The discussion on new forms of non-privileged self-employment of women and minorities is usually divided into separate discourses on women’s opportunities on the one hand and ethnic business on the other. The focus in the discussion about the special resources of migrant entrepreneurship has been above all on the assumed collective traditions of ethnic business and not on the individual emancipative resources of the self-employed. This book has brought the two discourses together. While women and migrants are most vulnerable to social exclusion on the labour market, at the same time they are subjects of unrecognized resources for self-employment that have to be taken into account under the special conditions of social citizenship policies in the European Union.

Dr. Ursula Apitzsch is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main.
Dr. Maria Kontos is researcher at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research.