This cross-national study examines how ethnic resources shape access to financial capital among first-generation Punjabi-Pakistani immigrant entrepreneurs in the precious metals industries of Manchester (UK) and Dubai (UAE). Based on 50 semi-structured interviews (August 2022–July 2023) and analyzed through Template Analysis, the findings show that while co-ethnic social capital is widely mobilized across both contexts, significant intra-ethnic variations emerge between Khandani (lineage-based) and non-Khandani entrepreneurs. Khandani entrepreneurs rapidly accumulate start-up capital by leveraging their reputational credibility and transnational embeddedness, securing preferential access to large-scale financing through Rotating Credit Associations (kameti). By contrast, non-Khandani entrepreneurs face delayed entry, relying on modest loans from kin and co-ethnic migrants, with limited capacity to scale. The study highlights how lineage-based prestige intersects with broader kinship networks (Biraderi), producing differentiated trajectories of immigrant entrepreneurship. By foregrounding intra-ethnic stratification, this research extends debates on ethnic resources and mixed embeddedness, demonstrating that not all co-ethnic capital is equally accessible, and that transnational contexts reproduce rather than neutralize status hierarchies.

To survive over time, a diaspora must create sites of belonging and micro places in which to concentrate the main elements of its “iconography” that can consolidate social networks. This article analyzes how second-generation Greeks in Italy fit into diaspora networks by investigating the ways in which they define their sense of Greekness and use their ethnic resources. The findings of field research show a weakness of (formal and informal) social network ties and the pre-eminence of the family’s role in the process of sociocultural identification and ethnic identity construction. In fact, the second generation’s “ways of belonging” and the sense of attachment to Greece have an autonomous significance and are expressed more at a familial level and less collectively. Familial socialization plays a mediating role in the process of identification and transmission of Greekness, as well as in guiding ways of employing ethnic resources, contributing to the maintenance of the diaspora.