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Towards Economic Inclusion in the Western Balkans pp 321–344Cite as

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Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Croatia

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Part of the New Perspectives on South-East Europe book series (NPSE)

Abstract

This chapter explores the resilience of immigrant entrepreneurs in Croatia during the COVID-19 pandemic that coincided with some natural disasters and changes in immigration legislation. It identifies the formal and informal barriers facing immigrant entrepreneurs in Croatia, their understandings of and attitudes towards resilience, and the activities through which they practise resilience. This topic is globally relevant for several reasons. First, the entrepreneurial world is likely to experience an extended period of quite frequent adverse events, rather than an extended ‘new normal’. Second, global migration is on the rise, as is immigrant entrepreneurship. Third, the Western Balkan region is considered a future depopulation ‘hot spot’, and immigrant entrepreneurs may fill some gaps in the business environment. Finally, the chapter contributes to research on entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship by offering an integrated approach to understanding entrepreneurial resilience in general.

Keywords

  • Immigrant entrepreneurship
  • Resilience
  • COVID-19
  • Croatia
  • Migration
  • Natural disasters

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-06112-7_14
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Notes

  1. 1.

    Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8t2AA-6UXc.

  2. 2.

    These factors have also been recognised by Ayala and Manzano (2014). Moreover, they even fulfil a longer list of resilience factors compiled by Portuguez Castro and Gómez Zermeño (2020) and reveal the understanding of resilience as structured by Conz et al. (2020).

  3. 3.

    That was also recognised by Šimić Banović et al. (2022) for the period before COVID-19 pandemic, and for Portuguese immigrant entrepreneurs by Szczygiel et al. (2020).

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is a part of the Project ‘Institutional support to the immigrant entrepreneurs in Croatia: Socioeconomic and legal aspects’ funded by the University of Zagreb (short-term research grants obtained in 2020 and 2021). The authors would like to thank the respondents for their participation in our research and student assistants Karla Anić, Matea Nikolić and Doroteja Horvat for their research help.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Department of Economics, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Ružica Šimić Banović

  2. Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism, University of Split, Split, Croatia

    Vlatka Škokić

  3. Faculty of Economics & Business, Department of Economic Theory, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Valentina Vučković

  4. Economic Research Division, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia

    Martina Basarac Sertić

  5. Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Macroeconomics and Economic Development, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Martina Basarac Sertić

Authors
  1. Ružica Šimić Banović
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  2. Vlatka Škokić
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  3. Valentina Vučković
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  4. Martina Basarac Sertić
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ružica Šimić Banović .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. European Institute, London School of Economics & Political Science, London, UK

    William Bartlett

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Milica Uvalić

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Šimić Banović, R., Škokić, V., Vučković, V., Basarac Sertić, M. (2022). Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Croatia. In: Bartlett, W., Uvalić, M. (eds) Towards Economic Inclusion in the Western Balkans. New Perspectives on South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06112-7_14

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