Identity Work as a Conversion Mechanism: Mobilising Economic and Cultural Capital in Immigrant Entrepreneurship

Immigrant entrepreneurship depends not only on resource endowments but on whether economic and cultural capital are recognised as legitimate within distinct evaluative environments. This chapter develops a field-spanning identity-based conversion mechanism that explains how identity work mediates capital mobilisation across ethnic, mainstream, and transnational fields. The mechanism comprises three linked conversion problems, namely uncertainty reduction, category placement, and channel readiness, and specifies how signals such as certifications, audits, traceability systems, platform metrics, and community participation shape access to finance, distribution, and reputation. By incorporating relational infrastructures of recognition, including status affiliations, brokerage positions, and diasporic ties, the analysis shows how recognition travels across fields and why similar resource bundles generate divergent outcomes. The chapter extends the mixed embeddedness framework by identifying identity mediation as the process that converts resources into usable value and outlines implications for entrepreneurial strategy, policy interventions, and future longitudinal, comparative, and digitally oriented research on immigrant entrepreneurship.