This blog has evolved from a book of the same name. Rurality is interpreted in many ways depending on individual encounters with rural space and this leads to different ways of conceiving the social and economic challenges that rural communities face. The blog represents the personal views of Professor Gary Bosworth, who is a Visiting Professor of Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln International Business School and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northumbria University.
//A great event at Queen’s University, Belfast, last week. After 2 days of transatlantic rural research with the TARRN network , and a tour of Stormont, the new Migration, Inter-Connectivity and Regional Development (MICaRD) network was launched with a discussion about the challenges and opportunities associated with migrant worker in rural labour markets. A note of the meeting will appear in Regions shortly but here is a sneak preview: Regions article may16
//Thanks for Ignazio Cabras, David Higgins and David Preece for all your efforts in editing this volume. Thanks also to Claire Markham for doing most of the work on our chapter, “The village pub in the 21st Century: Embeddededness and the local”, accessible from our University repository: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/.
In our chapter, we argue that “the local” as village pubs have traditionally been called, is increasingly having to serve a wider target audience and offer more diverse products and services to remain commercially viable. Throughout the book, there is clear evidence that the brewing industry globally is seeing both a groundswell of new entrants and microbreweries at one end whilst the big firms are consolidating into fewer increasingly dominant global brands. From the other chapters, it is interesting to see that the problem of “tied” pubs is not unique to the UK and also to learn that the fermentation of alcoholic drinks dates back some 7-9,000 years in China and perhaps a similar date in Mesopotamia. Beer brewing itself was also established in Egypt from about 5000BC.
The book can be purchased from the publishers, Palgrave: http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137466174#
You might also be interested in another paper that I have written with Victoria Ellis on Microbreweries in the UK which appears in the British Food Journal: Microbreweries paper for BFJ FINAL
//Following the publication of our Rural Studies paper on the unequal coverage and take-up of broadband internet in rural areas, David Cameron introduces a new policy pledging that everyone will have a legal right to request a 10Mbps broadband speed by 2020: http://www.rsnonline.org.uk/services/david-cameron-pledges-faster-broadband
The paper, written with Koen Salemink and Dirk Stijker from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands can be downloaded from our repository: Rural Development in the Digital Age
//In the spirit of collaboration, Bob Newbery and I are pleased to share our conference paper on home-based businesses via the link below. We have mapped 2011 Census data to show the rural urban spread of home-based businesses in England as the basis for ongoing research to better understand their distinct characteristics and challenges.
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On 14th January Lincoln Business School hosted a small workshop to discuss the experiences of people that have moved into Lincolnshire from other parts of Europe. We were privileged to here from two Polish entrepreneurs (pictured above) who have established businesses in Lincolnshire; Iwona Lebiedowicz has launched her own recruitment agency and translation service while Paulina Babuchowska was part of a partnership that ran a Polish shop in Lincoln. Both told us their personal stories and it was evident that these were highly talented and motivated individuals. As well as pursuing their own careers, with a strong emphasis on personal training and education, they also explained how this helped them to integrate into the wider business community as well as to provide important services to others in the region.
Professor Ian Barnes set out some earlier research into the experiences of earlier migrants in Lincolnshire, highlighting opportunities to update and refine our understanding now that EU borders have been open for 10 years. His research noted that the UK offered easier opportunities for starting a business and that this, along with informal network support within migrant communities, had seen a significant level of entrepreneurship developing.
We were also joined by Carey Doyle, a PhD researcher from Queen’s University in Belfast. Her study is exploring the relationships between space, place and identity in the towns of Boston (Lincolnshire) and Dungannon (Northern Ireland). Each town has seen similar decreases (approx. 94% to 84%) of the population born in the relevant region between 2001 and 2011 as a result of migration from Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, her research is exploring interesting political questions about the impact of migration in more rural regions that have been less exposed to such trends in the past.
Our fifth speaker, Nicola Radford from Lincolnshire County Council, explained that it can be difficult to reach out to non-native groups through publicly funded business support programmes. Technology hubs and funding for coastal communities offer grants and business advice but the take up among in-migrants is low, despite a range of innovative marketing efforts. This informs the ongoing research of our own PhD Student, Mahdieh Zeinali, who explained that she is researching the function of entrepreneurship as a vehicle of integration.
Our final speaker, Dr Agnieszka Rydzik, presented research into migrant employees, noting that their identity was shaped by their place of origin and in a number of cases this created “glass ceilings” for their career progression. This could be one of the motivations for pursuing further training and subsequently establishing new businesses here in the UK.
Further ahead, the degree of mobility and the interrelated social and economic networks that develop between the old and new homes of entrepreneurial migrants can provide the basis for new research into entrepreneurial behaviour, community cohesion and wider patterns of globalization.