dimensions of such movements. Increasingly, however, scholars have acknowledged that religious beliefs and practices travel, ‘not just through institutions and formal networks, but also as an integral part of the identities and experiences of many migrants’ (Sheringham, 2010, p. 1689).

3

New Religious Spatialities

The contemporary phase of religious movement and mutability has led to what Vasquez and Rocha (2013, p. 1) refer to as a ‘new global religious cartography’ in which, they argue, ‘the “global South” plays the protagonist role’. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 1, this new global cartography of religion is evident through the relative decline in Christian worship across Europe alongside the ‘explosive growth’ of Charismatic Catholicism and Pentecostalism in the global South, in particular in Latin American and many African countries (ibid.). Whilst these countries have become important new centres of religious change and innovation, its global spread has been predominantly via the missionary activities of transnational Charismatic churches that have emerged in the global North, leading some scholars to refer to processes of ‘reverse missionizing’ (Jenkins, 2011; see also Freston, 2001). Recent work on new religious cartographies that unsettle prevailing secularisation paradigms have foregrounded the role of post-industrial cities in the global North as enabling new forms of religious innovation (Kuppinger, 2019). It has been widely argued that the enhanced presence of organised religion and new religiosities in urban spaces has challenged widespread premises held within urban theory that processes of modernisation would ‘gradually stifle superstition and religion’ (Bartolini, Robert, MacKian, & Pile, 2017, p. 342). Indeed, a focus on cities has highlighted

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the ways in which secularisation and the emergence of new forms of religious and spiritual expression cannot be seen as contradictory but rather as coexisting and intertwined (ibid.; Baker, 2009; Wilford, 2010; Kong, 2010). For some, the persistence of religion alongside processes of secularisation is practised and experienced within what Wilford (2010) calls ‘sacred archipelagos’ or ‘island chains in a vast ocean of modernity’ (Bartolini et al., 2017, p. 341). In contrast to this island metaphor—in which religion persists in modernity only at the scale of the ‘body, the home and the community’ (ibid., p. 341)—others have argued that ‘religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance, and social identity’ (Beaumont & Baker, 2011, p. 1). In either case, far from ‘a machine that eats religion alive’, cities are now widely regarded as ‘postsecular’ locales in which modernity and concurrent processes of neoliberal governance have opened up new spaces for a vast range of religious and spiritual practices (Bartolini et al., 2017, p. 342; Beaumont & Baker, 2011; see also Ley, 2011). With regard to the provision of services to homeless people, Cloke, Johnsen, and May (2010, p. 73) point to evidence of a ‘postsecular rapprochement’, whereby faith-motivated groups may ‘join with others in third spaces in the city where common ground can be established in the pursuit of ethical ideals and practical service’. This is not to suggest that faith-inspired groups and individuals did not play a vital role in such services in the past, but rather that such groups are—in many cases—occupying a more middle ground in which, they argue, ‘Christian charity is being reproduced as relational love and friendship, a gratuitous and creative practice of service without strings, rather than proselytizing as the core purpose’ (ibid., p. 72). The (re)emergence of religion as a focal point for urban studies has thus involved a widespread recognition that religion is not only ‘something that happen[s] in cities’, but rather is ‘a constitutive and creative element that shapes urban cultures, everyday lives, and spaces’ (Kuppinger, 2019, p. 9). Yet the relationship between faith-motivated groups and neoliberal governance has incited significant debate amongst scholars of religion and urbanism. Within a ‘postsecular’ approach, the increased role of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in welfare has tended to be regarded as a ‘by-product of neoliberalism’ in the context the ‘shrinkage of public service provision’ (Williams, Cloke, & Thomas, 2012, p. 1480). Others have argued, however, that such a reading positions

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religious organisations as merely reacting, or adapting, to ‘the wider governmentalities of neoliberal politics’, or as providing alternatives to wider struggles over space, power and identity that characterise life in the neoliberal city (ibid; see also Cloke & Beaumont, 2013; Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016). This approach, it is argued, overlooks the realities in which neoliberalism is in fact co-produced by the involvement of FBOs which also have the potential to ‘subvert, resist, and rework [its] performative assemblage’ (ibid., p. 1481). Building on such insights, we seek to explore some of the complex entanglements of religion and neoliberalism in the urban spaces we study, exploring both the processes of convergence and compliance with neoliberal forms of governance as well as examples of resistance to and reworking of them. Thus, following Lanz and Oosterbaan (2016), we are interested in how Pentecostalism can be understood as an ‘entrepreneurial religion’, as part and parcel of wider processes of capitalist modernity. Yet we extend such perspectives to explore the entrepreneurial endeavours of individual migrants within the churches that we study in order to consider the complex interplay between entrepreneurial, religious and neoliberal subjectivities. The expanded role of religious organisations has been viewed as particularly salient for ethnic minority groups and migrant communities who are often excluded from mainstream sources of support. Indeed, this is notable in the context of increasingly restrictive migration and asylum regimes alongside processes of privatisation and financialisation of London’s economy (Wills et al., 2009). Moreover, London’s position as a Global City or ‘command center’ (Sassen, 2001) of the global economy has ‘relegated migrants, to low-wage and low-status sectors, such as cleaning, caring, retail, and security, regardless of their prior training and education’ (Fesenmyer, 2019). Within such a context, churches and religious organisations take on significant roles in supporting migrants (Wills et al., 2009; see also Sheringham, 2013), many of whose lives are ‘hyperprecarious’ (Lewis, Waite, & Hodkinson, 2017). Religious and spiritual practices in the city can thus be seen as a way of building a sense of community and support amongst migrant groups, as well as a way of re-claiming (sacred) space within an otherwise exclusionary context. A focus on the wider structural contexts and material spatialities within which religious organisations emerge from part of what has been referred to as a ‘spatial turn’ with studies of religion that draw attention to the

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intertwined politics and poetics of space (Knott, 2010). Work on diasporic African Pentecostal Churches (see e.g. Fesenmyer, 2019; Garbin, 2013; Krause, 2008), for example, has focused on the politics of space in relation to questions of the visibility and invisibility of these churches and the spiritual practices of congregants within the city, as well as wider processes of ‘territorialisation’ including the strategic establishment of Pentecostal churches within particular ‘global cities’ in the global North. Whilst spatial and racial hierarchies position these African churches at the margins of the city—both materially and socially—some scholars have pointed to the ways in which their ‘place-making practices’ allow them to both re-position themselves within such hierarchies, ‘while also allowing them to create new situations in which they are morally superior and their perspectives and experiences are recognized’ (Fesenmyer, 2019, p. 35; see also Garbin, 2013; Hovland, 2016, p. 346). In Garbin’s (2013) study of a New Year parade performed by Congolese Kimbanguists through central London, he refers to it as a kind of ‘moral (re)mapping of the city in the collective appropriation of space’ (p. 428). Although their church is physically located in a warehouse at the margins of the city, Congolese Kimbanguists (re)claim the space of the central London through, he argues, ‘an embodied enactment of the collective self’ in which they ‘project and expose their own vision of the sacred onto a secular public sphere’ (ibid., p. 444). Indeed, beyond the spatial politics concerning the materialisation of religion in cities—and contestations over public space and identity (Naylor & Ryan, 2002; Smith & Eade, 2008)—more recent attention to the poetics of religion has highlighted the ways in which place is ‘experienced through the body’ which, for Pentecostals is regarded as ‘the most immediate site of “spiritual warfare” fought between God and demonic forces’ (Fesenmyer, 2019, p. 35; see also Robbins, 2004). The embodied and lived dimensions of religion and spirituality are discussed in more depth below.

4

Religion, Embodiment and Everyday Life

The ‘spatial turn’ within studies of religion has involved an acknowledgement that in order to understand religion’s role in contemporary society, we must broaden our focus beyond ‘overtly religious places’ in order to recognise and understand the ways in which religion and spirituality infiltrate other spaces and practices of everyday life (Kong, 2010, p. 769). A focus on ‘lived’ or ‘everyday’ religion (Ammerman, 2007; McGuire,

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2008) unsettles notions of the religious and profane as separate realms of experience and, rather, suggests that religion and spirituality emerge ‘in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the realities of everyday life’ (Orsi, 1997, p. 7). Such work foregrounds the poetics of religion and spirituality, revealing their embodied and experiential dimensions, the ways in which they are closely related to individual and collective identities and experienced and negotiated across multiple scales (Sheringham & Wilkins, 2018). Indeed, with regard to migrants, a focus on religion as embodied practice has revealed some of the ways in which religious and spiritual practices take a fundamental role in enabling them to create and sustain transnational connections and to cope with the challenges of everyday life in new contexts (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2002; Sheringham, 2013). Work that has explored religion and spirituality beyond the ‘formal structures that are intended to organise them’ has focused on cities and practices of sacralising urban landscapes through processions and public rituals (Garbin, 2013 see above Orsi, 1997), and, as discussed above, more invisible forms of everyday religious practice through a ‘postsecular rapprochement’ between religious and non-religious actors in the contemporary (neoliberal) city. Religion and spirituality have been seen as crucial resources for those living ‘at the margins of society’, such as migrants who often draw on their religion to find solace as well as to address material concerns (McGuire, 2008). There also exists a substantial body of work that has drawn attention to the ways in which diasporic domestic spaces become imbued with religious and spiritual meaning through, for example, the presence of mandirs (home altars or shrines) in the homes of South Asian families (Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2009; Tolia-Kelly, 2004), images and shrines to venerate deities and spirit ancestors amongst Vietnamese people in London (Wilkins, 2019; see also McAllister, 2012), or crucifixes and domestic sacred objects in the homes of Brazilian migrants (Sheringham, 2013). Within such work there has been a growing acknowledgement of the need to take seriously the ‘agency and salience of the spiritual’ (Dwyer, 2016, pp. 758–759), not separate from social and material concerns and spaces, but as deeply entangled with the ways in which these are negotiated and experienced. Yet whilst a lived religion approach has encompassed work on ‘everyday spiritualities’ (Mackian, 2012) that take place outside the spaces of organised religion, it is important to note that such a focus does not mean disregarding the role of religious institutions and congregations

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(Wilkinson & Althouse, 2012). Indeed, in this book we argue that a lived religion approach is key to understanding the ways in which Pentecostal beliefs and values permeate ordinary spaces including those of work and entrepreneurship. In her work on the spiritual practices of Vietnamese migrants in Berlin, Hüwelmeier (2016) explores religious gatherings amongst congregants of a Pentecostal church within a South Asian bazaar and the ways in which the ‘health and wealth gospel of Pentecostalism’ as well as the ‘deliverance from evil spirits’ through ‘practices of exorcism’ (14) are performed within the marketplace. Her research thus extends widespread understandings of a marketplace (in which the majority of traders are migrant entrepreneurs) as a ‘pure economic locality’, revealing how ‘traders’ beliefs and practices suggest engagement with powerful realms beyond this world’ (ibid.). Hüwelmeier’s (2016) observations are useful for our research as we explore the ways in which the economic and commercial practices of Pentecostal migrant entrepreneurs are deeply intertwined with their religious beliefs. Yet rather than looking at the performance of this spiritual practice within a particular locale, we seek to unpack and analyse the myriad ways in which affiliation to a Pentecostal church and espousal of Pentecostal values influences and informs migrant enterprise, within and across multiple scales and at different stages of the migration process.

5

Conclusions

In this chapter we have explored a range of work into the changing role of religion and spirituality in contemporary society, including recent debates on postsecular cities and calls to re-evaluate the relationship between religion and modernity. We argue that although recent work that has called for scholars to ‘rethink the lines drawn between the secular and the religious’ (Bartolini et al., 2017, p. 350) exists, very little attention has been paid to the intertwining of religious and entrepreneurial practices and values. Particularly notable is the ways in which, despite growing research attention being paid to the proliferation of Pentecostal churches and believers in cities in the global North, scholars have yet to explore the ways in which the practices of these churches—and their congregants—shape and are shaped by their entrepreneurial beliefs and values. Research that has focused on the ways in which Charismatic and Pentecostal diasporic individuals and congregations have claimed material and

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spiritual space within the city has offered important new ways to understand and explore relationships between the sacred and the urban, the spiritual and the material including important debates surrounding the role of these churches within wider processes of neoliberal urbanism. Yet, we argue, whilst such work is important for demonstrating the complex place-making practices of these churches and their congregants, they tend to focus on particular churches, particular cities and particular moments rather than looking at some of the more everyday and less visible ways in which faith is intertwined with the experiences of migrants. Our approach in this book is informed and inspired by a lived religion approach and the growing acknowledgement amongst scholars that religion must be explored as, ‘not simply a dimension of personal and social life’ but rather as ‘the framework through which personal and social life is understood and experienced’ (Bartolini et al., 2018, p. 7). This book also forms part of conceptual moves to challenge and unsettle dichotomies such as those held between modernity and religion, sacred and profane, material and spiritual, institutional and everyday (ibid.). Yet, here and in the chapters that follow, we extend such work and put forward an agenda which adds ‘entrepreneurial’ to the mix, exposing how the practices of migrants who establish, manage and sustain their own businesses, at whatever scale, are often inspired to do so for reasons that go far beyond the economic or commercial concerns. Indeed, the empirical and conceptual framework that we develop here reveals that migrant entrepreneurship can itself be a valuable lens through which to explore the entanglement of spiritual and material practices and values and to advance arguments about the role of religion and spirituality in modern social life. In the following chapter we extend our framework further to explore in more depth the complex entanglements of religion and business practices and values in relation to theories of entrepreneurship.

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Wilkins, A. (2019). Migration, work and home-making in the city: Dwelling and belonging among Vietnamese Communities in London. Routledge. Wilkinson, M., & Althouse, P. (2012). Pentecostalism as lived religion. Canadian Journal of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity, 3(1), i–iv. Williams, A., Cloke, P., & Thomas, S. (2012). Co-constituting neoliberalism: Faith-based organisations, co-option, and resistance in the UK. Environment and Planning a, 44, 1479–1501. Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J., & Mcllwaine, C. (2009). Religion at work: the role of faith-based organizations in the London living wage campaign. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2(3), 443–461.

CHAPTER 3

Conceptualising Religion in Relation to the Drivers and Outcomes of (Migrant) Entrepreneurship

Abstract This chapter explores how existing scholarship on migrant and ethnic entrepreneurship has engaged with religion as part of the cultural resources that migrants mobilise in the countries where they settle. We examine how the literature on migrant entrepreneurship has grown into two main fields in order to explain the emergence and success of this type of labour incorporation. On the one hand, there are theoretical approaches that emphasise the role of structural factors in host settings, whilst on the other hand there are those that conceptualise religiosity, faith and values as integral to the cultural/ethnic resources that migrants mobilise in new contexts. Our conceptual framework seeks to unsettle this binary, as we position religion within the enabling and constraining effects of structural factors. Keywords Religion · Entrepreneurship · Migration · Christianity · Pentecostalism

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Introduction

We have discussed in Chapter 2 the growing body of scholarly work that examines the relationship between religion and migration across a range © The Author(s) 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7_3

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of disciplines. This includes work on the ways in which religious and spiritual practices shape and are shaped by mobility, as elaborated in the seminal work of Levitt (2007); the formation of transnational religious networks (Chafetz &Ebaugh, 2002); the growing visibility of diasporic religious identities in urban spaces (Garbin, 2013) and how religion and everyday life are deeply intertwined (McGuire, 2008; Sheringham, 2013). Yet despite this acknowledgement, there remain few examples of research that take work and entrepreneurial practices as a site of analysis. In this chapter we turn to the intersections between religion and ethnic minority and migrant entrepreneurship, through a discussion of some of the ways in which this relationship has been studied and consideration of whether Pentecostalism and other forms of Charismatic Christianity show certain specificities in the emergence and development of (migrant) firms. The significant body of work migrant integration that has burgeoned in recent decades has considered the ways in which new populations settle and how they engage in a variety of economic activities (Borjas, 2000; Portes, Haller, & Guarnizo, 2002). The labour market incorporation of migrants has generally been studied as one of the pillars for their overall social integration in the societies where they settle and constitutes an important part of policy developments and academic research. Scholars have researched extensively the occupations and sectors in which migrants are employed, the impact of migration policies on their trajectories and the overall precarity of their employment (Alberti, 2014; Anderson, 2010; Bloch & McKay, 2015; MacKenzie & Forde, 2009; Nobil Ahmad, 2008; Standing, 2011). These studies situate migrant workers generally in low pay-low status employment (Bryson & White, 2019), suffering a sense of disconnection from the labour market and struggling to capitalise on their skills (Villares-Varela, Ram, & Jones, 2018). Although new migrants tend to have higher levels of education than their predecessors, they experience a significant gap between the occupations held in their countries of origin to those available in the British labour market (Ibid.). The structure of the British labour market, as well as the experiences of discrimination and racialised exclusion experienced by migrants, are also identified as some of the drivers for the difficult pathways to recognition of credentials and search for satisfactory employment (Jones, Ram, & Villares-Varela, 2018). In this context, becoming an entrepreneur might emerge as a means to combat social exclusion (Blackburn & Ram, 2006).

