Milan’s inclusive entrepreneurship policies: the risk of ‘differentiated inclusion’

Abstract

Using Milan’s entrepreneurship policies as a case-study, this paper explores the diversity that the broad policy category of ‘inclusive entrepreneurship’ may entail in terms of policy instruments and participants’ experiences. To this end, the study considers policymakers, practitioners and young adults receiving local support to establish their own businesses. It does so by drawing on qualitative interviews. It argues that inclusive entrepreneurship policies may entail a ‘differentiated inclusion’ that is produced by the simultaneous interaction between diversified policy instruments and a system of inequalities that affect individual capacities to strategise entrepreneurial risks and opportunities.