Embedded yet excluded: Relational outsidership and strategic readjustment among underdog immigrant entrepreneurs

How do migrant entrepreneurs navigate double outsidership, − simultaneous exclusion from host-country institutions and their own ethnic migrant networks? While ethnic migrant communities are commonly viewed as protective, internal relational dynamics can reproduce exclusion even within co-ethnic networks. Drawing on a qualitative multiple-case study of African migrant entrepreneurs, we theorize within the Finnish host-country context to show that migrant embeddedness is conditional, shaped by informal hierarchies and calculative trust that restrict access to strategic resources. In response, migrant entrepreneurs enact strategic readjustment—a proactive reconfiguration of cultural positioning and diversification of network ties beyond the diaspora. We advance international management theory by reconceptualizing outsidership as a relational, continuously reproduced condition, shifting attention from mere absence within networks to the dynamics of power, recognition, and legitimacy within embedded networks. Our findings illuminate how migrant entrepreneurs navigate complex social and institutional landscapes in advanced economies.