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The process of ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ has been explained from different sociological and entrepreneurship perspectives, where the drivers are attributed to either the structural factors or contextual dimensions (e.g. nature of locality, welfare provision, business environment, migration policies, spaces available in the market for new entrepreneurs, composition of the local and foreign population, etc.), or the individual characteristics of entrepreneurs (e.g. cultural background, previous business experience, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) (for a review see Cederberg & Villares-Varela, 2019). In this chapter, we explore how religion has been situated within these debates and how scholars have looked at particular forms of religiosity and their impact on the business activities of migrant entrepreneurs.

2 Ethnic Minority and Migrant Entrepreneurship: The Emergence and Consolidation of the Field The long-standing debates regarding the labour market incorporation of migrants through business ownership or self-employment opened the main approaches to the field: are migrants better off working for others or setting up their own businesses? What contextual characteristics should take place for this type of labour incorporation to emerge? It was thanks to the seminal work of Light (1972), and later of Wilson and Portes (1980) that we learnt that social mobility could take place within the ethnic enclave. In Wilson and Portes’ (1980) study, Cuban migrants in Little Miami were better off than their compatriots in paid employment, and they were developing new services, needs and employment for their communities and beyond. Since then, research on migrant and ethnic entrepreneurship has looked at the drivers and dynamics of this type of labour incorporation amongst minorities and newcomers in the global North. Although self-employment entries for ethnic minorities and migrants do not always leave migrants better off than the local population in terms of salary and working conditions (Brynin, Karim, & Zwysen, 2019), it has emerged as the pathway to combat precarity and discrimination in the labour market and foster a sense of empowerment and realisation (Villares-Varela et al., 2018). This field was dominated in the first years by supply-side accounts, where the characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs were understood as the

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variable with the strongest explanatory capacity to understand the development and success/failure of migrant-owned businesses. Social networks were seen to play a key role in providing a distinctive competitive advantage to migrant entrepreneurs over the local population (Vershinina, Barrett, & Meyer, 2011). These early supply-side accounts showed that migrant and ethnic minority entrepreneurs could be successful against all odds by mobilising very specific capitals, particularly in relation to social networks, proclivity to risk-taking behaviour and community solidarity (for a review see Jones et al., 2018). Such approaches generated a considerable amount of research although they failed to explain why, for example, similar migrant groups would have different entrepreneurship rates in different contexts and what contextual characteristics could tell us about the spaces available for them to operate in these new markets. In the 1990s, more balanced accounts taking structural factors into consideration emerged, particularly by the US interactionist model of Waldinger (1990), in which migrant entrepreneurship was analysed as the result of the interplay between market environment and the characteristics of entrepreneurs. A transformational shift in the field was advanced by a stronger sensitivity to context theorised in Europe by Kloosterman, Van Der Leun, and Rath (1999) through their mixed embeddedness approach where ethnic resources are studied in relation to markets and regulations. In this model, markets are understood as the forces that shape the possibilities for migrant entrepreneurs to develop and sustain their businesses, and regulations appear as the institutions and laws that entrepreneurs must comply with (Kloosterman & Rath, 2003; Kloosterman et al., 1999; Rath, 2000; for an extended review of the field, see Ram, Jones, & Villares-Varela, 2017). In the last decade, new developments in the composition of the migrant population in contemporary cities have led to closer engagement amongst entrepreneurship scholarship with debates around superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007). New migrant enterprises appear here as responding to the changing contexts and regulatory frameworks within increasingly diverse contexts, showing that the high levels of diversity (beyond ethnicity) in contexts like the UK challenge old theoretical frameworks which were based in the study of settled ethnic minority communities (Jones et al., 2014; Sepulveda, Syrett, & Lyon, 2011), and signalling a new era of the diversification of diversity (Jones, Ram, & Theodorakopoulos, 2010). Research has explored how communities characterised by diversity develop transaction economies which are embedded in

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migrant infrastructures where locality and the resources exchanged take place against a backdrop of inequality (Hall, King, & Finlay, 2017). However, despite a significant departure from the traditional composition of ethnic minority populations in terms of origins, legal status, levels of education, religion, occupational trajectories, the outcomes of their businesses do not seem to transform their livelihoods. This is signalled by Jones et al. (2012) whose research reveals that both ‘new’ and ‘old’ groups are structurally disadvantaged, moderating the role of group characteristics in and the outcomes of entrepreneurship for migrants. Similarly, Kloosterman, Rusinovic, and Yeboah’s (2016) study of Ghanaian entrepreneurs in the Netherlands shows that despite higher levels of education and skills when compared to their predecessors in the urban ethnic economy, this group of new migrants still ended up in the lower social positions of the opportunity structure. Religion has not featured strongly in these debates around the role of structural factors and/or group characteristics, and the new trends in migrant entrepreneurship in superdiverse contexts. In the next section we begin to unpack how studies of religion and entrepreneurship have addressed these issues, and the core contributions of our research to the field of migrant enterprise.

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Migration, Religion and Entrepreneurship

Scholarship in the field of religion and entrepreneurship shows that there is a close relationship between society, cultural values, religion and entrepreneurial activity. Max Weber’s (1930) seminal work shows that values and ethics underpin engagement in secular work, and its subsequent accumulation of wealth and reinvestment. The role of values here is central to the nature and development of capitalism. Existing work on role of spirituality and religiosity in entrepreneurship shows that religion should be considered a factor playing a key role within entrepreneurial activity by accounting for how the values and mindsets of entrepreneurs influence their activities (Balog, Baker, & Walker, 2014), or as part of the portfolio of capitals they mobilise in their entrepreneurial endeavours (Neubert, Bradley, Ardianti, & Simiyu, 2017). This body of work looks at religion or spirituality as individual traits of entrepreneurs, as well as drawing out other macro and micro level factors, including how religiosity conditions the sources of funding of entrepreneurs, the networks and organisational culture, and the motivations and business

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behaviour (Ibid.). Dana’s (2009) review of the field of religion and entrepreneurship also indicates its importance in holding values which shape entrepreneurship in different ways, including providing networks, opportunities, fostering entrepreneurial spirit, but also signalling that the direction of these relationships shows different degrees of intensity. Religion can also reinforce the important building of trust within these networks, as it ‘may create and promote institutional structures and social networks that build connection and trust between nascent and established entrepreneurs who are co-religionists’ (Henley, 2017, p. 601). Despite these important findings, we should not conflate religiosity with higher levels of entrepreneurial activity, given that research has also shown that high levels of religiosity do not necessarily correlate with entrepreneurial outcomes (Dodd & Seaman, 1998). The questions of in which direction this relationship unfolds the social mechanisms behind it remain. In the field of ethnic minority and migrant entrepreneurship, religion has not featured as a salient characteristic and even less so explained in relation to structural factors. Some contributions explore how the diversity of newcomers is accompanied by new values and belief systems showing, for example, how ethnic and religious diversity might enhance start-up rates (Carswell & Roland, 2007). In addition, when studying the vital social networks of migrant entrepreneurs, religious networks or affiliation feature amongst the broad ties that entrepreneurs might use in their journeys, which are generally brought together with other links such as migrant/co-ethnic ties, ethnic affiliation or other group-based associations (Yuniarto, 2014). Ethnic churches, for example, appear as a source of vital resources for ethnic communities that might cushion the challenges of economic assimilation, particularly for those migrants who might lack sufficient family support (Tong, 2019). In the so-called supply-side accounts of migrant entrepreneurship (Cederberg & Villares-Varela, 2019), faith/religiosity is described as one of the many ‘cultural’ factors that explained migrant enterprise frequently linked to the individual characteristics of the entrepreneurs. Similar findings are highlighted by Henley (2017) who looks at the intersections between religion and entrepreneurship. Examples include studies that have looked at the weight of ‘ethnic/cultural resources’ as the core focus of entrepreneurship (Basu, 1998; Srinivasan, 1995; Werbner, 1984, 1994); highlighting, for example, the propensity of South Asian (Basu & Altinay 2002) and Jewish (Sarachek, 1980) minority groups, or the differences between Muslim and non-Muslim migrant entrepreneurs in Britain

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(Rafiq, 1992). The latter study, for example, reveals a nuanced picture of the role of religiosity, signalling that business owners of Muslim origin are more likely to be placed in ethnic-oriented markets, and they generally have lower profitability (Rafiq, 1992). This research also suggests that business entries are more likely to be due to unemployment rather than a push for entrepreneurship (Ibid.). Altinay’s (2008) study of Turkish entrepreneurs in London also sheds light onto the relationship between religion and firms’ managerial strategies, including recruitment and the search for business support, whilst also indicating where the businesses are placed in the market. Interestingly, a later paper (Altinay & Wang, 2011), which explores sociocultural characteristics (including religion), shows that levels of education play a major role in explaining the business orientation whereas religion does not seem to have a significant impact, revealing the complexity of conceptualising religion in enterprise. Trust through religious affiliation can also make a positive difference to the entrepreneurial endeavours of migrants as shown by Martes and Rodriguez (2004) in their study of how Brazilian churches in the US enabled entrepreneurial activities in the cleaning industry. Beyond looking at the impact of religion on networks or trust, entrepreneurship scholars have explored how religion might play a key role in the identity construction of entrepreneurs, using an intersectional lens (Essers & Benschop, 2009; Pio, 2010). Pio (2010) uses a mixed embeddedness approach to highlight the role of spirituality for Muslim women entrepreneurs in Sweden in relation to how women draw on spiritual resources by giving meaning to their enterprises. Her paper shows that the businesses opened by Muslim women entrepreneurs comply with spiritual values (e.g. separation of men and women; women as customers) and these are used to develop successful businesses. In a similar way, Essers and Benschop (2009) explore how Muslim identities are constructed for migrant women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and how gender/femininity are useful as symbolic markers to illustrate the tensions between Western and Islamic values. They find that women comply with and contest Muslim values in different ways (for example by using Islam to develop niche markets for their businesses; but they also legitimise being independent businesswomen by embracing feminist interpretations of the Qur’an. They highlight how identities as Muslim women are maximised to accommodate the success of their businesses. Moreover, Schaeffer and Mattis (2012) have highlighted the intersections between diversity, religion and the workplace. They argue that traditional

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theories of work have disregarded the religiosity of individuals whose identities mark them as minorities and should take into account diversity at the workplace beyond an idea of a ‘unified spirituality’ (Ibid., p. 330) which can actually reproduce structural discrimination at the workplace. If different groups have different trajectories at the workplace, the role of religiosity will be very different. Schaeffer and Mattis (2012) call for studies looking at work trajectories of minority groups to understand how religion can help them to make sense of the diverse meanings of work. In the next section, we turn our attention to how entrepreneurship and migrant entrepreneurship scholars have looked at the role of Charismatic Christianity and Pentecostalism in shaping entrepreneurial aspirations and outcomes.

4

Pentecostalism, Migration and Enterprise

To the best of our knowledge, research on migrant enterprise has not looked in depth at the influence of Christian values for entrepreneurs. A recent analysis of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data by Henley (2017) shows that religiosity is linked to entrepreneurship, although the relationship is not that similar for each denomination where ‘independent and evangelical forms of Christianity are positively correlated with early-stage entrepreneurial activity’ (p. 608). Relatedly, there is a growing body of work that looks at the role of Pentecostal beliefs and practices in entrepreneurship and its impact on economic development in the global South (Heslam, 2016). As discussed in Chapter 1, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing Christian denomination in the UK, and it is particularly popular amongst migrant communities from the Caribbean, African and Latin American countries. This form of Christianity is characterised by the emphasis on the promise of prosperity, its success amongst the poor, its role in shaping aspirations (Togarasei, 2011). These features have translated into the incorporation of its message with neoliberal reforms in the global South (Haynes, 2012) or the involvement of the church in the understanding of the success of entrepreneurs in their business ventures (Ojong, 2008). With regard to migrants living in the global North, Pentecostal beliefs have the added value of assisting in the context of migration in the form of a Weberian elective affinity, as put forward by Griera (2013). For Fesenmyer (2018) this type of religiosity, ‘encourages an understanding of religion as a personal relationship with God […]; such a relationship

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takes on added significance in the context of migration, where believers often contend with myriad challenges as they try to build lives in a new setting’ (p. 754). These challenges can be navigated, from a Pentecostal framework, by encouraging believers to engage in neoliberal market participation (Haynes, 2013), through ‘for example, a church’s encouragement of entrepreneurship amongst its members’ (van de Kamp, 2011 in Haynes, 2013, p. 87). In addition to work that highlights individual success through business ownership, extant research on the role of Pentecostal churches for migrants in the global North has highlighted the role of churches in cushioning processes of social exclusion. Toulis’s (1997) ethnographic study of a Pentecostal church in Birmingham shows how attending services at these churches is the outcome of racism and exclusion from white churches since Pentecostalism helped believers to conceal race and class differences. This research also illustrates how education attainment is linked to higher status both in church and at work but, on the other hand, irrespective of one’s occupation, collective membership is given by being part of the church, which might override hierarchies within occupations (Ibid.). The intersection of Pentecostalism and migrant enterprise has been slow to emerge in the field of entrepreneurship. Existing research has looked at the Pentecostal African-Caribbean community in London, the role of faith in entrepreneurial values (Nwankwo, 2013) and the role of ethnic capital and faith-based networks in facilitating entrepreneurship (Gbadamosi, 2015; Ojo, 2015). Nwankwo and Gbadamosi (2013) study how faith is used by African-Caribbean Pentecostals in the UK to exploit the cultural resources of faith-based networks in order to promote their firms. Their qualitative research shows that in-group identity for entrepreneurs is based on religious affiliation where identity as an entrepreneur is aligned with God’s mission within a prosperity narrative. They also explore the role of community-level relationships that aid entrepreneurship, such as reciprocity in business relationships, using church networks for advertising, finding a community of clients, etc. The use of these networks also relates to the generation of trust to generate both suppliers and providers within the church ranks. Finally, their paper shows how interconnections between faith values and entrepreneurship help entrepreneurs to direct their enterprises whilst at the same time generating resources to sustain the church. In his study of the connections between entrepreneurship and Pentecostalism in London, Gbadamosi (2015) explores the ways in which Pentecostalism becomes a source of

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support to overcome exclusion from mainstream institutions, particularly for African-Caribbean entrepreneurs. This study underlines the value of networks within the church as well as how these are also capitalised by churches which are starting to offer this sort of workshops/support on their premises (Ibid). Using Mead’s framework of symbolic interactionism, Ojo (2015) explores African Pentecostalism as ‘entrepreneurial space’. He does so by highlighting the role of ‘spiritual agency’ in helping entrepreneurs to adjust to the country of residence. Using a single church as a case study, he explores motivations for setting up an enterprise, including the role of social networks at both the local and the transnational level. These examples provide a useful overview of some of the interconnections between faith and enterprise for Pentecostal migrants in the UK. We acknowledge here the merit of these contributions in attempting to conceptualise religiosity as one of the distinctive factors of ethnic and migrant entrepreneurship. However, we should also signal that unpacking the role of religion as one of these cultural factors influencing entrepreneurial behaviour should be approached with caution, given the risk of homogenising and essentialising groups based on either ethnic or religious affiliation (for a critical discussion on cultural factors see Cederberg & Villares-Varela, 2019; Jones & Ram, 2007). It is important to note that scholars of religion and enterprise have also flagged that these interactions between religion and entrepreneurship, and their effect on networks and other competitive advantages for the entrepreneurs, are context-specific since they are underpinned by political structures and other sociocultural values (Dodd & Gotsis, 2007).

