Blood, buddies, banks: Potential funding sources for starting a new business as perceived by Maghrebi, Filipino and Chinese immigrants in Italy

After an overview of the role of entrepreneurship in migratory projects and the connected modes of financing business activities, especially among Maghrebi, Filipino and Chinese immigrants, the chapter examines data drawn from a study of 489 individuals belonging to those ethnic groups and Italian natives in the province of Bologna, Italy. Via a “vignette”, respondents are invited, firstly, to imagine a long-unemployed young couple (sharing the respondents’ migratory background) deciding to set up a new enterprise, even if they lack the capital to do so; secondly, to suggest spontaneously to whom the couple should turn for economic support and to provide reasons for their choices, in order to capture the salience of family members (blood), friendship and community networks (buddies), credit institutions (banks), and other funding sources and coping strategies. Statistical analysis of post-coded reactions and scrutiny of response transcripts reveal sharply defined differences in the outlooks of the four groups, which arguably reflect cultural specificities, tempered by enlightening intra-group differentiation, conflict and ambiguity. Moreover, the non-directive vignette technique helps identify unanticipated solutions and rationales.