Indigenous Entrepreneurship for Cultural Continuity: A Cross‐National Comparison of Motivations Among Pakistan's Kalash and UAE Bedouin Entrepreneurs

The study examines how Indigenous entrepreneurial motivations vary when cultural continuity is pursued under contrasting institutional conditions. Based on 29 semi‐structured interviews and contextual material from the Kalash of northern Pakistan and Bedouin entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates, the study adopts a qualitative cross‐national comparative design to trace how motivations take shape at the intersection of culture, economy and state support. Kalasha entrepreneurs describe enterprise as a means of sustaining households, preventing out‐migration, and maintaining an anchored presence on ancestral land in a setting marked by poverty, weak infrastructure, and limited recognition. Bedouin entrepreneurs, situated in a resource‐rich and heritage‐oriented policy environment, frame their ventures as acts of stewardship, public representation of Bedouin identity and participation in a state‐supported heritage economy. The analysis shows that shared commitments to land, lineage, and collective identity generate distinct motivational logics once institutional conditions are brought into view. The paper shows that Indigenous entrepreneurial motivation unfolds along a trajectory from defensive preservation to expressive projection, mediated by institutional conditions rather than confined to a single scarcity‐driven pattern.