Mexican Migrant Entrepreneurial Readiness in Rural Areas of the United States

Abstract

A significant literature on minority entrepreneurship exists, but comparable literature on Latin American migrants and their role in local community enterprise development is very sparse. This paper is an extension of earlier work focusing on characteristics of recent Mexican migrants to rural and urban areas. Measures of entrepreneurial readiness are examined along with measures of human, social and migration capital. Migrants with previous experience in owning a business provide rural communities with an unrealized pool of talent and experience. This research demonstrates that business owners who migrate are likely to be married, have non-agricultural work experience and other household assets in the form of land and/or properties, and are more likely to be legally documented arrivals. Additionally, these migrants express additional risk-taking behavior, because they are more likely—along with their siblings—to be family "pioneers" in migrating, but still attached to migration networks through their community or other close, non-parental relatives. These characteristics illustrate entrepreneurial capacity within these migrant communities in rural areas. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, rural communities, migration, general estimating equations