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This introductory chapter discusses the rationale for connecting entrepreneurship with neighbourhoods and homes, presents the objectives and key questions of this volume and provides an overview of the book chapters. Major economic and societal changes that have led to an increase in micro businesses and non-farm self-employment are outlined and literatures and concepts in entrepreneurship research and urban and neighbourhood studies that are useful for understanding these changes discussed. The chapter highlights the home as entrepreneurial space and the household as unit of analysis for entrepreneurship studies. It argues that cities are places of small-scale businesses of all sorts, including home-based or mobile online businesses, that they accommodate a considerable self-employed workforce and that therefore scholars, policymakers and practitioners have to look beyond central business districts, high streets and designated business areas to detect and promote entrepreneurship in cities.

The recent unprecedented scale of Chinese migration has had far-reaching consequences. Within China, many villages have been drained of their young and most able workers, cities have been swamped by the ‘floating population’. Many rural migrants are unable to integrate into urban society. Internationally, Chinese have been increasingly more mobile. This Handbook provides a unique collection of new and original research on internal and international Chinese migration and its effects on the sense of belonging of migrants.

Social practice theories are the subject of much discussion among those who study sustainability. Using social practice theories to analyze how routinized activity can contribute to unsustainability problems has resulted in a great deal of stimulating scholarship. In this introductory chapter, we begin by venturing back to some of the early work on social practices and offer an account of key theoretical contributions to the contemporary study of sustainable consumption. Our review indicates that concepts from Anthony Giddens’ theory of practice have had considerably more impact on the study of sustainable consumption than the practice-based concepts that Pierre Bourdieu developed. We suggest that this may have led to overlooking the power relations that keep certain materially consumptive social practices firmly rooted in everyday routines. The chapters in this volume advance current theorizing at the nexus of social practices and sustainable consumption. The chapters in Part II explore how the study of sustainable consumption must move beyond the household and into the public sphere. The third Part, ‘Collective Dimensions of Household Practices’, illustrates how the routines in a household such as driving and eating are shaped by societal variables and thus are not a reflection of individual agency. Part IV, ‘Sustainable Consumption and Social Innovation’, examines shifts in systems of provision that shape daily routines that have environmental consequences.