This article explores the underexamined role of personal enablers in migrant entrepreneurship. Drawing on timeline interviews, the study relays the importance of entrepreneur enablers in migrants’ business endeavours over time, ranging from coincidental and ephemeral encounters to the development of supportive communities. In the absence of accessible business support structures, the role of chance in migrants’ entrepreneurial trajectories increases, leading migrants to become self-employed, often against the grain of their own expectations or those of their inner circle of contacts or the wider society. The timeline interviews are a helpful method to capture how particular people, in conjunction with broader societal and smaller personal developments, influence entrepreneurial choices and progression over time. The study adds a dynamic and agentic perspective to migrant entrepreneurship literature underlining the importance of personal enablers to support migrant entrepreneurial developments over time.

本文探讨了个人推动者在移民创业中的作用未被充分审视。该研究利用时间线访谈，传达了企业家推动者在移民商业活动中的重要性，从偶然和短暂的相遇到支持社区的发展。在缺乏可用的商业支持结构的情况下，机会在移民创业轨迹中的作用增加，导致移民成为个体经营者，这往往与他们自己或他们的内部交往圈或更广泛社会的期望背道而驰。时间线访谈是一种有用的方法，可以捕捉特定的人如何与更广泛的社会和更小的个人发展相结合，随着时间的推移影响创业选择和进步。