ABSTRACT
Economic structures and market conditions In order to analyse and compare opportunity structures between different locations, it is useful to distinguish between three levels of observation – including the national, the regional/urban, and the local/neighbourhood level – which in turn facilitates the discovery of location-specific traits and their spatial variations (Kloosterman and Rath, 2001). In this study, the national framework of the opportunity structure is self-evidently the same for the various places of research in Thailand, but the urban and local structures differ from place to place. Furthermore, even though the legal frameworks regarding citizenship, street vending, and the informal sector hardly vary between different places, the local practices of state authorities that enforce these laws and regulations can differ significantly. This also shows that the distinction between macro and micro levels or national and local perspectives is somewhat artificial, as most situations and actions are a combination of both. Yet it makes sense to describe these levels separately as long as the relations between micro and macro perspectives are traced. The economic and politico-institutional opportunity structures can contrast not only between nation states but also between or even within cities, as the results of this study show. A comparative perspective on divergent urban regions within one country and their relationship to the opportunity structures for migrant or ethnic minority entrepreneurs has been identified as a research gap (Kloosterman and Rath, 2001, p. 198).
