Refugee Entrepreneurship: Learning from Case Evidence

Freiling, Jörg; Harima, Aki

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92534-9_18

Cited by 21 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Therefore, it is essential for future research to elaborate on how transnational entrepreneurs can be connected to others in the virtual dimension, and how this can influence their transnationalism and the way they are doing their business. Through virtual connection, (returned) immigrants who are disconnected to their home or (former) host country can still utilize transnational resources and experience, as is the case with refugee entrepreneurs (Freiling & Harima, 2019; Meister & Mauer, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is this Transnational Entrepreneurship? Five Cases in Which It Is Hard to Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

Harima

Baron

2020

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economie

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Scholars have lately started using the notion of ‘transnational entrepreneurship’. However, transnational entrepreneurship has not achieved the status of an independent research field in literature yet. Scholars and policymakers do not seem to have managed to address the clear-cut, distinctive nature of transnational entrepreneurship due to its conceptual ambiguity. This challenge calls for thoughtful consideration of the scope and range of the transnational entrepreneurship concept. Consequently, this study aims at critically reviewing the recent literature on transnational entrepreneurship in contrast to migrants’ entrepreneurial activities and international entrepreneurship to identify the current scholars’ underlying assumptions about this phenomenon and challenges them by demonstrating its heterogeneity with the presentation of five empirical cases. In these five cases, entrepreneurs conduct business in which transnationalism plays a certain role, yet differently. We contrast the presented cases with the four assumptions about transnational entrepreneurs identified from literature: (a) frequent travels between home and host countries, (b) simultaneous entrepreneurial engagement in two countries, (c) deep dual embeddedness in home and host institutional environments and (d) highly educated migrants. Based on the discussion, we develop a set of research propositions regarding the characteristics of transnational entrepreneurs, which are not fully considered in literature. By demonstrating the heterogeneity of transnational entrepreneurship and by showing future research orientations, we contribute to the literature on transnational entrepreneurship.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is this Transnational Entrepreneurship? Five Cases in Which It Is Hard to Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

Harima

Baron

2020

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economie

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“…While research on refugee entrepreneurship has acknowledged the adversity that refugees face (Refai et al, 2018), the focus has been on the benefits gained from refugees engaging in entrepreneurial action in terms of their integration in the local community (Wauters and Lambrecht, 2008) as a pathway to self-sufficiency (Fong et al, 2007), belongingness (Bizri, 2017), and a boost to domestic entrepreneurship (Wauters and Lambrecht, 2006). Although there have been numerous anecdotal stories of refugee entrepreneurs displaying resilience (Freiling and Harima, 2019;Palalić et al, 2019), scholars have not explored the nature of the adversity they face, the nature of their resilience outcomes, or the way entrepreneurial action operates under this adversity to generate different resilience outcomes. Furthermore, although we know that entrepreneurial action can facilitate positive outcomes in the face of adverse events (e.g., recessions [Powell and Baker, 2014], bushfires [Shepherd and Williams, 2014;Williams and Shepherd, 2016a], and earthquakes [Williams and Shepherd, 2016b), we do not have a good understanding of the role of entrepreneurial action in generating resilience outcomes for the individual facing adversity (e.g., see calls for entrepreneurship research that is more contextualized [Welter, 2011], especially in rural and other depleted communities [Jack and Anderson, 2002;Korsgaard et al, 2016]) or when the adversity is persistent.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to circumvent adversity? Refugee-entrepreneurs' resilience in the face of substantial and persistent adversity

