Search results

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize business incubators and their support for entrepreneurial refugees. While the number of initiatives supporting refugees’ entrepreneurial activities has increased in recent years, we still know little about how they differ from other types of business incubators.

This case study investigates a business incubator in Hamburg, Germany, targeting enterprising refugees. For this paper, 14 in-depth interviews with program participants and incubation managers were conducted.

This paper inductively derives five functional domains of refugee business incubators: providing structured entrepreneurial knowledge; alleviating anxiety related to institutional differences; guiding through the process at the incubator and motivating participants; understanding and tapping into social capital in the host country; and providing soft support concerning personal matters. The findings show that business incubators could and possibly should address specific needs of refugees and that there is much room for improvement. This study suggests that the five domains listed above represent key characteristics that distinguish refugee business incubators from traditional business incubators.

This paper offers valuable practical insights for refugee business incubators, which need to consider and develop functional domains listed above. Because these kinds of incubators are a fairly recent phenomenon, there is a general lack of and need for blueprints. The findings of this paper suggest that business incubators could integrate and support entrepreneurial refugees provided that they consider the five functional domains identified here. The findings also provide evidence that entrepreneurship can be a possible means of vocational integration for refugees and one way of institutions and policy-makers in host country seeking to support refugees’ entrepreneurial activities, for example, by developing or subsidizing business incubators targeting refugees.

This paper’s contributions are twofold. First, this paper addresses a gap in the literature on refugee entrepreneurship by providing insights concerning the important role of support institutions. Second, this paper conceptualizes business incubators for enterprising refugees as a distinctive type of business incubators. This paper has, however, some limitations. Because it only considered a relatively small number of refugee entrepreneurs, it is difficult to generalize the findings. The cross-cultural setting of the empirical study, with its potential for linguistic and cultural misunderstandings, may have affected the results.

For the developed economies in Europe, to which refugees move, and as refugees’ enterprising expectations evolve, emerging cognitive factors have become closely intertwined with their post-arrival encounters. However, the link between refugees’ social cognition and entrepreneurship commitment tends to be overlooked. This paper aims to join the international debates regarding cognitions of refugee entrepreneurship and explain the bewildering effects of refugees’ social cognitive dissonance on refugee business support.

This paper reviews the extant knowledge of refugee entrepreneurship and refugee business support. It synthesizes the literature on cognitive dissonance, multiple embeddedness and hospitality to inform a conceptual model and explain the ramifications of refugees’ entrepreneurial cognition on refugee business support and how public attitudes in the destination transform accordingly.

This paper illustrates the prevalent imbalance between the provision of support and refugees’ anticipations in developed economies. A conceptual toolkit is framed to disclose the succeeding influence of cognitive dissonance on the performances of refugee business support. This framework indicates that the cognitive dissonance could elicit heterogeneous aftermath of refugee business support service, resulting in a deteriorated/ameliorated hospitality context.

This conceptual toolkit unfolds cognitive ingredients in the refugee entrepreneurship journey, providing a framework for understanding refugee business support and the formation of hospitality under cognitive dissonance. Practically, it is conducive to policymakers nurturing rational refugee anticipation, enacting inclusive business support and enhancing hospitality in the host country.

The study deploys Anthias' intersectional framework of social spaces and her concept of translocational positionality to explore the barriers to entrepreneurship for refugee entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the study aims to assess how migrant identities require a specific form of business support.

A total of 32 semi-structured interviews with 14 refugee entrepreneurs and 18 business support agents were conducted between April and October 2022 and, together with field notes, were combined for thematic analysis in NVivo 12.

Organisational, representational, intersubjective and experiential barriers combined to create practical and psychological deterrents to entrepreneurship for refugees. However, an explicitly humanistic and de-centred approach to business support was (partially) able to counter such barriers.

Policymakers and business support agencies should consider intersectional characteristics and the importance of a compassionate and individual approach when designing business support programmes for refugee entrepreneurs.

Two intersectional concepts of social spaces and translocational positionality are brought into conversation with each other, creating a novel approach to framing the barriers to entrepreneurship for refugees.

