Not Bad For Some Immigrants, Ep. 5: Work, Work, Work, Work, Work
The stats on immigrant entrepreneurship are fascinating—in Canada, "business ownership and self-employment rates are generally higher among immigrants than the Canadian-born population," according to Statistics Canada. In 2016, 11.9% of immigrants aged 25 to 69 were either self-employed or owned a private incorporated company, compared to 10.1% of second-gen folks and 8.4% of "third-plus" Canadians (which is how the government classified people with all Canadian-born parents). And there's a reason for that—"earlier research showed that the higher self-employment rate among immigrants was caused, at least in part, by the difficulty of finding suitable paid employment."
That's not the only pathway to entrepreneurship, obviously. For Allison Hill, founder of Hill Studio, a salon and wellness space for Black women in Toronto, it was more about solving a problem that she both experienced, and saw around her: a lack of spaces where Black women are truly prioritized, cared for and supported. She first noticed this gap in the hair industry, but eventually widened her focus to other wellness spaces, including yoga studios and run clubs. And now, she's built a brand that does things differently.
"Where are the places where you can get together with like-minded folks and actually be well, and [have] it not be about what you're wearing or if you're a boss or showing up perfectly?" she asks. "And, how can we come together as a community and not necessarily solve the problems, but reinforce each other so that we can go back out into the world and figure out what to do with ourselves? That's what Hill Wellness is about."
But that doesn't mean her lived experience as a Black woman and a child of immigrants doesn't impact how she navigates entrepreneurship. Real talk: running your own business is hard, and entrepreneurship when you're part of an immigrant community can be ever harder. Or at least, it comes with specific challenges—though also unique opportunities. So, in this episode of Friday Talks: Not Bad For Some Immigrants, Hill talks about what drew her to entrepreneurship, what it means to be a Black woman navigating these spaces and what keeps her going, even when it's hard.
Hosted by Friday Things founder and editor Stacy Lee Kong, Not Bad For Some Immigrants is a six-part video series about the stories we tell about immigrants in pop culture, media and real life. It rejects the focus on striving—to succeed, to assimilate, to be judged worthy of belonging in, and to, our new homes—that so often infiltrate stories about our experiences, and instead makes space for complicated, nuanced and joyful conversations about what it actually costs to build a new life, the stories we learn to tell about ourselves and what it really means to belong.