Shepherd

Saade

Wincent

2020

Journal of Business Venturing

153

131

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People face adverse events in a variety of forms. Some individuals are resilient to adverse events in that they are able to maintain positive functioning while others experience considerable disruption. In explaining heterogeneity in resilience, research has emphasized people's resource endowments and pre-adversity organizing prior to the adverse events as well as people's cognitive and behavioral responses to such events. Therefore, for most resilience studies, adversity is an event. Although it is critically important to understand resilience to these short-to mediumterm adverse events, there is a need to understand resilience over an extended period. In this regard, we focus on Palestine refugees who were born in refugee camps and as adults have known nothing other than being a refugee. When it comes to substantial and persistent adversity, entrepreneurial action likely plays a central role in resilience to such adversity. To explore these relationships, we conducted an extensive data-collection effort over 15 months on refugee entrepreneurs (in refugee camps and not in camps), including 110 interviews. We find the importance of direct, indirect, and recursive relationships among actions (i.e., entrepreneurial action and integration activities), multiple identities, and resilience outcomes under conditions of substantial and persistent adversity. Furthermore, we find important differences between refugee entrepreneurs who live in refugee camps and those who live outside these camps-differences in affiliation, language use, and social capital development-which enable those refugee entrepreneurs living outside the refugee camps to achieve resilience outcomes not accessible to those living inside the camps. Overall, this study makes a number of contributions to the entrepreneurship literature. First, research has investigated resilience in terms of resources, endowments, and capabilities before an adverse event. The implicit assumptions in this research are that capabilities matter and that adversity has a beginning and subsides over time. In this study, we focus on resilience outcomes in the context of refugees facing substantial adversity over a substantial period and extend the capability argument of resilience in the following ways: (1) the "social" capability for resilience, not as an endowment but created through activities that build a social basis for resilience outcomes, (2) social integration activities are initiated and facilitated by engaging in entrepreneurial action with non-similar others, and (3) resilience outcomes help individuals both engage in integration activities and build a social capability of resilience. Therefore, in the context of substantial and persistent adversity, refugee entrepreneurs need to act in order to build (rather than simply deploy) their social capability for resilience outcomes. Second, resilience has been explored as either a process or as an outcome. In this study, we find that resilience outcomes are both a consequence and an antecedent of entrepreneurial action-a mu...

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“…Firstly, refugees face institutional barriers in the host country, such as legal issues, socio-cultural and market-related obstacles (Alrawadieh et al 2019;Kachkar et al 2016), a lack of access to support systems and infrastructure (Chadderton and Edmonds 2014;Kachkar et al 2016), and a lack of financial resources (Harb et al 2019;Wauters and Lambrecht 2008). Secondly, due to the forced departure from their home country and the newness of host societies, refugees generally face severe resource constraints (Freiling and Harima 2019;Heilbrunn 2019;Wauters and Lambrecht 2008). Nevertheless, all resources are not equally scarce.…”

Section: Refugee Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, scholars have paid attention to the entrepreneurial potential of refugees (Betts et al 2014;Bizri 2017;Shepherd et al 2020;Wauters and Lambrecht 2008). Researchers have studied different aspects of refugee entrepreneurship, such as social capital (Bizri 2017;Mboko 2020;Yassine et al 2019), innovations created by refugees (Betts and Bloom 2015), entrepreneurial intention (Alexandre et al 2019;Mawson and Kasem 2019), barriers that refugees face in the host country (Alrawadieh et al 2018;Kachkar 2018;Wauters and Lambrecht 2008), support programs for refugee entrepreneurs (Harima et al 2019;Meister and Mauer 2019), social entrepreneurship for and by refugees (Freudenberg and Halberstadt 2018), and psychological factors such as resilience and hope (Freiling and Harima 2019;Shepherd et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurial Opportunities of Refugees in Germany, France, and Ireland: Multiple Embeddedness Framework

et al. 2020

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Recently, the entrepreneurial potential of refugees has received growing attention from scholars and policymakers. However, the literature on refugee entrepreneurship suffers from the fragmentation of previous research findings, which has been mainly attributed to the fact that refugees have heterogeneous backgrounds. Tackling this challenge, this study conceptualized the framework for the multiple embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs by applying and extending the concept of mixed embeddedness. Based on 50 semi-structured interviews with refugee entrepreneurs who relocated to Germany, France, and Ireland, we identified six patterns in which refugees’ multiple embeddedness and their actions as entrepreneurial agencies interacted to develop entrepreneurial opportunities: (i) value creation with homeland resources, (ii) acting as transnational middleman minorities, (iii) integration facilitation, (iv) qualification transfers, (v) homeland-problem solving, and (vi) creative innovation. This study contributes to the literature on refugee entrepreneurship by considering multiple contexts in which refugees can be embedded in and by elaborating on the interactions between opportunity structure emerging within the multiple embeddedness, actions, and capabilities of refugees as entrepreneurial agencies.

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Refugee Entrepreneurship: Learning from Case Evidence

Cited by 21 publications

References 13 publications

Is this Transnational Entrepreneurship? Five Cases in Which It Is Hard to Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

Is this Transnational Entrepreneurship? Five Cases in Which It Is Hard to Say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

How to circumvent adversity? Refugee-entrepreneurs' resilience in the face of substantial and persistent adversity

Entrepreneurial Opportunities of Refugees in Germany, France, and Ireland: Multiple Embeddedness Framework

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