Entrepreneurship of U.S. Women in Southern Europe: An Example of Migrant Leadership Irina Isaakyan (EUI-Florence)

Questions: Can migrants in general and women-migrants in particular be more than diasporic leaders? Can they become multi-vector leaders on a wider community level, even in spite of the fact that the majority of them enter their countries of destination as “migrant wives”? And under what conditions can it happen?

Definitions: Examples: English Counselling Entrepreneurship – ‘a process of starting and running one’s own business’ (Waldinger et al. 1990: 17) Ethnic Niche – ‘overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in a particular job’ (Model 1993: 164).

Smart Entrepreneurship: Expansion  I own an English-language school, in which we privately teach English for local Greeks. We have recently introduced French instruction because of the crisis demand. Many Greek people who want to migrate to French Canada or just to feel more linguistically confident in any part of Canada want to learn French. I am the school principal and one of the English teachers. My team includes other US national women and also three francophone colleagues – one from France and two from Quebec.  I am not only teaching English in my class, I am also teaching my students and their parents basics of civic culture: how to be nice, how to love animals and people. I also do a lot of personal consultancy as I have a degree in clinical psychology. They come to talk to me about their problems – both kids and their parents. I have a couple of other colleagues with counselling degrees. We often work as a therapeutic group.

Internalized Leadership  We do something meaningful here. Many Greeks have lost their jobs and started to drink, and US-trained psychologists like me offer these poor people highly qualified help almost for free. The payment for my services is very symbolic, which allows me to have many patients.  My economic situation is much better than what I would have in the United States. I teach English in my own private school. People are interested in learning English from a native speaker because it is an opportunity to prepare for emigration. The euro-crisis has made them dependent on my instruction.

Summing-Up Leadership  Multi-faceted  Contextual / Dynamic  Interaction between Immigration Law & “second” economy !!!