ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that the Arctic is facing serious population and economic challenges. Apart from already being the most sparsely populated world region, the Arctic has been experiencing an additional population decline in recent decades. Yet, there are some prospects of reversing this trend. Owing to climate change and global warming, the natural resources of the region are becoming much more accessible, and their economic exploitation is becoming both technologically possible and profitable. Yet, in order to attract immigrants, the Arctic region countries need to develop the environment in a way that is both friendly to newcomers and conducive to the socio-economic development of the region. This environment has to be characterized by community resilience – that is, the ability to positively respond to and even influence social and economic change, while keeping the essence of the local cultural, social and economic integrity within critical thresholds. In such a case, the mixed embeddedness concept developed by Kloosterman and Rath (2001) is an interesting theoretical approach that could serve as an inspiration for building community resilience towards immigrants and their entrepreneurial activity. The aim of this chapter is to present the concept of mixed embeddedness of immigrant entrepreneurship and integrate it with the theory of community resilience within the Arctic/Circumpolar North context.
