Mentors as identity work orchestrators: Facilitating migrant entrepreneur’s integration abroad

Little is known about how mentoring facilitates migrant entrepreneur’s (MEs) host-country integration. This study generates insight by exploring the role of mentoring in bridging the identity differences of MEs. We propose a more nuanced view that accounts for the identity work that occurs during the mentoring process highlighting the mentor’s role in orchestrating (i.e. shaping) mentee identity work via identity prompts and signals. In addition, we find that mentee identity is shaped by the cognitive and behavioural responses to their mentors. Hence, the study presents a dynamic and agentic perspective on migrant entrepreneurship, emphasising the role of the mentor in facilitating ME integration. Exploring qualitative data from 14 mentor–mentee pairs, we find that on an endogenous level, the mentor–mentee relationship is in essence an identity work process. Our model illustrates the mechanisms underlying the endogenous dimensions of the mentoring process, resulting in ME integration in the host country, characterised by their ability to actively read and circulate identity signals across identity groups. Viewing mentor–mentee relationships through social identity work lenses allows for enriching the mentorship field by considering the presence of identity boundaries, dynamics, and signals, which can obstruct or enable ME integration.