Scholarlink

<p>Entrepreneurial legitimacy is often treated as a strategic or symbolic resource, yet in racialised markets it operates as an ethical condition shaped by misrecognition and unequal evaluative thresholds. Using Black African immigrant entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom as a critical case, this article examines how legitimacy is constructed through identity work and network navigation in environments where presumptions of credibility are unevenly distributed. Drawing on phenomenological and narrative analysis of two phases of interviews with 32 entrepreneurs, this study shows how participants adjust self-presentation, cultivate networks and formalise practices in response to scepticism. These communicative, relational and organisational efforts are conceptualised as moral labour, defined as work undertaken to mitigate misrecognition and secure credibility under unequal evaluative conditions. The article reconceptualises legitimacy as an ethical condition shaped by recognition and misrecognition and develops moral labour as a mechanism through which immigrant entrepreneurs sustain participation in racialised evaluative environments.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

The Moral Labour of Legitimacy: Recognition, Misrecognition and Entrepreneurial Evaluation in Racialised Markets

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月29日

查看全文
  • Alexandros Psychogios,
  • Tamaralaiyefa Harold Tiemo

摘要

Entrepreneurial legitimacy is often treated as a strategic or symbolic resource, yet in racialised markets it operates as an ethical condition shaped by misrecognition and unequal evaluative thresholds. Using Black African immigrant entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom as a critical case, this article examines how legitimacy is constructed through identity work and network navigation in environments where presumptions of credibility are unevenly distributed. Drawing on phenomenological and narrative analysis of two phases of interviews with 32 entrepreneurs, this study shows how participants adjust self-presentation, cultivate networks and formalise practices in response to scepticism. These communicative, relational and organisational efforts are conceptualised as moral labour, defined as work undertaken to mitigate misrecognition and secure credibility under unequal evaluative conditions. The article reconceptualises legitimacy as an ethical condition shaped by recognition and misrecognition and develops moral labour as a mechanism through which immigrant entrepreneurs sustain participation in racialised evaluative environments.