Between Institutional Exclusion and Entrepreneurial Agency: Cameroonian Women in Cape Town’s Informal Economy

Abstract

The informal entrepreneurship of migrant women is commonly explained either as a response to exclusion from formal employment or as evidence of entrepreneurial agency. This article argues that these explanations are better understood as interconnected. Drawing on a sequential mixed-methods study of 104 Cameroonian women operating informal businesses in selected areas of the Cape Metropole, South Africa, supplemented by two focus groups and five key-informant interviews, the study examines how structural constraints interact with migrant-generated resources. The findings show that restricted access to suitable formal employment was a major condition of entry (approximately 90% of respondents cited hardship or difficulty finding employment), but did not by itself explain subsequent entrepreneurial action. Women mobilised personal savings, family and friendship networks, communal savings through Njangi, prior skills, business information and customer relationships to establish and sustain their businesses. These resources were particularly consequential where formal finance, permitting and some forms of business information were difficult to access (67.9% strongly agreed, and a further 30.2% agreed, that permits were difficult to obtain). Migrant networks therefore did more than provide social support: in particular domains they performed economic and informational functions that participants found difficult to obtain through formal channels. The article develops the concept of constrained entrepreneurial agency to explain this relationship. Entrepreneurial action was neither unconstrained nor merely passive, but involved situated choices made within continuing limitations. The article contributes to migrant-entrepreneurship scholarship by showing that necessity and agency are analytically connected rather than rival explanations, and by specifying the functions that migrant networks perform where formal channels are difficult to access.