5

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have discussed how the field of migrant entrepreneurship has addressed this form of labour market incorporation in relation to two differentiated sets of factors: structural context and the characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs. In neither of these perspectives has religion been systematically conceptualised, nor explored at the intersection of both context and the characteristics of entrepreneurs. When religion is incorporated into supply-side accounts, it runs the risk of essentialising or reifying individual or group characteristics as determining their entry into self-employment and/or the outcomes of their ventures. Whilst accounts

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from the entrepreneurship field have pointed out that religion and spiritual capital should be considered as part of broader cultural, capital or institutional factors, they have not shown us the social mechanisms behind these interactions. We argue here that the religiosity of migrant entrepreneurs should feature against the backdrop of the enabling and constraining factors presented by the context in which these migrants settle. As discussed in Chapter 2, a ‘lived religion’ approach, can also help us understand that religion should be incorporated beyond secular and sacred notions of culture and social life at the workplace. Spiritual and economic practices are to be understood here as inextricably linked to the contexts within which migrants settle. In this book we argue that there are two key areas that require further enquiry. First, extant research does not appear to reflect sufficiently on the importance of context, such as the neoliberal landscapes within which these entrepreneurs are acting. Secondly, there is a notable lack of reflection on the processes and experiences of social exclusion experienced by these entrepreneurs within the wider world of work. In the next two chapters, we explore in more depth how contextual characteristics inform the ways in which migrant entrepreneurs navigate accessing business ownership, and how Pentecostal values and church structures might aid in these processes. The following chapters illustrate how Pentecostal migrant entrepreneurs experience spirituality, focus on individual success and foster community life, all within a context of neoliberal understandings of success and self-betterment.

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Rafiq, M. (1992). Ethnicity and enterprise: A comparison of Muslim and nonMuslim owned Asian businesses in Britain. New Community, 19(1), 43–60. Ram, M., Jones, T., & Villares-Varela, M. (2017). Migrant entrepreneurship: Reflections on research and practice. International Small Business Journal, 35(1), 3–18. Rath, J. (Ed.). (2000). Immigrant businesses. Palgrave Macmillan. Sarachek, B. (1980). Jewish American entrepreneurs. The Journal of Economic History, 40(2), 359–372. Schaeffer, C. B., & Mattis, J. S. (2012). Diversity, religiosity, and spirituality in the workplace. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 9(4), 317– 333. Sepulveda, L., Syrett, S., & Lyon, F. (2011). Population superdiversity and new migrant enterprise: The case of London. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 23(7–8), 469–497. Sheringham, O. (2013). Transnational religious spaces: Faith and the Brazilian migration experience. Palgrave MacMillan. Srinivasan, S. (1995). The South Asian Petty Bourgeoisie in Britain. Avebury. Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Togarasei, L. (2011). The Pentecostal gospel of prosperity in African contexts of poverty: An appraisal. Exchange, 40(4), 336–350. Tong, G. (2019). Ethnic churches as an important space of co-ethnic resources for immigrant entrepreneurs. Review of Religious Research, 61(2), 135–156. Toulis, N. R. (1997). Believing identity: Pentecostalism and the mediation of Jamaican ethnicity and gender in England. Berg. Vershinina, N., Barrett, R., & Meyer, M. (2011). Forms of capital, intra-ethnic variation and Polish entrepreneurs in Leicester. Work, Employment & Society, 25(1), 101–117. Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024–1054. Villares-Varela, M., Ram, M., & Jones, T. (2018). Bricolage as survival, growth and transformation: The role of patch-working in the social agency of migrant entrepreneurs. Work, Employment & Society, 32(5), 942–962. Waldinger, R. D. (1990). Opportunities, group characteristics and strategies. In R. D. Waldinger, R. Aldrich, & R. Ward (Eds.), Ethnic entrepreneurs (pp. 13– 48). London: Sage. Weber, M. (1930). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism [1904–5]. na. Werbner, P. (1984). Business on trust: Pakistani entrepreneurship in the Manchester garment trade. Ethnic communities in business, 166–188. Werbner, P. (1994). Renewing an industrial past: British Pakistani entrepreneurship in manchester. In J. M.Brown & R. Foot (Eds.), Migration: The Asian experience. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Wilson, K. L., & Portes, A. (1980). Immigrant enclaves: An analysis of the labor market experiences of Cubans in Miami. American Journal of Sociology, 86(2), 295–319. Yuniarto, R. (2014). “Making connection”: Indonesian migrant entrepreneurial strategies in Taiwan. Journal of Identity & Migration Studies, 8(1), 95–119.

CHAPTER 4

Values and Faith as Drivers of Entrepreneurship: The Trajectories and Practices of Pentecostal Migrant Business Owners

Abstract This empirical chapter provides a detailed account of the ways in which religion is intertwined with the trajectories and practices of migrant business owners. Drawing on narratives from our in-depth interviews, the chapter explains how entrepreneurs relate to their religion and churches as part of their migration trajectories both before and when they open their own businesses. We provide an overview of our interviewees’ narratives in relation to their motivations to become entrepreneurs, which are frequently presented as a means of escaping low paid employment and achieving self-realisation, and explain how experiences of exclusion and lack of mobility in the labour market are supplemented by the role of faith and religiosity, which enables those migrants we interviewed to realise their aspirations to set up their own businesses. Keywords Values · Faith · Entrepreneurship · Aspirations · Pentecostalism · UK

© The Author(s) 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7_4

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1

Introduction

In previous chapters we have explored how religion has been incorporated into migration studies in different ways, including a discussion of recent work that has highlighted the myriad ways in which religion and spirituality are integral to people’s everyday lives, beyond the realm of the congregation (Bartolini, Chris, MacKian, & Pile, 2017; Kong, 2010). Yet despite these valuable insights which unsettle widely held binaries between the religious and the secular and which demonstrate multifaceted role of religion in the lives of migrants in particular, research to date has tended to overlook the role religion might play in people’s working lives or their entrepreneurial endeavours. In the field of migrant entrepreneurship, religion has been incorporated, at best, as one of the cultural resources/capitals that migrants bring with them. This perspective, we argue, risks essentialising and homogenising groups of migrants, portraying them as detached from the contextual structural factors that enable the emergence of new forms of labour incorporation. In addition, the social mechanisms by which religion and faith are articulated in the narratives of business owners have not been sufficiently explored (Chapter 3). Experiences of religion and enterprise in particular have been studied by examining how the values of entrepreneurs influence their activities (Balog, Baker, & Walker, 2014), highlighting that spirituality emerges as another individual trait of entrepreneurs, as well as identifying other macro and micro level factors, including how religiosity conditions the sources of funding of entrepreneurs, the networks and organisational culture, and also the motivations and business behaviour. In studies of the field of migrant entrepreneurship, religion has only been touched on and generally situated within the pool of cultural and ethnic resources that migrants bring to their businesses, without much acknowledgement of the intersection of these values, aspirations and practices within contextual or structural factors. Here we explore how religion has shaped the migration trajectories of business owners, its role in the formation of aspirations and how values are utilised in the business venture.

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2 Religion and the Migration Trajectories of Business Owners The role of religion, faith and churches features in the migration decisions and trajectories of some of the participants who allude to God and prayers as a key part of the process of moving to England and their wider trajectories. Praying for a successful migration to the UK is common in these narratives, where family members in the country of origin are also enablers of these spiritual resources to form the aspirations to emigrate and cushion any barriers that might occur. This is consistent with previous findings that have explored the role of religion at all stages of the migration process, including the initial decision to migrate, experiences of settlement, as well as the decision and process of returning home (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2002; Hagan, 2008; see also Sheringham, 2013). For example, one participant explains that prayer by family members was important in shaping their decision to emigrate: I suppose so [religion was important when deciding to emigrate] because sometimes, you pray about – you say, I would like to go to England, although you say, nobody – my mother will take it, my grandmother, and they’ll put it before the church and they would pray about the decisions that you want to make […] they’ll tell you they would seek God on your behalf, […] mothers and fathers, all much older than you are, who took you underneath their arms and all this prayer for you. (Entrepreneur 18, London, male, Barbados, social enterprise)

Secondary migration movements or returns are also left in the hands of God, where the power and control of individual decision-making seems to be mediated by faith and prayer. For example, Entrepreneur 15 explained that: When we [as a family] had a discussion whether we want to go back to Brazil, I mean none of us, none of my family has a solid answer whether we’re going to stay here or whether you’re going to go back and because we’re Christian we always ask God as well, you know, whether we should take the … for God to lead us and give us a guidance whether we should maybe, you know, plan our future here or maybe one day eventually go back to our country. (E15, London, male, Brazil, cleaning company)

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Indeed, for several participants, engagement with their faith was recounted as integral to their entire migration trajectory, to the point that several attended services in the UK from very early on in their migration cycle. Attending services upon arrival was described as an important source of support for the early stages of the migration trajectory, and access to vital networks in the UK. At times, the decision as to which church to attend had already been taken from the country of origin, using family and community networks already established from the country of origin: I knew this church X already when I was back home because I found out through an aunt who lives in Leicester. I asked her ‘can you find out good churches in the city X-location in Hampshire-?’ I then knew, I had a name and an address, and I think after 10 days in the UK I attended the first Sunday service. (Entrepreneur 24, Hampshire, female, Zimbabwe, home care company) [After arrival] I went straight to the nurses’ home and we had a lot of girls from various West Indian islands that were Christian, so we used to meet in each other’s rooms and have our sing-songs, our prayer meetings, things like that… have fellowship. (Entrepreneur 17, London, female, Barbados, social enterprise)

For some participants, however, their relationship with the church and God shifted as a result of migration, a change manifested through changing denominations and/or through strengthening of their existing faith. This is the case of one interviewee who conveys that being a good Christian was only possible for her if she was not in her country of origin, given her perceived strictness of the practice there and the laxer approach in UK churches: I used to always love God, but I said to God ‘God, I want to become a Christian, but not in Jamaica’. That was strange, as a child I remember I whispered that prayer to God. I said, ‘God, I love you and I want to be a Christian, but not in Jamaica,’ because in Jamaica they were so strict, so I said, ‘Not in Jamaica’ (laughing). Yeah, that’s what I said to God, I need to come here [England]. And, then I did pray that, but then I remember getting a vision that the Lord is calling me, and I did not go, and God allowed something to happen to me and thereafter turn to God. And, I said to God, ‘If you help me, I will serve you until I die,’ and that

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is a promise that I made to God until today […] Yeah, and from there God has given me visions, dreams, messages, a lot of things to serve him. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon)

For other migrants, the challenges of the migration process, together with the need, as a newcomer, to access networks of support seem to shape the role churches have in the lives of their new congregants. This was conveyed by Entrepreneur 25, when he explains that without the church, the difficulties accompanying his migration trajectory would have been much more challenging: When you are new to a country you are lost, you don’t know where to go, how to find employment, how to register your children to go to school, which schools are good… so you rely on friends of friends from back home, family… but in church you get all that and extra support, and you get to know people who have been here for years and years, some are from here too. We used the foodbank occasionally. And now the childminding here, we use it so we have some space where the children have a good time. And you can also help others. You also know they share the same values you have. (Entrepreneur 25, Hampshire, male, Poland, construction company)

These examples demonstrate the importance of these first contacts developed through church communities for migrant entrepreneurs, which shape their processes of integration in the UK and their subsequent occupational trajectories. Such a finding concurs with existing research on the social role of churches for migrant communities which, as Levitt (2008) suggests, can provide a vital ‘path to civic engagement’ (see, however, Fesenmyer, 2016). Yet, what interests us here is not just the role of these religious networks in facilitating the lives of migrants beyond the church but, rather, the ways in which these networks form part of a much wider set of factors—including values, beliefs, practices, spirituality—which shape and are shaped by migrants’ sense of self, their involvement in the church community and their subsequent entrepreneurial endeavours. 2.1

Exclusion in the Labour Market and Developing Self-belief to Become an Entrepreneur

As illustrated in Chapter 1, the characteristics of the businesses and occupational trajectories of business owners corroborate findings of previous research on migrant entrepreneurship (Jones, Ram, Edwards, Kiselinchev,

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& Muchenje, 2014). These businesses are generally placed in saturated sectors of the market, with cut-throat competition from similar companies. The competition in these sectors amongst migrant and ethnic minority communities leaves business owners with little room for consolidation and growth. This was conveyed by most interviewees when they explained that the sectors in which they are embedded have a large number of small companies competing with each other for workers and customers, which make the business less stable in terms of supply and demand. This leads to different strategies, such as diversifying the service provision, as expressed by Entrepreneur 16 (female, London, Jamaica, hairdresser salon). She explained, for example, how she needed to expand the services she offers as people are less likely to use her business premises, given the large number of salons in the area and the growing number of people who learn hairdressing skills and techniques via online tutorials. Strategies displayed to survive or succeed rely on the use of intensive labour, and flexible family arrangements (Song, 1999; Villares-Varela, 2017, 2018). Family support strategies were often signalled as one of the pillars of survival and/or success, where interviewees frequently referred to how their partners have been important for the business to be set up and to develop, from liaising with providers, helping with paperwork, driving to business appointments or using family resources to support the business when necessary. Again, in line with previous research, narratives of multiple job-holding were also prominent (Kibria, 1994; VillaresVarela, Ram, & Jones, 2018), with business owners dipping into the new sector whilst keeping part-time paid employment elsewhere, as in the case of Entrepreneur 14 (London, female, Trinidad and Tobago, hairdressing salon) when she explained that she worked as a hairdresser whilst at the same time developing her catering business. Experiences of exclusion and lack of mobility in the labour market as employees were signalled as the main reasons for entering business ownership, together with the aspiration to ‘better themselves’ and their families once in the UK. Business owners often alluded to discrimination in the labour market in sectors where their experience and qualifications counted for nothing, such as the case of a female entrepreneur with a home care company who struggled to get ahead on the promotion ladder (E1, female, Hampshire, Zimbabwe, home care company). Hence, opening up a business here emerges as a means of moving beyond these limitations. When discussing these working conditions, several interviewees also referred to the hierarchical power relations at the workplace with

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employers acting as a motivating factor to start up their businesses, as illustrated by Entrepreneur 25 when he conveys that: I was tired of always having to be under someone else’s preference to how I should work, when and the way he was treating me, as if I come from a developing country, the arrogance of my boss when he was talking to me because I am from where I am from. I could not put up with it anymore. (Entrepreneur 25, Hampshire, male, Poland, construction company)

