This article contributes to critical discussions questioning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship by examining the experiences of men and women entrepreneurs who have recently become employers in South Wales, the United Kingdom. Our research uses a co-creative visual method based in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore transitions from entrepreneur to entrepreneur-employer in everyday contexts. Findings demonstrate how initial emancipatory experiences become increasingly bounded when becoming an entrepreneur-employer. This exposes a Catch-22 of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation as a symptom of neoliberal entrepreneurial discourses that constrain what entrepreneurs are encouraged to do: grow. We find a plurality of particular emancipations, but conclude that within a developed context entrepreneurship, and more specifically, becoming an entrepreneur-employer is a relational step through which perceived constraints become more readily experienced and emancipation never fully realised.

本文通过考察最近在英国南威尔士州成为雇主的男女企业家的经历，对质疑企业家精神的解放潜力的批判性讨论作出了贡献。我们的研究使用基于解释现象学分析（IPA）的共创视觉方法来探索在日常情况下从企业家到企业家-雇主的过渡。研究结果表明，当成为企业家-雇主时，最初的解放经历如何变得越来越有限。这暴露了作为自由解放的企业家的Catch-22，这是新自由主义企业家话语的症状，它限制了鼓励企业家做什么：成长。我们发现了许多特定的解放，但是得出结论，在发达的背景下，企业家精神，