“I Decided to Go Solo”: Exploring Self-Employment by Migrant Women

Abstract Book of the 12th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences

Year: 2026

[PDF]

"I Decided to Go Solo”: Exploring Self-Employment by Migrant Women

Carolina Gallo Garcia

ABSTRACT:

Contemporary scholarship has documented the challenges migrants – particularly women – encounter in integrating into the Canadian labour market. Persistent barriers to access and longterm participation in paid employment have led many to pursue alternative pathways, notably
entrepreneurship and self-employment. Drawing on a qualitative empirical study with 60 selfemployed migrant women from diverse national backgrounds living in Québec, Canada, this paper sheds light on the key factors shaping their transitions into self-employment.
The analysis highlights systemic constraints such as the non-recognition of credentials and professional experience, language barriers, as well as gendered, ethnic and racial discrimination.
At the same time, it foregrounds participants’ sense of purpose and agency in shaping their entrepreneurial trajectories. Building on theories of governmentality and self-making, the paper examines how contemporary entrepreneurial discourses frame self-employment as a pathway to greater “freedom” – whether from rigid employment structures and discriminatory labour markets, or through promises of flexibility and the possibility of “doing on their on”.
I argue that entrepreneurship emerges simultaneously as a normative expectation and a pragmatic strategy through which migrant women navigate economic insecurity, seek personal fulfillment, and construct more acceptable lives from their own perspectives. In doing so, the paper
contributes to feminist and migration scholarship by critically interrogating the ambivalent promises of autonomy embedded in self-employment narratives.

Keywords: Migration; Women; Self-Employment; Self-Discipline; Work