Starting up a business and ‘being your own boss’ was perceived to cushion some of these disadvantages, since becoming a business owner means you do not have anybody to answer to, enabling migrants to escape these strongly hierarchical work and employment relations. In addition, participants often alluded to the self-realisation and gratification of growing something bigger from your own effort and personal investment and how you can open up opportunities by yourself in the face of adversity: The advantages [of being an entrepreneur] is that you see the business growing, you see that can lead you to something else bigger. You open up your mind so that you see … you can have other opportunities. Maybe not within the same industry but elsewhere, and you know already how to run a business, you know what challenges you’re going to face and how you can overcome that. (Entrepreneur 15, London, male, Brazil, cleaning business) You are your own boss, you can make decisions for yourself, and you see yourself and the business grow. That’s satisfying, not like my previous jobs. (Entrepreneur 10, Birmingham, male, Ghana, business consulting)

Thus, being positioned within the labour market as an employee was thus an important factor in participants’ decision to become business owners alongside Pentecostal faith, which provides a vision for changing circumstances and moving away from experiences of exclusion. Pentecostal belief systems also shape these business trajectories and experiences to enable the realisation of these aspirations and support migrants’ trajectories. As mentioned in Chapter 1, of central importance here is the focus on reflexivity, individual responsibility and agency that comes from Pentecostal teachings, with U-turns forming an essential part of the redirected narrative in the relationship with God that encourages congregants to reflect on ‘their own failings and weaknesses’ (Fesenmyer, 2016, p. 750) to

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change their own circumstances. Moving further, we argue that these notions of success encompass core neoliberal values such as ‘competition, choice, entrepreneurship and individualism’ (Connell, 2010, p. 27). These processes are also reflected in the way some of the business owners interviewed explain how opening up a business came into their lives. Growing professionally is closely connected to spiritual growth, as explained by Entrepreneur 6 when she explained that you should aspire for greater things where possible to fulfil the potential of God’s gifts to you: God has been generous to me with the skills and health I’ve got. So you have to make use of this and not be shy to aspire for the big things you can have in life. By the grace of God I saw this, that it is up to me what I make, the steps I take, how I want to invest in myself to achieve big things, get the income and status I deserve by the grace of God. We should all do this, try not to depend on others, I am free now because I make my own money. (Entrepreneur 6, Birmingham, female, Ghana, hairdressing salon)

Investing in oneself in order to achieve greater things clearly connects with aspects of neoliberal subjectivities (Verdouw, 2017) which are closely connected to entrepreneurship. Success through access to wealth emerges as a distinctive feature of business ownership linked to a ‘condition of moral health’ (Buchan, 1997, p. 270 in Verdouw, 2017, p. 525) unlike previous understandings of wealth accumulation as ‘pathological’ (ibid., p. 524). Similarly, Entrepreneur 25 suggested that seeing yourself outside of a dependency relationship to your employer, the state and others is one of the pillars of his entrepreneurial endeavours. Financial independence here is tantamount to neoliberal subjectivities, where being in debt is seen as stigmatising (Verdouw, 2017, p. 528): I am not afraid now of going for things that were imaginable in the past. I visualise myself as the owner of this large company and I will achieve it, mark my words. This is what God has given me, I don’t want to depend on others, or fall into getting benefits for me or my children. I now make the right decisions. (Entrepreneur 25, Hampshire, male, Poland, construction company)

These narratives echo processes of self-betterment (Fesenmyer, 2016) and emerge here as an individual project accompanied by God’s blessings, where becoming an entrepreneur of the self (Türken, Nafstad, Blakar,

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& Roen, 2016) (metaphorically and literally for the business owners interviewed), encompassed a highly reflexive individual (Giddens, 1991): Being in church has helped me to think of what I used to do wrong, how I was not praying enough to become a better father, better at providing for my family. So this is what God has given me, allowing me to work on myself and think of myself as someone better and bigger […] opening up my businesses is testimony of all the work I have done on my own with the support of God. You have to think big and you can’t expect others to do the work for you. (Entrepreneur 7, Birmingham, male, Nigeria, buy/sell business)

Our findings show how becoming a successful business owner is here carefully guided by the church through the transmission of values, teaching and training (see Chapter 6 for more discussion of the role of churches as a space for training professional and business skills).

3

Lived Religion in Business Decisions and Trajectories

Entry into entrepreneurship is thus closely intertwined with the beliefs held. Participants also signalled how revelations, dreams and/or prophecies intersected strongly with the steps taken to become entrepreneurs. This transpired in the interview with Entrepreneur 16, owner of a hair salon in London, who explained at length how the Lord prophesied that she would open her own business, and Entrepreneur 3 who explained that trust in God facilitated the last push to get ready to become an entrepreneur: [I opened the business] because I got a prophecy from the Lord that I was going to have my own business. So, if you get a prophecy, you have to run with the prophecy. It was a minister. I went to a convention and he said, ‘Someone in here is doing a hair business,’ and when he explained where I was doing the hair, I knew it was me. And he said, ‘Prepare yourself, God is going to move you into your own business’. So, I just begin to start, because I used to pray about it and I know, because God had already shown me things, he used to show me, and I realised. So, you know, you have to just save for it. So, I saved for it, so when the time comes, bang I am there ready to do it. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon)

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I have, by the grace of God, the Spirit reminds me to keep worshipping and when I’ve been faced with difficult situations like losing my job, my trust is in God, and asking for guidance as to what next I can do. And I believe that my business is the next thing I should do. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, care agency)

Previous experiences, knowledge and skills are intertwined with the presence of God in the participants’ everyday lives. For example, revelations and dreams seem to accompany some of the skills and family experience accumulated, enabling migrants to become business owners, as explained by Entrepreneur 1 in relation to her own trajectory from childminding to being the proud owner of a nursery: In my family, it is a family of teachers. My mum is a teacher, I have got four brothers who teach, and I always wanted to teach […] But, while I was in teaching, I had a revelation that we needed to start from early years, and if you got a lot of things right in the early years, then the issues that teachers have in the older age groups wouldn’t exist. So then I started as a childminder and eventually established a nursery. (Entrepreneur 1, Birmingham, female, Jamaica, nursery)

Similarly, Entrepreneur 24, owner of a home care company in Hampshire explains that a prophecy foretold that she was not meant to be under a boss but to manage others in order to ‘achieve great things’ which gave her enough strength and trust to quit her job as a nurse in the NHS and start her own care provision company. I was told in a prophecy in church that I was not meant to be ruled by others, that I was born to achieve great things and that in my current position I wasn’t able to. I saw the Lord speaking to me clearly because this is what I was suffering after years of trying to get promoted and seeing my white colleagues with less experience do very well for themselves. So… I saw it clearly then. I had the courage because God is now seeing this for me, and I started the process of setting this up. (Entrepreneur 24, Hampshire, female, Zimbabwe, care company)

Revelations and prophecies do not only shape business entry decisions but also other elements of the business trajectory, such as choosing the location of the business premises, whom to hire, or the appropriate time of opening. God intercedes here in the selection of the business premises

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where the secular pathways usually taken as a business owner are intertwined with the intervention of the divine, as conveyed by Entrepreneur 1, when she stated that ‘we didn’t have to do anything. God did it’ (E1, Birmingham, female, Jamaica, nursery). Similarly, Entrepreneur 16 from Jamaica with a hair salon explained how the exact location and subsequent move of her business to a different borough in London was based on God’s guidance. Entrepreneur 24 from Zimbabwe also explained how she visualised the premises where she eventually opened her agency in a dream ‘sent by God’ days before actually seeing the place the letting agency had scheduled for her. [I opened the business in this location because] He told me, He sent me that message, that He was going to put me right below my church. Until God blessed me, when things were right, then I could go out in big shops and [to open] in this area, X borough, He [God] told me […] the Lord placed me right here. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon) God sent me this vision in a dream of a place, with high ceilings and a green area in the back. I have never been to this part of the city before. And then when the letting agent told me of this place, I came here and I recognised it from my dream. I knew then this was the right place for me. (Entrepreneur 24, Hampshire, female, Zimbabwe, care company)

Prophecies and revelations were not the only ways in which God indicated to business owners that they should set up their businesses. When things ‘fall into place’ in the business journey, our participants highlighted how God’s support has been there all along: I was quite fortunate because I don’t know how I got a mortgage to tell you the truth, but I was only working part-time, my salary was very low. So initially, they said they needed a guarantor, but something happened along the way- it must have been God- and they decided that I could go on mortgage by myself, and that’s what they did, they put me on by myself, so I could buy a property […] it went through quite smoothly, it’s God’s grace. (Entrepreneur 13, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment agency) In everything I do, if it is going to be successful, God has to be involved. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, care agency)

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In addition, the role of faith and religious values transcends the first steps of setting up the business. Most interviewees narrated how having Christian values and a Christian lifestyle helped them to build relationships of trust with their customers and other stakeholders they have to deal with in their businesses. For example, Entrepreneur 1 equated her managerial skills to her Christian values, whilst Entrepreneur 3 understood that God will always guide your entrepreneurial journey. The values associated with being a good Christian paid off for Entrepreneur 15 who explained that spiritual life dictated his business life and how he proudly displayed this affiliation with customers and suppliers: I definitely believe that the kind of manager I am is because of who I am, because I am a Christian. That is very much aligned in how I deal with people, how I deal with money you know how I manage the children, how I deal with parents, being sympathetic, being able to be extra supportive with staff and stuff like that, just because of who I am. (Entrepreneur, Birmingham, female, Jamaica, nursery) Being a good entrepreneur, I believe it’s connected to being a child of God […] If you are a Bible-believing Christian who is following the teachings of Jesus Christ, then it means that the Holy Spirit will guide you, and in fact it will teach you to do things, and in fact it will even chastise you if you are not doing things according to how the Lord wants them to be done. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, care agency) And I always tell them [customer/suppliers], you know, yeah, I’m a Christian. Because I … I’m … maybe my perception it might be wrong but I think when you say it’s because you are Christian then they expect the best of you […] they will give you more trust […] Those two [religion and business] they go together. In my business that’s when the spiritual life dictates, you know, you have to be honest, calm mind, so that’s the part side of it that the spiritual comes into it. (Entrepreneur 15, London, male, Brazil, cleaning company)

Whilst the Christian values they represent and exercise are important to build relationships of trust, our participants strongly emphasised that having faith and being religious has proved to be extremely important in navigating challenges in business and life more broadly. Overcoming life and business hurdles through their relationship with God is frequent in the narratives analysed, for example for Entrepreneur 16, when she

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explained that the vulnerability of black businesses requires the resilience supplied by her belief system: It is only [because of] God that the business goes, you know stronger. But, the thing about it, as was said, they always say that black business don’t last, a black business closes down very quick […] So, because I know, as a child of God I pray about it, so I push to do it to show others that it can happen. And, it’s good because a lot of people congratulate me for doing this. And, some days you feel like you want to give up, but it makes you push because people come and say, ‘That’s very good,’ so how can I try to give up now? Do you understand me? You have to make people see that a black person can do it. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon)

Dealing with challenging relationships at the workplace is also cushioned by Christian values such as patience, as explained by Entrepreneur 14 when she referred to how her faith helps her to deal with ‘difficult people’: [It is good for the business] because that sometimes you get difficult people and being a Christian you have to know how to be patient and you have to know how to control yourself and not let things get the better of you and not get too angry because somebody might offend you. Because as Christians even though somebody offend you must turn the other cheek, so it’s learning patience […] Being a Christian could help me in my entrepreneurship because as I say I have difficult people to deal with. (Entrepreneur 14, London, female, Trinidad and Tobago, catering business and hairdressing)

Business and financial worries were also put in the hands of God, as explained by some interviewees who said that their worries were expressed in their prayers and in the Sunday service for God to solve, almost like a form of meditation that lets them focus on the present, in order to be more effective in actually carrying out their business activities. These strategies are analogous to well-being and mindfulness practices put in place in large organisations to improve performance from a secular perspective (Dane, 2011). Overcoming fears and fostering resilience were at the core of these narratives for migrant business owners: Becoming an entrepreneur can be a scary step. But because you believe in God, then you take the step of faith and do it knowing that God will do his

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part when you are doing your part. So faith is critical in this. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, recruitment agency) I just literally let it go and trusted God that everything would be fine, and it was. I had a few issues, but I put down to God’s grace, so it was fine in the end. (Entrepreneur 13, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment agency) It helps me to keep doing my job, have a smile on my face, continue going… if I have problems with the bank or finances or I don’t know if I will cover all my expenses this month my customers will notice, I will be moody, my family will be suffering too. So I leave my worries in church in my prayers and things eventually get better. (Entrepreneur 24, Hampshire, female, Zimbabwe, care company) God still keeps us in the time of recession. Since I came to X borough, it is a strain. This is the one where, proper that the Lord said, ‘I put you here’. That is the one that I was struggling, and that is why I always say to people, ‘Whatever God gives you, the enemy always make you feel as if it is not God, and things aren’t going to be better’. It is like you know, like you have got to struggle, but God has already told me that my finance does not belong to me. No, my finance is not my problem, God said my finance is his problem. So, now I am just sitting and relaxing. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdresser salon)

Despite the power of faith and religion in enabling business ownership and trajectories, entrepreneurs have also confronted failure in their entrepreneurial endeavours. Although Pentecostal faith and teachings have a clear focus on success through faith and prayer, failure is also accounted for as part of the pathway God puts you on as a business owner. The situations when business and other life goals do not go according to plan are not interpreted as ‘failure’ as such, as explained by Entrepreneur 23. Obstacles are explained as one the challenges you must overcome in order to become a better Christian and entrepreneur. Here, once again, the role of individual responsibility and doing the ‘leg work’ after placing your trust in God is still crucial to achieving and realising what you should do in your professional and spiritual life, as conveyed by Entrepreneur 23 and Entrepreneur 24: You tend to pray and ask God for direction when you are doing things, and you trust it will work. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but

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even if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you have failed. It just means that it may not have been your time and, you know, God allows certain things to happen because he has a bigger plan or a bigger purpose for you, so I just think that you should always take things for God and even sometimes when you do things that many not be part of God’s plan for you, He will allow you to do it, but even if you fail, you won’t fail, crash, do you know what I mean? There will be a safety net within the fall. (Entrepreneur 23, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment agency) I set up something before this business and it did not go well. I had all the signs but then I had problems with finding the right people to work for me, issues with the bank and a business loan I did not get […] Here I was thinking ‘why God, why did you encourage me to this’, but then I realised that was all the learning he asked me to take so I could now do this much bigger and much better. (Entrepreneur 24, Hampshire, female, Zimbabwe, care company)

In addition to shaping their entry into and consolidation of their business activities, religiosity also interceded in the way entrepreneurs relate to customers. For several interviewees, their business premises facilitate an extended conversation with their regular clientele that might be conducive to propagating their religious affiliation and beliefs or reaching out to others in their communities, which would not be possible in paid employment. This, once again, aligns their business ventures to their religious values: Well, it’s been quite good because I always talk about my Christian life so I will talk about it to my clients, I will try and encourage them and sometimes I don’t know like my new clients I don’t know if they are Christians or not so when I start to talk about God or here I’ll play Christian music some of them will be like, oh, you know, I’m a Christian as well and you know we get to go round that Christian way of talking. Some of my clients they are living off the world, they go parties, they go this and that, and I try and encourage them, come to church, you know, just come and see how it is. So, it’s very good as well because I use my Christianity to also win souls for the kingdom and also talk with other Christian members as well and learn more because we share different views and my view mightn’t be your view or you might know this and I might not know this so it’s quite good working with, yeah. (Entrepreneur 14, London, London Trinidad and Tobago, catering business and hairdressing)

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By doing people’s hair, that is good, I came here to share Christ with them. The Lord asked me to minister to people, I have people will come when they need me here, even sometimes working, I will stop. Somebody may be hurting, and it is so much, you know you can go in the kitchen, you can go and pray with them. Someone will come, people come to me and say to me that God has sent them here for me to pray with them, do you know what I mean? So, it is a lot, so now I was running from here, because I used to say, ‘God, I don’t like X borough,’ but then the Lord, I came out here and the Lord put me back, and he told me this is where he placed me. So, this is where my minister is at work. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdresser salon)

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Conclusions

This chapter has shown that migration and religion are closely intertwined, with narratives of business owners who attribute an important role to their faith, aspirations and church networks in providing the first steps in their migration trajectory. Upon arrival, some experienced difficult trajectories, characterised by employment opportunities only in low pay sectors, with strong hierarchical relationships and not many opportunities for professional recognition and promotion. This is consistent with previous findings on the precarity of work for migrant workers and its relationship with entry into self-employment/business ownership (see discussion in Chapter 3). Hence, becoming an entrepreneur emerges as a means of enhancing occupational and social trajectories in the UK by escaping frequently racialised entrapment in certain sectors and occupations where migrants cannot capitalise on their skills (Ram, Jones, & Villares-Varela, 2017). Changing these labour market positions, again, seems to be influenced by the Pentecostal faith of the research participants: exclusion here is connected to having the aspirations and capabilities to change these circumstances from a position of Pentecostal faith, where dreams and revelations heavily featured in the aspirations to become an entrepreneur and even shape some of the decisions about sector and location of their business endeavours. This focus on self-betterment as an individual project blessed by God (Fesenmyer, 2016) is underpinned by broader aspects related to neoliberal subjectivities linked to entrepreneurship, individual success and self-betterment (Verdouw, 2017). When navigating the burdens and challenges of business ownership, participants recalled how their faith had allowed them to put these

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concerns into God’s hands, so they could find the resilience needed in their search for success and self-realisation. Religiosity here also played a key role in the development of trust through the exercise of broad Christian values and lifestyles which are understood here as enablers to build key relationships with customers, providers and other social actors. In the following chapter, we explore the ways in which the churches themselves—and church leaders—support migrants in their entrepreneurial endeavours.

