Abstract

How often do we have or take the opportunity to ask people who have immigrated to Canada about their journeys? What could we learn from their stories? Canada is a country built upon immigration. Today, Canada is one of a handful of countries that actively recruits and promotes immigration as a means to sustain population growth and respond to internal labour force needs. Since 1967, immigration policy changes widened the range of sending countries to include countries located in the Global South and increasingly immigrants are well-educated and highly skilled people from urban settings. This study took place in the third largest immigration destination in Canada, Montreal. It focussed on the experiences of a group of fourteen women. Sooner or later, all of these women turned to entrepreneurship to generate economic activities. By contextualizing their experiences, I hoped to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges they faced in accessing economic opportunities in Canada. Generally, past research has focussed upon male dominant models and often overlooked the experiences of immigrant women entrepreneurs. It is important to focus on women in particular to better understand the gendered implications of entrepreneurship and to offer different experiences that work against stereotyping all entrepreneurs into one homogenous category. By studying the specific experiences of these fourteen women, and by using a qualitative approach, I hope to illustrate the importance of textualized research in building a better understanding about immigrant women entrepreneurs in Canada.