Social enterprise and ethnic minorities: exploring the consequences of the evolving British policy agenda

Recent years have seen successive British governments move social enterprise centre stage as a policy construct. Yet there remains little understanding as to whether this policy direction provides new opportunities for engagement for migrant and ethnic minority groups or acts to reinforce past processes of exclusion. We address this issue by examining the nature and extent of migrant and ethnic minorities’ involvement in social enterprise activity and the resulting implications for policy and practice. Through original empirical analysis of ethnic minority third sector organisations in East London, results are presented in relation to the challenges of defining and measuring this arena of activity, the nature of the current transition towards social enterprise forms, and the extent of engagement in the policy process. We conclude that the narrow arena of action for social enterprise activity as promoted within the current policy discourse provides little scope for engagement for the majority of small-scale ethnic minority organisations.