References Balog, A. M., Baker, L. T., & Walker, A. G. (2014). Religiosity and spirituality in entrepreneurship: A review and research agenda. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 11(2), 159–186. Bartolini, N., Chris, R., MacKian, S., & Pile, S. (2017). The place of spirit: Modernity and the geographies of spirituality. Progress in Human Geography, 41(3), 338–354. Connell, R. (2010). Understanding neoliberalism. Neoliberalism and everyday life. In S. Braedley & M. Luxton (Eds.), Neoliberalism and everyday life (2014, pp. 22–36). McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP. Dane, E. (2011). Paying attention to mindfulness and its effects on task performance in the workplace. Journal of Management, 37 (4), 997–1018. Ebaugh, H. R., & Chafetz, J. S. (2002). Religion across borders: Transnational immigrant networks. AltaMira Press. Fesenmyer, L. (2016). African-initiated Pentecostal churches are on the rise in the UK–what role do they seek to play in wider society? Religion and the public Sphere. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/76444/. Fesenmyer, L. (2019). Bringing the kingdom to the city: Mission as placemaking practice amongst Kenyan pentecostals in London. City & Society, 31(1), 34– 54. Giddens, A. (1991). The consequences of modernity. Wiley. Hagan, J. M. (2008). Migration miracle: Faith, hope, and meaning on the undocumented journey. Harvard University Press. Jones, T., Ram, M., Edwards, P., Kiselinchev, A., & Muchenje, L. (2014). Mixed embeddedness and new migrant enterprise in the UK. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 26(5–6), 500–520. Kibria, N. (1994). Household structure and family ideologies: The dynamics of immigrant economic adaptation among Vietnamese refugees. Social Problems, 41(1), 81–96. Kong, L. (2010). Global shifts, theoretical shifts: Changing geographies of religion. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 775–776.

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Levitt, P. (2008). Religion as a path to civic engagement. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(4), 766–791. Ram, M., Jones, T., & Villares-Varela, M. (2017). Migrant entrepreneurship: Reflections on research and practice. International Small Business Journal, 35(1), 3–18. Sheringham, O. (2013). Transnational religious spaces: Faith and the Brazilian migration experience. Palgrave Macmillan. Song, M. (1999). Helping out: Children’s labor in ethnic businesses. Temple University Press. Türken, S., Nafstad, H. E., Blakar, R. M., & Roen, K. (2016). Making sense of neoliberal subjectivity: A discourse analysis of media language on self-development. Globalizations, 13(1), 32–46. Verdouw, J. J. (2017). The subject who thinks economically? Comparative money subjectivities in neoliberal context. Journal of Sociology, 53(3), 523–540. Villares-Varela, M. (2017). “Not helping out”: Classed strategies of the (non) contribution of children in immigrant family businesses. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(10), 1758–1775. Villares-Varela, M. (2018). Negotiating class, femininity and career: Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs in Spain. International Migration, 56(4), 109–124. Villares-Varela, M., Ram, M., & Jones, T. (2018). Bricolage as survival, growth and transformation: The role of patch-working in the social agency of migrant entrepreneurs. Work, Employment & Society, 32(5), 942–962.

CHAPTER 5

Becoming an Entrepreneur in Church: The Role of Religious Organisations in Supporting Migrants

Abstract This chapter analyses the role of churches in providing business support for migrant entrepreneurs in order to explore: (i) the ways in which they help their congregants in and outside of their working lives; (ii) how they substitute/complement other business support agencies and (iii) how Pastors see their role in assisting their members in the world of work. It draws on primary data collected with Pastors and migrant entrepreneurs themselves to explain how entrepreneurs gain financial skills, mentoring and coaching, Pastoral and spiritual care, as well as access to networks of suppliers and customers. We argue that churches simultaneously provide cultural legitimacy in the formation of neoliberal subjectivities whilst counterbalancing the effects of neoliberalism in relation to the erosion of community and family lives. Keywords Church · Pastors · Pentecostalism · Entrepreneurship · Skills · Networks · Neoliberalism

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In this chapter, we turn to look at churches as a space that provides business support for migrant entrepreneurs. We explore the ways in which © The Author(s) 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7_5

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churches help their congregants in and outside of their working lives, including how they substitute or complement other business support agencies. We also consider how pastors and other members of these organisations see their role in assisting their members in the world of work. Drawing on the narratives of pastors, we analyse how Pentecostal churches understand and play a role in the working lives of their believers and the services they offer for start-ups. As discussed earlier in the book (Chapter 1, Introduction), the disconnection between the needs of migrant entrepreneurs and the existing offer of business support paints a picture of migrant business owners who are ‘self-made’, rarely accessing formal banking, and who lack formal managerial skills. In addition, in a post-2010 Britain, organisations such as Business Links (a one-stop-shop for small business services) have been eroded from the business support landscape in 2011 as part of the cuts put in place by the ConservativeLiberal coalition (2010–2015) (Ram et al., 2013). Although Business Links did have a provision for ethnic minority businesses—albeit an unequal one (Ram & Smallbone, 2003)—its disappearance has made access to these vital resources even more challenging for disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The support provision in the aftermath of austerity policies in Britain seems to appear here rather fragmented and organised around third sector organisations, local councils and charities. This vacuum in business support provision has been filled, in part, by other organisations such as charities, the banking sector and social enterprises, who are offering programmes for business support for disadvantaged groups (Villares-Varela, Ram, Jones, & Doldor, 2017). This chapter shows how churches emerge in this alternative business support landscape in austere Britain. Whilst scholars have highlighted the role of spiritual capital in entrepreneurship (Henley, 2017; Neubert, Bradley, Ardianti, & Simiyu, 2017), less attention has been paid to the role of churches in sustaining entrepreneurial initiatives. By looking at the Pentecostal churches in our sample, this chapter reveals some of the different ways in which these churches are servicing communities in urban spaces who have rarely accessed other type of support in their entrepreneurial endeavours, from mentoring and encouraging entrepreneurial aspirations, to formal training on financial and business skills.

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Church as a Place for Spiritual Growth

Pastors and congregants explained that the main role of church is the provision of spiritual guidance, and a good foundation of Christian values. Sunday services, Bible study groups, Men and Women’s ministries, marriage ceremonies, etc., are part of the everyday activities that all churches, regardless of size or resources, offer to cater to congregants’ spiritual needs. Spiritual teaching and learning are strongly linked to the belief in the power of faith to overcome life challenges, and to empower individuals to realise their full potential and achieve their life goals. Pastors explained that praying and faith are the most important pillars of church and that individuals still need to work on their own development: ‘we promise them if they have faith it will happen, but it depends on them, not on the pastor’ (Pastor 7, London). The power of changing people’s lives in church is explained in detail by pastor 2 (Hampshire) who describes how the church motto is about ‘empowerment’ and continues, That’s the goal of what we do. Because confidence is an issue with people who have been at the bottom of society. How do you raise them up, you know? Do we just teach religion to them and leave them where they are? No, that’s not- It’s about changing people’s lives. (Pastor 9, Hampshire)

Pastor 9 (Hampshire) goes further still, explaining that church should help congregants not to be dependent on the state, which resonates with the idea of financial dependency as detrimental to the growth of the self, which is imbued in the teachings: The church becomes their [congregants’] family and encourages them and gives them the motivation to continue. You know, to go for the higher steps […] They are not dependent on the government anymore. And they are not on the street causing problems. (Pastor 9, Hampshire)

Empowerment and reflecting on how to change individual trajectories are a crucial part of church life, which are also reflected on how some of the entrepreneurs interviewed explained how they had found church to be the space where they can realise their full potential, where they can change their pathways, old ways and trajectories, as described in Chapter 4. We should note that this emphasis on empowerment and agency, and realising one’s full potential, is not only linked to entrepreneurship. Indeed, for many, religious faith—practised and experienced through an individual

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relationship with God—provided a sense of empowerment for addressing everyday concerns—from material and social issues, to emotional and intimate ones—overcoming obstacles, and changing life paths. These before/after narratives were an important way to articulate the lived aspects of Pentecostalism which transcend the formal and congregational setting. Moreover, one pastor explained in detail how the notion of empowerment was not just related to career progression, but was about emphasising ‘radical discipleship’: Our values are not just related to success and career progression. Our values are radical discipleship, sacrifice, let’s see where God takes you […] I don’t want you to think we discourage progression but our value first of all is honesty, good stewardship, character and not entrepreneurship at all costs […] We teach people how to become everything they want to become by discovering their gifts, by working through their roles, and being everything they need to be. (Pastor 2, Birmingham)

The notion of working on the self as an individual endeavour that emerged within several narratives could be seen to demonstrate the internalisation of contemporary understandings of neoliberal subjectivities (Harvey, 2007; Connell, 2010), in which the focus is on individual responsibility, agency and empowerment, and the individual as an ‘entrepreneur’ in a metaphoric sense (Türken, Nafstad, Blakar, & Roen, 2016). Teachings on self-betterment might also provide part of the legitimacy needed to sustain certain aspects of these neoliberal subjectivities, in relation to values such as ‘competition, choice, entrepreneurship and individualism’ (Connell, 2010, p. 27). These foundations of church life as pivotal in changing people’s lives and occupational trajectories are intertwined with the emphasis put on the importance of good stewardship based on solid Christian values. These are regarded as very important for congregants’ lives, which also extend to their working lives and business endeavours. Pastors explained how in church people learn about the love of Jesus Christ, looking after your neighbour, being morally worthy, and being as good as possible in every single domain of life. This is conveyed by Pastor 7 (London) who explained how these values are particularly important for congregants who are from abroad:

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Here [we preach] family values, we also preach about being here [as in the UK] to our young people nowadays, like avoiding drugs, avoiding all kind of those things. We preach the love of Jesus Christ. We are Christian, always looking after the next, you know, person. Our neighbour. (Pastor 7, London)

Similarly, Pastor 3 (Birmingham) addressed that good stewardship is important not just for individuals, but for the economy of the country: I would say in our teaching, what we try to teach people is to be good in everything in what they do. You know, to aspire for something great, always to aim for the great things even if they fail, but let’s aim for great things because we believe in a God who gives. He gave everything; He is best for us, so we have to give also our best for God, but also the economy of this country. If we work hard, and if we are good stewards, with that the economy is growing. (Pastor 3, Birmingham)

When asked about the values preached and how these can translate into ‘business values’, Pastors highlighted that the main principles they teach are honesty, integrity and excellence. Pastors explained that all of these elements are intertwined, and how being a good Christian maps onto being a good administrator in the sense of having the right guiding principles in both one’s career and entrepreneurial endeavours. In addition, fulfilling all the gifts and capacities (‘use your talents’, ‘use the capacities God blessed you with’) that God has given you is seen as tantamount to being a good businessperson. Again, there is a lot [in terms of values that could shape business] but basically our stance is good stewardship. Life management, financial stewardship. You know, ‘give, save, live’. […] use your talents well, build good relationships, be honest and in good character. All that feeds in, you know? (Pastor 2, Birmingham) You know, we say that Jesus Christ was the most, the biggest administrator of the world (laugh), because the job He did here is 2018 years ago and it is still running to this day! So he was the biggest administrator so we say that we, sometimes we put that in our sermon as well. If you want to be a good Christian, you can be a good businessperson as well. (Pastor 7, London)

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The values which are related to the importance of success and career progression […] it’s an important aspect [which is] integrity. Integrity is very important in the success of a career. The right values for your own career, and that’s a biblical aspect. Having integrity […] will set the success for your business […] God blessed us with capacities to grow, to be creative, to be innovative, so I think the church values support the idea of becoming good in everything you do, excel in everything we do […] church values fit in any kind of business success. (Pastor 3, Birmingham) Businesses [fits with] church values, you have to be able to have administrative skills, and having church values, having integrity, being honest. (Pastor 6, London)

Interestingly, some of these churches often invite guest speakers to speak about how to reconcile business values with church values, as explained by Pastor 1 (Birmingham): ‘we’ve had people come in and talk about the ethics and morals of business and so we would go back to the biblical teaching’. Participant entrepreneurs, many of whom drew connections between being a good Christian and business values, explained that those guidelines and precepts can also aid the management of their businesses. As Entrepreneur 23 conveyed: I do try to be ethical, you know, try to do the right thing […] [Being a Christian] is good because you have, obviously, boundaries and guidelines and, you know, things that you wouldn’t do. So you are not going to rob anyone, you are not going to do anything that’s… you are not going to do anything criminal. You are not going to wilfully let people lose money. (Entrepreneur 23, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment agency)

One particular aspect emphasised by pastors regarding the translation of Christian values into entrepreneurial ones relates to the morals of tax paying and obeying the country’s rules and regulations. This was a common theme in pastors’ narratives, many of whom discussed their preaching in terms of the need to be authentic, transparent and accountable: [Re the morals of business] we are a great believer in that you pay your income tax. We are not a believer in that you should be doing jobs taking cash. We believe you should be transparent in your business. So we would teach them transparency, we would teach them authenticity, we

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would teach them to obey the government and all the government’s ruling with finances. We would obviously ask them to get an accountant who is a dependable accountant so that again transparency is clear. (Pastor 5, Birmingham) Our values are obviously taken from the Bible […] For instance, we are a great believer in that you pay your Income Tax. We are not a believer in that you should be doing jobs taking cash […] We teach them transparency, authenticity, we would teach them to obey the government and all the government’s ruling with finances […] So we would try and look after them in that sense. (Pastor 4, Birmingham)

These narratives show that churches emerge as spaces for spiritual learning and growth and that these areas are strongly intertwined with generating values and practices that can be translated to congregants’ working lives and entrepreneurial aspirations. Working ‘on the self’ and improving individual trajectories were at the core of some teachings imparted in church, which encompass wider cultural developments in neoliberal contexts. We turn now to explore how churches also shape the lives of their congregants by becoming crucial social spaces that structure their collective, community and family life in the UK.

