Female social-housing residents and pre-entrepreneurial identity: the first step towards entrepreneurship within local economic development

Placing entrepreneurship at the forefront as a path to employment for unemployed female social-housing residents, arguably a usually marginalised group within society, this paper reports on research carried out within Balsall Heath, Birmingham, UK. The field of entrepreneurship is fragmented and known for varied opinions (Keating and Higgins, 2016; Audretsch et al., 2007), with entrepreneurship and identity research growing, this paper aims to narrow these fragmented gaps. This paper seeks to contribute to limited research upon pre-entrepreneurial identity, as the first-step in forming a tailored entrepreneurship support programme and enhance understanding of identity at the pre-entrepreneur stage. A qualitative research methodology is adopted, through traditional storytelling, people naturally arrange their lives, events and experiences into stories as they are ‘narrative thinkers’ (Graham et al., 2015:345). Grounded-theory analysis is applied in aiding the creation of a theoretical framework through practice-based theory (Rae, 2004b). Findings are presented through an emergent model of pre-entrepreneurial identity, classifying emerged themes through two characteristics: tangible and intangible.