Migrant entrepreneurs are individuals migrating from home to host regions in which they live and engage in entrepreneurial activities. They are simultaneously embedded in existing structures of both home and host regions that constrain and enable decision-making and operation. Prior research on migrant entrepreneurship investigates the structural impacts of home and host regions on entrepreneurs, using “distance” to capture the extent to which structures vary across regions.

This paper incorporates the mixed embeddedness perspective to explore mechanisms through which migration direction shapes migrant entrepreneurs. By integrating macro-, meso-, and micro-forces, the mixed embeddedness perspective presents an applicable approach to examine the role of structures in framing the actions of migrant entrepreneurs. Migration direction affects entrepreneurs’ embeddedness in home and host regions with re-activation of existing networks, generation of novel connections, and thus construction of entrepreneurs’ identity and startups’ legitimacy in host regions, which then develops corresponding advantages and disadvantages for those ventures. Additionally, we regard macro-economy conditions as essential structural forces affecting migrant entrepreneurship that complements migration direction.

This paper has the following theoretical implications: First, by developing a distinct classification of migrant entrepreneurs based on migration direction, it clarifies the underlying similarities and differences among different categories of migrant entrepreneurship. This typology offers a novel theoretical framework to distinguish different types of migrant entrepreneurs and presents a structural explanation that links exploitable market opportunities to migration direction. Second, by differentiating advantage/liability of origin and advantage/liability of foreignness in migrant entrepreneurship, it also expands the application of the advantage/liability of origin in entrepreneurship research. Prior research on migrant entrepreneurship pays less attention to migration direction and generally confuses advantage/liability of origin with advantage/liability of foreignness, while this paper attempts to remedy the gap by distinguishing different sources of such advantage/liability with economic discrepancy and migration direction. Third, by highlighting the role of migration direction in migrant entrepreneurship, it also adds to the discussion of structural distance across regions. This paper introduces the mixed embeddedness perspective that relates migration direction to macro-structures and elaborates directionality by specifying focal regions, thereby paving a novel way for the further investigation of direction’s role in shaping the function of structural distance.

Future directions of this paper are as follows: There is ample room to unpack migration direction as well as joint impacts of migration direction and other drivers of migrant entrepreneurship such as the magnitude of distance. Little attention has been paid to regarding opportunities brought by the advantages of origin for migrant entrepreneurs. Moreover, since the framework of this paper mostly concerns the structural impacts on migrant entrepreneurship, further entrepreneur-based investigation concerning the embedded agency of those entrepreneurs enables promising theoretical contribution.