3 ‘We Are a Family, We Are a Community ’: Church as a Social Space Most of the churches we approached have a wide range of services available to their congregants that span the spiritual, reproductive and productive work realms, and with different degrees of formality. From the core services (Sunday service, marriage/funeral ceremonies), other provisions include in-house emergency accommodation, coffee mornings and Bible study groups, youth clubs, family/marriage counselling, groups for men and women to bring their pre-school children, homework clubs and care activities for children whilst parents are attending any of the other groups (see Table 2 in Chapter 1 for detailed breakdown of activities). Of particular interest to this research are the activities set out in relation to the learning of skills for becoming a business owner, which are explained in detail in the next section. The pastors interviewed explained how catering for this diverse range of needs offers crucial support for families who might not be able to access any other form of care, together with

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the added value of spending time in the safe environment of church where family members can also be nurtured spiritually. For some groups, lack of access to wider care services derived from their ineligibility to access public funds because of the nature of their residence permits. For those with full rights to social protection, social provision was deeply diminished due to the impact of austerity measures. In both cases, the church emerges as one of the social actors covering some of this crucial provision. These findings corroborate other research that has explored how some faith-based institutions are helping to meet the social welfare needs of the communities they service (Fesenmyer, 2016; Griera, 2013), and how helping others and engaging in reciprocal relationships is at the core of the teachings of some Pentecostal churches in the UK (Fesenmyer, 2019). This seems particularly pertinent against the backdrop of neoliberal Britain, since churches appear to supplement and substitute welfare support, as argued by Connell when she explains that ‘welfare is commodified by putting the provision of services up for tender and forcing the public agencies that formerly provided them to compete with nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), churches and companies to win the tenders’ (2010, p. 24). For participants in our research, these processes of privatisation and commodification of welfare affect people at the individual level. For example, Pastor 9 (Hampshire) explains that church life is more than praying, a recurring narrative amongst most of the pastors interviewed: If we see church as just a place where people just come, once a week, and nothing else, then it is different. But if we see church as an actual opportunity to impact people’s lives in so many different ways, then you know, faith becomes fundamental. Faith comes alive actually. […] it is not just about practicing religion, because religion doesn’t do it. The stuff we are getting involved in, the lives of the people, we have marriage courses, we have so much. (Pastor 9, Hampshire)

More broadly, as put by Pastor 8 (Hampshire), when asked about whether they think the state should be covering some of these needs of their congregants, he argues that, ‘ we stop looking at the state. So, we just do what we can. I have a different perspective now. I feel who else will do it?’.

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Here, we can see the close connections as well as the distinctions between church and faith and how faith is lived. The entrepreneurs interviewed also emphasised the importance of church support and services in their lives, beyond their business activities, by referring to spiritual, family and work arenas. The list of the multiple roles of the church in their lives was extensive, ranging from a sense of peace, cheer, prayer, fellowship, guidance, support, discipline, love, etc. Participants’ narratives focused particularly on how church has helped them as migrants in a new country, by providing fellowship, networks, counselling in their relationships, and how this support is specific and separable from the support you get from your partner, family or workmates. Church is my family as far as I am concerned. Because I was raised in church, if you’ve got a problem and church knows, everyone is flocking around you, the support is there. (Entrepreneur 13, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment company) Church is like part of family to me. […] there is always a place where you feel you belong to, and this is where I belong. Yeah, so, in every consideration I make, Church guides me. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, recruitment agency) To me, it is a place, because we are the church really, but going in there I find peace, I always find peace with God. But, sometimes when you have a situation or a problem, and you are going to church, and you cheer, and somebody prays with you, you come back all refreshed, you feel so much better, you feel uplifted. But, I enjoy going to church because I love to worship, and I love the fellowship, because to me it is my church family. So, it is like, I am excited when Sunday comes. (Entrepreneur 16 London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon) It [church] provides social networks, visits to the vulnerable […] relationship counselling, family […] relationships, parenting. (Entrepreneur 18, London, male, Barbados, social enterprise) We do things here that we used to do back home with our neighbours, a sense of being part of a community. You don’t get much of that elsewhere, but you get it in church. (Entrepreneur 11, Birmingham, Brazil, beauty salon)

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The reach of churches extended beyond their physical premises and into the wider community, though the extent of this reach generally depended on the resources they have and the connections with neighbouring schools and other organisations. For example, some pastors explained how their churches collaborate with local schools by running church services in the school premises, or by offering chaplaincy services, or visits to local prisons. These activities can also go beyond the UK borders through collaboration with transnational organisations, churches and charities based elsewhere in the Global South. Besides the functions of churches in the provision of spiritual and social networks, several churches provided pivotal skills and social ties to gain employment. For example, some pastors explained how their churches function as sites to support, informally, congregants seeking employment. Pastor 7 (London) explained that when church members were looking for work, they would sometimes connect them with business owners from church who might be looking for employees: We do [offer support in finding employment] sometimes. We do, because we have like tutors who run their own company, we have one cleaning company as well, a guy who runs a cleaning company. So when people come to look for a job we recommend them to these guys. (Pastor 7, London)

Hence, churches provided their congregants with a wide range of services and support spanning the productive and reproductive realms whilst nurturing their spiritual needs. Self-betterment through individual work is supplemented here by collective goals that service their immediate communities and beyond, fostering a sense of belonging and connectivity through employment and other support networks. We now turn to explore how some of this support can be specifically geared towards the acquisition of professional skills, business learning to start up their companies or grow their existing businesses.

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4 ‘You Can Become Employers, You Don ’t Have to Be Employed by Anyone ’: Church as a Space for Professional and Business Learning and Growth In addition to the social activities that churches offered their congregants, the participant churches preached to congregants about aiming for ‘big things’ professionally. These teachings were also supplemented by a remarkable range of provisions that aid the development of professional and business development skills. These span tailored workshops on financial skills, to specific events about how to set up your own business and/or become self-employed, as well as the regular presence of invited motivational speakers. Emphasis on the importance of education and skills development was also at the core of the churches’ teachings. For example, Pastor 3 (Birmingham), emphasised the importance of excellence in their teaching and how, in order to avoid poverty, you have to work hard, making again the connection between professional life, and the work on the self as individual responsibility. This was echoed by Pastor 6 (London) and Pastor 7 (London), who actually established a ‘graduation day’ event in church to promote the value of higher education amongst their youngest congregants. [We preach] that in order to avoid poverty in this country we have to work hard and it’s also and it is also for them to aim for something greater than for mediocrity of for small things. So these are values we promote. To excel in every aspect of their lives. It can be jobs, it can be talents, it can be spiritual things. In everything they do they need to excel in everything, so we try to encourage them excel and work hard, develop yourself in the area that God placed you or called you to live in this life. (Pastor 3, Birmingham) We encourage them to [be professional], we compare like the Bible teaching, with the professional, with the professional life, or even when they are in school or college [not only in business]. The Bible can help you here if you use the schools you can have a successful life, professional life, you know. (Pastor 6, London) I know for here it’s the case because when I left university one of my real passions when I came back was to start up this new thing called a graduation day. And so what I would do is encourage the young people to

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attend university or college and then on graduation day we would celebrate their achievements. Now, that has been going for the last ten years and it’s … you can hear the buzz in the ear, “Oh, when is it because I graduate next year” […] And we just had four students that just finished uni and so, you know, it’s good to see the church recognising them and, you know, and I think that’s a classic example. (Pastor 7, London)

Other churches provide skills and training in different realms, such as communication skills, CV writing and interviewing skills, food safety and hygiene, etc., which can then be reutilised in the labour market at any point. Pastor 8 (Hampshire) described the ‘schools’ they run in church for congregants and explained the difference these had made for one of their believers: We also run schools and part of the school is helping people to either get a job or discover what their direction in life is. Some can just walk in the building and go over and get a job in supermarket A. We had a guy who went through the hostel [in house emergency accommodation] and once they get stable, they come and serve here [in church premises, food, café]. So again, it gives them an opportunity to integrate, to get skills [by helping in church] and he got a job in supermarket A. So he will go in and work in supermarket A and then come here and volunteer. The same guy is now working in the hospital, so he has progressed, and it gives so much joy to see that. (Pastor 8, Hampshire)

When it comes to business development, some of the pastors interviewed were very vocal about the specific focus of their teachings to motivate congregants into self-employment through formal events and training, whilst others had a more open approach focused on personal and career development in general and not necessarily linked to enterprise. Pastor 6 (London) explained how they use inspirational messages in their teachings, whilst Pastor 1 (Birmingham) expressed his desire to see more people doing business as well as realising their full potential in different sectors: There’s a lot of inspirational messages but there’s also a lot of … sort of motivational … a lot of, you know, sort of messages that come out as well. Inspiring people to think positively, to go after their dreams. Don’t hesitate if you’ve got a vision or you’ve got some desire to do something, you know, do it now. (Pastor 6, London)

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We would love to see more [Christian] people doing business, more people in that public and private sector enhancing their giftings. (Pastor 1, Birmingham)

The role of the church in providing inspiration to become a business owner is also apparent in the narratives of congregants who explained how services and networks accessed through the church were pivotal in their decision to become entrepreneurs. For example, several participants referred to the inspiration of their Pastor’s teachings and individual testimonies of fellow congregants given during church services. This is the case of Entrepreneur 3, who explained how the church services had instilled in him the desire to become an entrepreneur. Similarly, Entrepreneur 25 described how listening to a fellow congregant and compatriot giving a testimony illuminated his pathway, and changed his ways towards a more domestic-oriented behaviour leaving behind old habits linked to drinking (Lindhardt, 2015): Even from the altar, there’s been many times when the word has been spoken to say that we should not only rely on thinking that somebody will employ us, that we can also employ people ourselves. So even our children, right from that young, tender age, they are hearing this message of ‘you can become employers, you don’t have to be employed by anyone. (Entrepreneur 3, Birmingham, female, Malawi, care and recruitment agency) During a Sunday service… it was so powerful. I heard the story of X [member of same church], and he talked about the same struggles I had, issues with alcohol. All the things that were not good in my life before he also experienced. I had terrible jobs too but I was trying to work hard, did not have many skills. It was as if I was speaking there, like we were the same person. At that time, I felt God was speaking to me by giving me this inspiration from X. He then said how the moment he set up his company all changed: respect from his friends, his wife and children paid him more respect, admiration. So after the service I asked him and he helped me set up my business. (Entrepreneur 25, Hampshire, male, Poland, construction company)

Many participants also referred to the crucial function of pastors as role models for encouraging them to set up their own business. Some pastors

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were entrepreneurs themselves, so they were seen as having the legitimacy and authority to be role models for their community of potential entrepreneurs. Pastors transmit the benefits of being an entrepreneur from a narrative of liberation, emphasising the benefits of financial independence including being able to employ members of your family and wider congregation. Some pastors also encouraged congregants to support business owners who were starting up by recommending that they use each other’s business services if possible and help each other. Several entrepreneurs referred to this during their interviews: Well, the Pastor is always telling us to open our own business, open our own business and we should always be the head, we should always be, you know, wanting to do more, yeah, because me as a Christian if I’ve got my own business and there is a member in the church that don’t have a job I could always employ them. Even as a non-Christian if I’m the manager at work and I know that somebody’s looking for a job even if they are Christian or non-Christian I can employ them, like say my Christian brother might have a friend that’s looking for a job and I’m a manager I could employ them whereas if my Christian brother don’t have a job and I’m the manager or I know that there is jobs going here there and everywhere I can always introduce it to them so yeah. (Entrepreneur 14, London, female, Trinidad and Tobago, catering business and hairdressing salon) He [my Pastor] comes, he encourages, he prays, you know he tells me to do something else, bring another business. He tries to encourage you and tell you, ‘You can do it’. And, when you feel like you want to give up, he will say, ‘No’. You know, he is very encouraging”. He always shares, and tell us you know, he talks to us about the business, and then he is one of those, he is always encouraging the church to support us. That’s one other thing as well, always tell the church to support. And, I remember one day he said, ‘If you lot all start supporting Sister [Name 4] business, she would really credit. So, I find he really always encourages and supports it in that way. And, pray as well, he has supported a lot with prayers. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon) We can get advice from them [pastors], and they will impart advice and information upon us as well, they have helped us pray, and give us good advice about things. (Entrepreneur 1, Birmingham, female, Jamaica, nursery)

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These church-led resources within the spiritual and professional realms were supplemented by specific support to acquire financial and business skills. Pastors in some of the churches explained that the financial skills courses could be offered as a standalone opportunity or as a prerequisite for those wishing to become self-employed under the understanding that, to be a business owner, you first need to know how to manage your own finances. Some of these courses were provided in partnership with Christians Against Poverty (CAP), as highlighted by Pastor 1 (Birmingham) and Pastor 4 (Birmingham); or as part of their in-house offer as explained by Pastor 8 (Hampshire), who also described how other courses in church (life skills, how to cook on a budget) support the financial knowledge and resilience of their congregants: The first thing [if people want to set up a business] would be to send them to a Christians Against Poverty (CAP) course in which people who want to do business and people who want to know about money we would teach them first of all of the fist values and principles of cash flow. We would teach them how to manage their money, before we would even consider sending them to any courses because if you can’t manage your own money, we certainly would not be saying to them, ‘Go and build a business’. (Pastor 1, Birmingham) We do have a CAP course and people who want to do business and people who want to know about money we would teach them first of all the first values and principles of cashflow, we would teach them how to manage their money before we would even consider sending them to any [business] courses because if you can’t manage your own money we certainly would not be saying to them ‘go and build a business. (Pastor 4, Birmingham) Every summer we do a financial course, teaching people how to manage their money. Teaching people that you must have savings. You don’t need to end up on the road if your job ends. These things have become part of the church […] Right now, we are doing a life skills course and we are teaching them basic things like communication skills, social skills. We are also teaching them how to cook on a budget, stuff like that. (Pastor 8, Hampshire)

The advantages of completing this training were also echoed by the entrepreneurs interviewed, who had themselves taken advantage of some of these training opportunities:

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[In church] they teach us finance, sometimes when they are teaching finance, how to manage your finances well. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, hairdressing salon) [In church, they teach you] about the finance, like how you … you have that budget and, you know, if there are any debts how you can set up a budget to make sure you pay all your… But it’s more like individual coaching rather than a business that, even a business sense. (Entrepreneur 15, London, male, Brazil, cleaning business)

Several Churches provided business support directly as an in-house service or indirectly by referring people to others. Smaller churches without the capacity to provide specific training for people who wanted to start a business often reached out to bigger congregations in their local community. For example, Pastor 1 (Birmingham), explained how they relied on a partnership with a business consultant to service their congregants, which was echoed in Pastor 4’s (Birmingham) narrative; whilst Pastor 11 (Hampshire) explained how his church offers in-house training for those who want to kick off a business venture. Support can come through other informal arrangements, such as people who work for the church in helping congregants with their initial business ideas. We do offer access to it [business support service]. He is a man, named X, who goes around to businesspeople teaching them how to do business. And I’ve done a course with X and I would use his material when it comes to business, but our main line of pattern would obviously be the Bible. If we have people who we believe have got the potential, we go to this partnership business […] I am a great believer in taking people to the right people, so if someone case and says, ‘listen, I want to start a business up’, I would be in contact with one of our local churches [part of their denomination] who got expertise in that base and we would send them there. (Pastor 1, Birmingham) If someone came and says, ‘listen I want to start a business up’, I would be in contact with one of our local churches who have got expertise in that place and we would send them there. (Pastor 4, church Birmingham) We do offer two sessions a year, maybe in the future we will have more, since they are very popular. We bring a business consultant and they get 8 hours of how to write a business plan, how to register your company,

