One of the main challenges faced by refugee hosting states is the labour market integration of newcomers, which can be achieved to some extent through the creation of small businesses. This paper analyses the individual level determinants of the entrepreneurial intentions of highly-skilled women with refugee experience. The study adds a new perspective to the conversation about highly-skilled migrant women analysed so far, mostly as family reunion migrants joining economic migrants. It also contributes to the relatively new research on refugee entrepreneurship by adopting an unusual perspective for looking at highly skilled women. The empirical analysis embedded in the context of Sweden is two-fold. First, it is done in SPSS on the sample (N = 98) drawn from the 2017 Swedish Invandrarindex data set with the use of binary logistic regression. Second, the findings from the quantitative analysis are nuanced with the analysis of two case studies based on SSI with Syrian women having refugee experience. The results show that the gender variable does not predict the effect on entrepreneurial intentions. The findings confirm the importance of previous self-employment and leadership experience and indicate the potential importance of entrepreneurial role models, the cultural aspect of entrepreneurial intentions and the role of an encouraging environment in the host country.

This literature review answers the research question of how being a refugee or an immigrant affects entrepreneurial experience. It aims to examine the differences between refugees and immigrants in the light of immigrant entrepreneurship literature and emerging refugee entrepreneurship research. The analysis of the selected 41 peer reviewed papers within the framework of the eight dominant theories in immigrant entrepreneurship literature, including the field pertaining to refugees, implies that being a refugee has a rather negative impact on the entrepreneurial experience as compared to being an immigrant. Nonetheless, the literature on refugee entrepreneurship or their general labor market integration is rather scarce in number of applied theories and conducted studies in comparison to the immigrant entrepreneurship area and leaves vast room for future research.