Migrant entrepreneurs

Photo c/o Myla Bides

There are people who come to New Zealand to specifically engage in business.  They are already established entrepreneurs in their home countries but because of certain circumstances they opt to move to another country.  However, although they've travelled thousands of kilometres and have uprooted themselves and their families, they still would like to continue to be engaged in business instead of working as an employee.  Some of them come here on an entrepreneur's visa while the others go for gainful employment and then after a couple of years and using the money they've brought with them plus the amount they have saved, start their own businesses.

The normal entry-level businesses they engage in are the various food takeaways, dairy stores, bakeries, laundromats, fruit and vegetable shops, food retail shops, petrol stations, and many more.  Now this is not a scientific analysis but I've noticed a sort of pattern with the various businesses and their ethnicity: takeaways (Chinese, normally, although I've seen Indians and other ethnic groups engaged in this business), dairy stores and laundromats (Indian), bakeries (Cambodian), fruit and vegetable shops (Indian, Chinese), petrol stations (Indians), food retail shops (Filipino, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai).

Inside the shopping malls, I've seen massage parlours operated by Chinese, cleaning and lawn mowing (Polynesian, Indian), taxicab operations (Somalian).  The founders of these businesses have travelled thousands of kilometres and endured heaps of challenges, stress and pressure just to reach NZ and start their entrepreneurial journey.  This then is the mission of this blog to highlight the joys and the sorrows of these entrepreneurs.