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basics on taxation, the importance of an accountant, etc. We see more and more intake of this of late, so we would like to expand this. (Pastor 11, Hampshire) They come here, lots of them come in asking how to set up a business. We have one accountant - a girl in church, and she helped to open a business with them, things like registering the business, Company House, this kind of thing […] We also do like sessions, like workshops [to help set up a business]. (Pastor 7, London)

Several entrepreneurs explained how these services have been particularly helpful as they had not accessed any services from mainstream business support providers. This is consistent with the findings of existing research which highlights that migrant entrepreneurs are rarely connected and embedded into the main circuits of support (Ram, Jones, & VillaresVarela, 2017; Villares-Varela et al., 2017). Participants who have had their businesses for a few years recalled how business support was available some time back in the form of Business Links and how in the last years the offer has decreased (Ram et al., 2013). For example, Entrepreneur 18 who runs a social enterprise explained that ‘[there was more support then than now] We had a lot of people that we were able to go to and tell them our plans. They would push you in a direction […] they would help you’ (Entrepreneur 18, London, male, Barbados, social enterprise). Although access to finance was highlighted as one of the main challenges for migrant entrepreneurs, support in the form of capital and loans was described as equally rare. For most entrepreneurs we interviewed, funding was mainly from family savings, informal loans from friends, or even borrowing on their personal credit cards; confirming the results of previous research (Villares-Varela et al., 2017). This distrust of the banking sector, (perceived) discrimination or lack of access had led some to use community-level rotating credit systems, such as Entrepreneur 16 who explained the role of rotating credit systems in the community to support her business: I used pardner [rotating credit scheme] from Jamaica, that’s what buy my ticket and bring me to England. And, that is what helped me, when I came to this country, I tried to find someone that do ‘pardner’. So, I just go in pardner and save the ‘pardner’, and the Lord told me that I was going to have a business. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female, Jamaica, haidressing salon)

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Given these constraints, knowing how to budget is particularly important to run your business and your household finances in a foreign country. Yet the narratives of our participants demonstrated how this support moves beyond secular frameworks to encompass spiritual practices. Practising business prayers, demonstrates one way in which the spiritual domain and business practices are closely intertwined. Indeed, some churches offered these services specifically to business owners, as explained by Pastor 7 (London) and some of the entrepreneurs we interviewed: We support [businesses] by praying. We support with faith. Praying, you know, fasting and by faith everything can happen. I’ve got, you know, examples of this, so I am testament of this. For example, [congregant A] they run a building company, and this company wasn’t doing very well and he came to us saying he was going to close his company and we did a campaign of praying and fasting for about five months and his company is doing very well. (Pastor 7, London) I can just pick up the phone or, you know, you can send a message. There are prayer groups. So you know they are there, if you need practical support. (Entrepreneur 13, London, female, Jamaica, recruitment agency) In the very first instance, prayers were held in his [her Pastor] own house with his wife, when I was thinking of becoming self-employed. (Entrepreneur 3, female, Birmingham, Malawi, recruitment agency) It helps. If you are having a problem you put it up on the WhatsApp, and answer prayer, or pray for family, do you know what I mean? It’s good. Good support […] and church sisters I am in two prayer groups. (Entrepreneur 16, London, female Jamaica, hairdresser salon) He [Pastor] has been always praying for us, and at different points he will ask how things are going, how things are with the business, and he will let us know that he was praying for us. (Entrepreneur 1, female, Birmingham, Jamaica, nursery)

In addition to the practise of business prayers, the church premises were signalled as a useful space for congregants to mobilise social ties that could be maximised for their business activities. For example, church networks were useful for congregants to learn from each other, publicise their businesses amongst the wider community, and to have a supportive circle of

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friends who might use their services when needed, including the church and pastors. Examples included a catering business serving some of the church services at a reduced price, construction and plumbing skills that could be tested in the church: Some of them [customers] is through friends. They go to my church. And it’s pretty much like referrals. Yeah, that’s how I know them. (Entrepreneur 15, London, male, Brazil, cleaning company) [Most of our congregants business owners] are in construction, builders. This place [church premises] when we got it the cables were dangling everywhere, it was so bad. And people from church they just came, and somebody did the kitchen, somebody did that [pointing at a social space]. They did it from church. After that, many of them opened their own building trades. They have been encouraged to do that… I remember that guy that came and had no confidence in doing anything. We had him in the church house. He didn’t get a job […] He did this bathroom, we called friends to come and see, and after he did about ten other bathrooms [with his own business]. (Pastor 8, Hampshire) Just recently one of the sisters in church she cooked for our junior Pastor and he said to her ‘oh this food is really good, go into business’, so when she did go into business I was trying to get her customers so I called on my friends and I messaged them. I said ‘look, this lady in church is cooking, you guys should buy the food, the food is really nice’. I’ve tried the food so I’m trying to get clients and customers in for her as well, yeah. (Entrepreneur 14, London, female, Trinidad and Tobago, catering business and hairdressing salon)

Informal and formal mentoring also took place within church networks, whereby congregants would assist others or get formal coaching from pastors who may have business experience. Entrepreneurs explained how they had received help and also helped others with their business endeavours: The Pastor has his own business with his wife, so I ask him when I am lost about how to run things. He is like a coach. But he has always said to us that we are putting our own limits, that we can do what we think we can always with a good heart and thinking of making things better for ourselves, our families and the church. He helps me also by praying

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with me for the business. (Entrepreneur 25, Hampshire, male, Poland, construction company) The Pastor’s wife is in catering, and there’s another lady there [in the women’s group in church], Sister X, who is having a shop with her family, and we talk about the experiences we are having, and we look at ways in which we could open up to fit back into each other’s business and support each other to grow. (Entrepreneur 2, female, Birmingham, Malawi, recruitment agency) You should always try to help others; we are a tight community. So this lady in church was thinking of opening up a salon, and I helped her with the first steps, registration, all of that. She comes to me when she needs something, even now, that she has been running for some time. (Entrepreneur 12, Birmingham, female, Trinidad and Tobago, café)

Although these church networks might bring benefits for some of the entrepreneurs, pastors were aware of the perils of relying only on church networks to advertise their business activities, and advise congregants against these practices. Having businesses set up in sectors with cutthroat competition can cause challenges when it comes to advertising their services and goods amongst a close-knit community. In addition, churches do not want to have the responsibility of responding on behalf of some of these businesses if the services are not of sufficient quality. Pastor 6 (London) discussed some of these concerns: [The main challenge is] the competition that they have. That’s probably the biggest challenge because, you know, there’s so many people trying to make better of themselves but a lot of the ideas that they come with are common ones, aren’t they? … whilst we try to support people when they come to us with their business by saying, “Okay then, we’ll make a referral to the childminder,” if I know somebody I say, “Oh, so and so is a childminder, why don’t you take them to that child?” We don’t like to take the responsibility of those businesses relying on us to make them work […] And even in our local publication, every week, people used to want to put adverts in for what they do and business and so forth. We’ve actually had to curtail all that now because it was getting a little bit murky, so [we can’t vouch for everyone]. (Pastor 6, London)

We should also highlight that some of the churches in our study were not providing business-specific support for their congregants, nor were

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they particularly interested in doing so. This was predominantly owing to factors including the nature of the congregation and the location of the church. Thus, several pastors explained that in deprived areas of the city where church members have other basic needs, entrepreneurial aspirations were less common. As Pastor 3 (Birmingham) commented: Unfortunately, we don’t [offer support to set up a business] because we are living in an area, it’s a needy area. It’s an estate area, so people… I wouldn’t say people has much ambitions for, you know, big time business owners or looking for the future. If we had any other chance, we would probably [offer services]. (Pastor 3, Birmingham)

Other churches seemed less forthright in encouraging ‘entrepreneurial’ aspirations amongst their congregants and suggested to newcomers to first enter paid employment as a more cautious approach to life in the UK, as suggested by Pastor 2 (Birmingham): We have several people in the church who have really successful businesses. So that’s not an issue at all. We’ve got somebody with a very successful nursery business; we’ve got somebody who runs a heating elements, you know, an engineering business […] So, you know, it’s not that we are ‘anti’ but we have to be… but for migrants to just set up a business with all the different laws that there are in Britain. Our advice is’ why don’t you get a job and settle in for a while before you do that? (Pastor 2, Birmingham)

We have seen here that churches offer a wide range of support to enhance professional and entrepreneurial skills, the scope of which was conditioned by the resources they had, their congregants and their mission. An emphasis on self-improvement was aided by some of the necessary resources required to start up a business venture and grow extant activities. Entrepreneurs acknowledged in their narratives how churches have become a central social space to gather informal and formal mentoring and support, access to networks and customers. The benefits from these activities taking place in church lies in how spiritual support and Christian values are intertwined, with business prayers, we suggest, being exemplary of this blurring of secular and spiritual assistance.

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5

Conclusions

In this chapter we have discussed the business support services provided by churches and considered this against the backdrop of post-austerity Britain and the diminishing of business support provision for newcomers (Ram et al., 2013). Religious spaces seem to fill some of the lacuna of services left by central and local governments by providing a wide range of support for their congregants and the communities where they settle (and beyond, for those with a transnational remit), supporting previous findings on how faith-based institutions are meeting some of the social welfare needs of their congregants (Fesenmyer, 2016). Whilst the social role of churches has been previously researched, studying the ways in which churches provide professional and business support and the ways in which they go about it have not been sufficiently explored. Our research shows that the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in our study provide the basis for spiritual learning and growth, as well as a wide range of social services and activities for congregants, especially newcomers. Some churches have the capacity to offer comprehensive training in financial skills, as well as on themes such as how to get out of debt and poverty, and how to improve life and social skills. Professional training is also on offer, with some churches offering in-house or outsourced business-specific training. Besides the formal access to training and networks, Pentecostal teachings emphasise the importance of social agency, empowerment, the fulfilment of individual potential, individual success and professional development. These teachings seem to aid the required cultural legitimacy in the formation of neoliberal subjectivities, which emphasise a strong focus on freedom, individual responsibility, reflexivity and the portrayal of financial dependency as failure (Connell, 2010). These seem to encompass not only the core basis of Pentecostal teachings as part of the prosperity narrative, but also the potential need to showcase a sense of migrants’ economic contributions to society, against the backdrop of the hostile environment and the perpetual portrayal of immigrants as welfare dependants (Redclift & Rajina, 2019). Narratives about the role of the state and the impact of racialised discrimination were not frequent amongst the entrepreneurs interviewed, who instead tended to emphasise turning points, empowerment and individualised responsibility. Therefore, churches offered a wide range of support to fulfil the individual potential of congregants and supplement the diminished social

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protection from central and local government, which for many was inaccessible because of ineligibility, or they had experienced a reduction in social protection as a consequence of austerity measures. At the same time, however, our findings suggest that churches also counterbalance the effects of neoliberalism and the concurrent erosion of community and family lives, by facilitating a solid foundation for the congregants to access firm social networks, a sense of community, togetherness and family values, which are particularly crucial in a post-austerity context, and which are lost as part of the outcomes of neoliberal ideologies and policies. These networks are also mobilised to maximise the business activities in place, particularly in relation to mentoring, searching for suppliers and customers and showcasing their products and services. Finally, the narratives of Pastors and migrant entrepreneurs reveal the importance of Pentecostal values and beliefs in ways that stretch beyond the realm of the congregation, beyond the presence (or lack of presence) of the state. Thus, as we suggest earlier in this chapter, Pentecostalism— and the spiritual practices of congregants—is embodied, and lived and practised in ways that may transcend the social and material worlds to which we are referring. Thus whilst our analysis remains rooted in the social sciences, our findings demonstrate the need to give due weight to the fundamental importance of ‘the spiritual’ which, in myriad ways and often deeply entangled with the material—provides meaning and a sense of identity in people’s everyday lives (Dwyer, 2016).

References Connell, R. (2010). Understanding neoliberalism. In S. Braedley & M. Luxton (Eds.), Neoliberalism and everyday life (pp. 22–36). McGill-Queen’s PressMQUP. Dwyer, C. (2016). Why does religion matter for cultural geographers? Social and Cultural Geography, 17 (6), 758–762. Fesenmyer, L. (2016). African-initiated Pentecostal churches are on the rise in the UK—What role do they seek to play in wider society? Religion and the Public Sphere. Fesenmyer, L. (2019). Bringing the kingdom to the city: Mission as placemaking practice amongst Kenyan Pentecostals in London. City & Society, 31(1), 34– 54. Griera, M. (2013). New Christian geographies: Pentecostalism and ethnic minorities in Barcelona. In R. Blanes & J. Mapril (Eds.), Sites and politics

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of religious diversity in southern Europe: The best of all gods (pp. 225–249). Brill. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. USA: Oxford University Press. Henley, A. (2017). Does religion influence entrepreneurial behaviour? International Small Business Journal, 35(5), 597–617. Lindhardt, M. (2015). Men of God: Neo-Pentecostalism and masculinities in urban Tanzania. Religion, 45(2), 252–272. Neubert, M. J., Bradley, S. W., Ardianti, R., & Simiyu, E. M. (2017). The role of spiritual capital in innovatio and performance: Evidence from developing economies. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(4), 621–640. Ram, M., Jones, T., Edwards, P., Kiselinchev, A., Muchenje, L., & Woldesenbet, K. (2013). Engaging with super-diversity: New migrant businesses and the research—Policy nexus. International Small Business Journal, 31(4), 337–356. Ram, M., Jones, T., & Villares-Varela, M. (2017). Migrant entrepreneurship: Reflections on research and practice. International Small Business Journal, 35(1), 3–18. Ram, M., & Smallbone, D. (2003). Policies to support ethnic minority enterprise: The English experience. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 15(2), 151–166. Redclift, V. M., & Rajina, F. B. (2019). The hostile environment, Brexit, and ‘reactive-’ or ‘protective transnationalism’. Global Networks. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/glob.12275. Türken, S., Nafstad, H. E., Blakar, R. M., & Roen, K. (2016). Making sense of neoliberal subjectivity: A discourse analysis of media language on self-development. Globalizations, 13(1), 32–46. Villares-Varela, M., Ram, M., Jones, T., & Doldor, S. (2017). Facilitating new migrant business development: a collaborative approach. Birmingham: Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship and Ashley Community Housing.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusions

Abstract This concluding chapter summarises the key findings of our research and highlights how these contribute to and advance current understandings of: religion and migration, the workplace as a site for religiosity, the ways in which values shape enterprises for migrant business owners and the new centres of business support in superdiverse Britain. The chapter also outlines how our research provides insights for support strategies for both business support agencies, third sector organisations and charities working alongside migrant entrepreneurs, as well as for churches and faith-based organisations that provide services for their congregants and beneficiaries in the realm of work and enterprise. We also put forward some potential future avenues for research emerging from this book. Keywords Migration · Entrepreneurship · Religion · Policy · Research

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Main Findings and Contributions

In this book we have critically engaged with the role of ‘lived religion’—and more specifically, lived Pentecostalism—in the experiences

