ENTREPRENEURSHIP & REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 18, MARCH (2006), 109–131 In-migrant entrepreneurship in rural England: beyond local embeddedness CHRISTOS KALANTARIDISy and ZOGRAFIA BIKAz yTeesside Business School, University of Teesside, Middlesborough TS1 3BA, UK; e-mail: c.kalantaridis@tees.ac.uk zThe Management School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK; e-mail: zografia.bika@ed.ac.uk It is now broadly accepted in the literature that in-migrants make a disproportionately positive contribution in the creation of new ventures in rural England. However, to date, there have been precious few advances in our understanding of either the characteristics or, more importantly, the degree of embeddedness of in-migrant entrepreneurs. This paper aspires to address this gap in the literature, drawing upon the findings of an extensive fieldwork investigation in rural Cumbria. 1 It is argued that the attributes of entrepreneurial individuals who are not born locally enable them to follow distinct routes to starting and/or running a business, working in contexts that allow them to break away from the confines of rurality. They appear to rely less upon the local setting for the supply of materials and capital, as well as a market for their products/services and to have closer relationships with national and international sources of information than their locally-born counterparts. Thus, in-migrant entrepreneurs emerge as a key instrument in enhancing the integration of rural economies in the national and global markets as well as diminishing the strength of local ties. Weak local ties also mean that growing in-migrant entrepreneurship may be linked with the demise of rural localities as integrated entities. Keywords: in-migrant entrepreneurship; embeddedness; rural development. 1. Introduction Since the 1950s the population of England’s rural areas has grown at the expense of large agglomerations, 2 as a result of counter-urbanization (Lewis 1998). The net gain in the movement of people away from urban towards rural areas is the outcome of a number of factors at work: including the relocation of manufacturing employment to the countryside, retirement migration and increased commuting (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA] 2002). The new arrivals are relatively affluent individuals equipped with distinct attributes and networks of contacts. They are able to acquire easily land and housing pushing prices up, and forcing locally-born people to move out of their settlements of origin towards local towns or even further afield (Shucksmith 2001). As a consequence, in-migration lies at the heart of a new divide within rural localities across England: a ‘two tier’ society, made up of old and new inhabitants (Philips 1993, Shucksmith 2001). At the same time, however, in-migrants make a disproportionately positive contribution in the creation of new ventures in rural areas 3 (Keeble 1992). Keeble et al. (1992), drawing upon the findings of a large-scale survey, show that nearly twice as many entrepreneurs in remote and accessible areas are not born locally compared to Entrepreneurship and Regional Development ISSN 0898–5626 print/ISSN 1464–5114 online ß 2006 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/08985620500510174