Stories of resilience: how immigrant small business owners have adapted in the face of Toronto's Covid-19 pandemic

In response to the particular barriers faced by immigrant small business owners identified in the literature, this paper investigates the effects of COVID-19 on small immigrant businesses in the inner-suburbs of Toronto by asking the following questions: How are small immigrant business owners adapting during the COVID-19 pandemic? What strategies have they been using?. Using primary and secondary research methods, this paper found that the extent to which an immigrant small business owner was able to adapt their business to the pandemic environment and overcome barriers largely depended on (1) the extent to which they used existing co-ethnic, family and professional networks in their community; (2) the ethnic strategies used, which was largely influenced by the opportunity structures in which a business owner was embedded within; and, (3) the formal and informal place-

making methods use by immigrant business owners for community building.

Key words: Immigrant placemaking, ethnic networks, mixed-embeddedness, immigrant entrepreneurship