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and practices of migrant entrepreneurs against the backdrop of neoliberal Britain. Drawing on rich qualitative data from pastors of Pentecostal churches, business owners and other support workers, we have explored the ways in which beliefs and values shape the aspirations and practices of migrant entrepreneurs and the role of churches in supporting entrepreneurial activities amongst migrant communities. We have shown that, despite growing attention to the proliferation of Pentecostal churches and believers in cities in the global North, scholars have not sufficiently explored the ways in which the practices of congregants and churches have shaped the world of work and enterprise. By implementing a ‘lived’ religion approach, we have sought to traverse the boundaries between the material and spiritual through our focus on the lives and experiences of migrant entrepreneurs. We have also discussed how the field of migrant entrepreneurship, mainly dominated by business/management studies and sociology of migration and work, has addressed this form of labour market incorporation in relation to two differentiated streams: first, through supply-side accounts, which focus on the characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs, and second, through a focus on structural factors and the wider socioeconomic and political milieu. However, within neither perspective has religiosity been sufficiently explored, beyond being conceptualised as one of the other capitals or resources migrants bring. There has been very little attention paid to the social mechanisms and contexts within which religion operates and how religion is lived, experienced and practised in the lives of migrant entrepreneurs. In the preceding chapters, we have argued that the religiosity of migrant entrepreneurs needs to be conceptualised as deeply intertwined with the enabling and constraining factors at play within contexts of settlement. The narratives of business owners cited in this book have demonstrated how their religiosity and social lives are interconnected, particularly in relation to how faith shapes (and is shaped by) their migration trajectories, settlement in the UK, and occupational trajectories. In relation to the latter, business owners attributed an important role to their faith and church networks in their aspirations to set up a business, and in the initial stages of their entrepreneurial endeavours. Thus, overcoming exclusion in the labour market through becoming a business owner was enabled by their Pentecostal faith, where a focus on self-betterment as part of an individual project provided them with tools and objectives to gain the

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necessary push and professional skills to start their businesses. A ‘lived religion’ approach enabled us to explore religiosity through a lens that moves beyond binary conceptualisations, which distinguish between secular and sacred notions of culture and social life at the workplace. We thus argue that spiritual and economic practices are inseparable, and both are to be understood in relation to the contexts within which migrants settle. In this regard our findings suggest that these processes and practices in many ways demonstrate the consolidation of neoliberal subjectivities amongst migrant communities. The retrenchment of welfare state provision and support for small firms in post-austerity Britain has been accompanied by the emergence of churches as important spaces to fill part of the vacuum of services left by central and local governments. Indeed, as our study shows, these churches provide a wide range of support for their congregants and the wider communities in which they are located, in both social protection and business support arenas. Our research revealed how some of the churches had the capacity to offer comprehensive training in financial skills and business training whilst also cushioning other social protection needs. This demonstrates the intertwining of faith and business plans through the use of role models within the church and the reliance on business prayers. Moreover, the teachings received within the church emphasised the importance of social agency, empowerment and the fulfilment of individual potential mainly through professional development. We have argued that these teachings and practices enable the required cultural legitimacy in the formation of neoliberal subjectivities, which emphasise a focus on freedom, and individual reflexivity, which go hand in hand with prosperity narratives. Simultaneously, our research suggests that churches counterbalance the effects of neoliberalism—and the associated consequences such as the erosion of community and family lives—by facilitating a solid foundation for congregants to access firm social networks, a sense of community and family values, which are particularly crucial in a post-austerity context and which can foster a strong a sense of togetherness and belonging. Bringing into dialogue insights from migration, religion and entrepreneurship studies, this book contributes to and advances scholarly and policy-related debates surrounding: religion and migration; religion and migrant enterprise and geographies of religion—both in terms of the ways in which religion is lived and practised in people’s everyday lives as well as the wider socio-economic contexts within which religious

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actors are situated. It does so in three intersecting ways. Firstly, our findings advance existing work on religion and migration that usefully has drawn attention to the multiple and multifaceted ways in which religion shapes, and is shaped by, people’s migration trajectories at all stages of the migration process. Yet whilst existing research on migrant religion has demonstrated the role of religiosity in migrants’ migratory aspirations and experiences, far less attention has been paid to the relationships between these and migrants’ entrepreneurial aspirations and journeys, and to how both trajectories are inseparable from migrants’ faith and spirituality. Our research demonstrates that migrants’ entrepreneurial values, practices and decision-making are deeply influenced by their religious practices and beliefs both within and beyond the congregation. Thus, for example, our findings have shown how religious prophecies or ‘callings from God’ shaped people’s decisions to migrate or to open a business, whilst being a member of a church community (in this case a Pentecostal church) often provided support and advice in both migration and business-related endeavours. Second, and relatedly, our research contributes to a burgeoning body of work on the geographies of religion that has developed understandings of religion as ‘not static or place-bound’, but rather ‘dynamic and shifting network[s] of beliefs and practices’ (Sheringham, 2013). As discussed in Chapter 2, the ‘spatial turn’ in studies of religion (Knott, 2005) has drawn out the interconnected politics and poetics of space in relation to religious lives. In our research, we have explored the ways in which a church’s capacity to support migrants—in particular in relation to their business ventures—depends on a range of factors which relate to the politics of space both locally and transnationally, including material resources and type of tenancy, location in London, as well as the (entrepreneurial) aspirations of pastors and church leaders. Our research has also engaged with the poetics of religion, drawing out is ‘embodied’ and experiential dimensions and revealing that focusing merely on its material effects obscures the ‘agency and salience of the spiritual’ (Dwyer, 2016, pp. 758– 759). Indeed, advancing theories that unsettle widely held dichotomies between, for example, modernity and religion, sacred and profane, institutional and everyday (Bartolini, MacKian, & Pile, 2018), this book demonstrates how the widely overlooked practices and experiences of migrant entrepreneurs provide new perspectives on such relationships. Our findings show that migrants’ entrepreneurial endeavours are driven by far more than economic or commercial concerns and that work and

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business-related practices provide a vital lens through which to explore the spatial dynamics of religion and spirituality. The third theoretical contribution of this book lies in its emphasis on the religious and spiritual dimensions of migrant and ethnic entrepreneurship. As we have discussed in previous chapters, existing research on migrant entrepreneurship has tended to overlook the importance of religion and spirituality or, where it has been incorporated, it has been in relation to the cultural resources that migrants mobilise in new contexts with less understanding of the role of structural factors shaping the wider sociopolitical and economic context. Our research highlights the ways in which the landscape of neoliberalism in post-austerity Britain is closely related to migrants’ and their churches’ individual and collective religious practices and identities. Yet, as discussed above, it also shows how this relationship works in complex and contradictory ways. First, it works by enabling (or requiring) churches—and migrant entrepreneurs—to espouse the values of individualism, flexibility and self-betterment, which are also in line with Pentecostal values and teachings. Secondly, however, our findings demonstrate how the practices and support offered by these churches simultaneously counteract and cushion some of the more negative and exclusionary impacts of neoliberalism and (post) austerity. Moreover, moving beyond notions of ‘entrepreneurial religion’ which explore how certain religious movements—including Pentecostalism— flourish within neoliberal urban landscapes (Lanz & Oosterbaan, 2016), our research highlights the ways in which these wider structural factors intertwine with the lived, embodied and experiential dimensions of migrants’ religious and entrepreneurial practices.

2

Avenues for Future Research

This book makes important contributions to work on migration, religion and entrepreneurship drawing on research conducted amongst migrant congregants and pastors in Pentecostal churches in the UK—drawing on case studies in London, Birmingham and Hampshire. It also illuminates some important questions and potential areas of research in a wider context. In this section we briefly outline three ways in which the insights from this book could be taken further with implications for both academics and policy-makers.

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1. The gendered outcomes of Pentecostal teachings for migrant entrepreneurs. It is beyond the scope of this book to draw out in depth the gendered dimensions of Pentecostalism and migrant entrepreneurship, but we recognise that this is an essential area of research. Indeed, the field of migrant entrepreneurship has suffered from ‘gender-blindness’ as the underlying gendered patriarchal relations in the ethnic economy have not been researched in a systematic way. The domestication of men in church and the support for the acquisition of professional skills might help migrant women from these denominations to achieve a sense of self-realisation beyond paid employment. However, compliance with a traditional sense of family following Biblical teachings might also impact upon their trajectories by prioritising care activities over career. Thus, future research could explore some of the ways in which masculinities and femininities are consolidated and/or reconfigured in church contexts for migrant business owners. 2. A second area for future research could focus more specifically on alternative sources of business support given the limitations of publicly funded support and the increased role of churches and religious organisations. New studies could explore how migrants search for business support, how institutions compete/supplement each other, and what the effects on the access to help for religious and non-religious migrants are. 3. The role of religiosity in the entrepreneurial practices amongst members of other religious denominations. Our focus in this book has been specifically on Pentecostalism, taking a broad ‘lived religion’ approach to how it is practised and experienced. Future research might consider the role of religion and spirituality in the aspirations and business endeavours of migrant entrepreneurs from other religious denominations. Including other forms of religiosity would enhance our findings and expose commonalities and divergences in relation to both the nature of faith and the practices of migrant business owners.

3

Policy Recommendations

Our findings have also highlighted a number of issues that are useful for practitioners and policymakers. Below, we delineate a set of policy recommendations for: (i) churches and other FBOs which support

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migrant communities in their entrepreneurial endeavours, and (ii) business support organisations servicing migrant communities which, we argue, would benefit from engaging with religious organisations. 3.1

Recommendations for Business Support Providers

– Reaching out to churches in local communities to recruit beneficiaries. Our data shows that migrant entrepreneurs are generally disconnected from mainstream business support agencies, and churches offer a diverse range of potential entrepreneurs. If business support providers were willing to increase the diversity of their beneficiaries, they would find that churches in urban spaces include a generally diverse population of both new and established migrants who would benefit highly from support services. – Broadening existing support services. Although some churches offer in-house training, there is scope to improve these services through partnership with business support providers. Key areas of support would include: facilitating the acquisition of specific skills related to the development of business plans, legal requirements, access to finance, skill building and mentoring. The longstanding experience and professional expertise of business support providers would aid migrant entrepreneurs to combine church support—which complies with their religious values—with mainstream support. – Extending networks for consolidation and growth. Congregants who have set up businesses rely on immediate church networks for advice and access to customers and suppliers, which are of vital importance in the early stages of the development of small firms. Entrepreneurs who wish to consolidate their endeavours and grow would benefit from access to larger networks beyond their churches, sector-specific mentoring schemes and access to finance. Business support agencies could facilitate these bridges between available church services and mainstream services. 3.2

Recommendations for Churches and FBOs

– Understanding the career aspirations of congregants. Although setting up a business might appear as the most attractive option

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for some congregants, their skills and level of education could be matched with satisfactory and successful occupations in the labour market. The lack of recognition of skills and experiences of racialised discrimination tend to situate migrants in a position of vulnerability in the labour market that makes opening a firm a suitable and appealing option. However, a more thorough understanding of the biographies of congregants, their skills and professional aspirations could lead to a satisfactory trajectory in paid employment. – Fostering community values and social networks within and beyond church. For those congregants with strong entrepreneurial aspirations, churches emerge as the central hub for socialisation, networking and mentoring. This aspect seems to hold the highest potential for churches to enable the consolidation of networks that cushion the risks of opening up a business and to help the growth of their entrepreneurial endeavours. Reaching out to other churches and networks beyond the congregation would facilitate the connection of congregants with other social actors and institutions that can scale up their projects and facilitate access to a diverse range of resources and finance. – Connecting with existing support provision and embedding this in the church’s remit. Specific business support for migrant entrepreneurs is provided by a different range of social enterprises, charities, the banking sector and other key actors that churches could tap into. These institutions have years of experience in the provision of business support that could aid, train and support aspiring entrepreneurs and business consultants. – Establishing formal mentoring networks within the church. Informal mentoring takes place in church amongst congregants and also between congregants and pastors. Existing data shows that this plays a key role in terms of fostering migrants’ entrepreneurial aspirations and providing them with informal advice, support and encouragement in times of need. These mentoring services could be formalised in church structures, by upskilling mentors with specific training and situating this provision within the wide range of services churches offer. Our aim in this book has been to explore the intersections between Pentecostalism, migration and entrepreneurship within the context of neoliberal

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policies and post-austerity. Through this endeavour, we have drawn out the wider intersections between religious faith and the sociopolitical and economic contexts within which it is lived and experienced, as well as ways in which migrants’ religious and spiritual practices can allow them to encounter a reality that transcends the social and material realms of experience. This book thus highlights that religion must not be seen as a side factor—an ‘add-on’ or another ‘resource’—but rather needs to be conceptualised as integral to migrants’ everyday lives, including their work and entrepreneurial endeavours. Moreover, it shows that the experiences and effects of religion encompass far more than individual believers or churches and have much wider implications in terms of how we understand the social, cultural, political, economic and natural worlds within which we all live.

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Index

B Business prayers, 14, 88, 91, 97 Business support, 3–5, 11, 12, 17, 43, 71, 72, 86, 87, 92, 97, 100–102

C Charismatic Christianity, 6, 38, 44 Church, 3–7, 9–15, 17, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 42, 44–47, 55–57, 61–63, 66–69, 71–74, 76–92, 96–102 Cities, 4, 6–8, 13, 26–32, 40, 56, 63, 91, 96 Cultural resources, 42, 45, 54, 99

E Entrepreneurialism, 32 Entrepreneurship, 3, 4, 9, 17, 25, 31, 32, 38–46, 54, 57, 60, 61, 65, 68, 72–74, 96, 99, 100, 102 Everyday life, 4, 29, 30, 38

Exclusion, 5, 38, 45–47, 58, 59, 68, 96

F Faith, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17, 24, 25, 32, 42, 45, 46, 54–56, 59, 64–66, 68, 73, 79, 88, 96–98, 100, 103 Financial skills, 14, 81, 85, 92, 97

L Lived religion, 4, 11, 17, 24, 29, 30, 32, 47, 95–97, 100

M Migration, 1, 2, 7, 12, 24, 28, 44, 55, 56, 96–99, 102 Migration and religion, 3, 4, 12, 17, 24, 25, 37, 68, 97 Mixed embeddedness, 40, 43

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Villares-Varela and O. Sheringham, Religion, Migration and Business, Religion and Global Migrations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58305-7

117

118

INDEX

N Neoliberalism, 4, 10, 17, 24, 27, 28, 93, 97, 99

P Pastors, 6, 11–13, 15, 72–78, 80–85, 88–91, 93, 96, 98, 99, 102 Pentecostalism, 4, 6–10, 24, 26, 28, 31, 38, 44–46, 74, 95, 99, 100, 102 Postsecular, 5, 6, 27 Prayer, 55, 56, 65, 66, 78, 84, 88 Precarity, 38, 39, 68 Prophecies, 61–63, 98

R Religion, 3–7, 9, 11, 23–32, 38, 39, 41–44, 46, 54, 55, 64, 66, 73, 78, 96, 98–100, 103 Religiosity, 6, 7, 9, 12, 26, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 54, 67, 69, 96–98, 100 Revelations, 61–63, 68

S Secularisation, 5, 25–27 Secularism, 6, 25, 31, 47, 54, 91, 97

Self-betterment, 10, 47, 60, 68, 74, 80, 96, 99 Services, 4, 5, 10, 12–15, 25, 27, 39, 45, 56, 58, 72, 73, 77–80, 83, 87–90, 92, 93, 97, 101, 102 Skills, 2, 3, 38, 41, 58, 60–62, 64, 68, 72, 76, 77, 80–83, 85, 91, 102 Spiritual capital, 47 Spirituality, 4, 6, 9, 23, 24, 26, 29–32, 41, 43, 44, 47, 54, 57, 98–100 Structural factors, 3, 5, 9, 39–42, 54, 96, 99 T Testimony, 61, 83 V Visions, 29, 56, 63, 82 W Welfare, 2, 10, 27, 78, 92 Welfare state, 97 Work, 3–6, 9, 11, 12, 23–26, 29–32, 37, 38, 41, 44, 45, 47, 54, 59, 61, 66, 68, 72, 73, 75, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 90, 96, 98, 99, 103 Worship, 26, 79