Ethnicity and enterprise: A comparison of Muslim and non‐Muslim owned Asian businesses in Britain

This article examines the development of Muslim businesses in the UK with particular reference to the northern city of Bradford in the context of Asian business development as a whole. Asian businesses in Bradford have grown rapidly since they first emerged in the late 1950s so that there were 1800 by 1990. In Britain as a whole, there are an estimated 61,000 Asian owned businesses. The article shows that Muslim owned businesses are more likely to concentrate on the ethnic market. They are smaller than the average small business in terms of turnover and employment and concentrated in areas of low profitability. Muslims are also more likely to enter into business because of unemployment than for entrepreneurial reasons and are under‐represented compared to their proportion of the Asian population. This is due to their relatively lower socio‐economic status which in part is determined by cultural factors, namely the low participation of Muslim women in the labour force. Hence, contrary to the prevailing view in the literature, culture has an indirect rather than a direct impact on entrepreneurship, and socio‐econpmic status is a better predictor of entry into business. Similarly it is shown that it is too simplistic to describe ethnic entrepreneurial strategies as either ethnic enclave or middleman minority.