Market-based resistance: how migrant social enterprises navigate hostile institutional environments

Abstract

This paper examines how migrant-led social enterprises (MSEs) use market mechanisms as tools of everyday resistance in increasingly hostile environments. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal research conducted between 2015 and 2022, we assess how Pinewood, a UK-based migrant social enterprise, navigated profound institutional changes through innovative organisational practices. Our theoretical approach synthesises “mixed embeddedness theory” with “everyday resistance” scholarship to reveal how MSEs maintain legitimacy and pursue social transformation. The analysis identifies three key mechanisms through which market-based resistance operates: strategic professionalisation, innovative service development, and the creation of alternative economic networks. These mechanisms emerged through organisational responses to critical incidents, including the 2015 refugee crisis, Brexit-related turbulence, and COVID-19 adaptations. The study advances understanding of how migrant-led organisations engage in everyday resistance through market mechanisms, contributing to debates on migrant enterprise, institutional navigation, and social change within hostile migration regimes.