The world is currently facing one of the most significant refugee crises in history, posing challenges to policymakers in host countries needing to facilitate socio-economic integration of refugees urgently. Policymakers and scholars have started shedding light on the entrepreneurial potential of refugees. Refugees confront considerable institutional barriers in their new environments. Particularly challenging is that they lose connection to their home country ecosystem through forced displacement and are not yet well-embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem of the host country. The disconnection to the local ecosystem hinders refugees from accessing various resources essential to entrepreneurial activities. Against this background, this chapter illuminates the role of business incubators in integrating refugee entrepreneurs into the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, paying particular attention to relational dynamics within incubators. This study conducts explorative qualitative research with a single case study of a German business incubator for refugees. This study identifies three types of relational dynamics that characterise operation of refugee business incubators and two mechanisms constructive and descriptive to their mission. Finally, this study derives practical implications for refugee business incubators and policymakers in refugee-hosting countries.

Drawing on current development practice and literature on Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESO), such as accelerators, incubators, and labs, this chapter explores how refugees in Uganda are supported through entrepreneurial approaches. Following an exploratory method, interviews were conducted with proprietors and managers of ESO in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. The findings show that while the majority of these organizations purport to follow an innovation discourse, in reality, they support refugees through a mixture of inclusion, resilience, and innovation-led approaches. Inclusion-led approaches focus on basic language skills, establishing peer relationships, and access to survival essentials. Resilience-led approaches nurture livelihood skills, building community ties, and access to seed-corn grants. Innovation-led approaches develop entrepreneurial skills, establishing extra-local connectivity and access to micro-finance. This chapter highlights the critical importance of inclusion and resilience-led approaches in developing supportive ESO for refugees.

This paper examines how entrepreneurship focused programs build capacities for disadvantaged groups to pursue more dignified lives. The struggles of disadvantaged entrepreneurs against pronounced structural constraints are well documented, but less is known about how targeted programs of entrepreneurship focused support change the status quo for disadvantaged communities.

The paper is grounded in a mainly inductive, interpretive study and explores the work of an entrepreneurship focused program targeted at refugee participants. The paper reports on intensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 23 program participants in London, UK.

The empirical sections elaborate three key mechanisms supporting greater self-determination and better opportunities: building entrepreneurial intention, building contextual legitimacy and building proximal ties. These mechanisms empower disadvantaged groups to pursue a wide variety of meaningful goals, including but not limited to starting a business.

This paper draws attention to problems of over-emphasizing the disadvantaged entrepreneurs' agency. It uses the vocabulary of self-determination theory (SDT) and offers a psychosocial perspective of the consequences of disadvantage and the potential for entrepreneurship focused programs to build key capacities and improve precarious lives.

This article reconstructs the conditions under which displaced persons are integrated into their workplaces with their hosts. It identifies the characteristics of this pathway and provides guidance on the support that should be provided to these people. This support is part of social responsibility. Theories on professional integration/labour market integration (LMI) have been categorised and then arranged in a logical order to determine the stages of this integration. Theories on professional integration support for refugees were also reviewed and examined in relation to this categorisation. Six stages characterise professional integration: getting a job, its sustainability and its wage adequacy, its security and sustainability, career continuity and employability, the fact of being a full and equal participant and being an integrated part of the workforce and the meaningfulness of that job. The level of professional integration marks the quality of this integration. Each level encompasses the previous levels. Displaced persons should be supported throughout their careers to go beyond technical and behavioural skills and take a more holistic view of their tasks to find meaning in their work. While most research focuses on getting a job as a characteristic of occupational integration, this study found five other characteristics that were ordered. It also links vocational integration with social responsibility and provides guidance on how to help displaced people reach the final stage of this integration.

The chapters in this book have drawn together issues affecting disadvantaged entrepreneurs as they struggle to access, interact with, and benefit from the traditional entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). The findings highlight the importance of their motives for entrepreneurial activity, their resources, and how access to these are affected by issues such as gender and migrant status. In addition, substitutes for and complements to more traditional EEs have also been identified, including incubators, civil society organisations, and social enterprises, demonstrating the importance of alternative EEs often left unexplored in mainstream literature. The authors conclude that future research could usefully further explore background contexts driving disadvantaged groups towards entrepreneurial activity and the existing theory surrounding this. Particularly relevant for future research is the role of human capital, intersectional factors such as gender, migrant status, location, and roles of activities. Future research into stakeholders that can substitute for elements of the traditional EE is also important. Understanding this will assist disadvantaged entrepreneurs to both develop the absorptive capacity to create and develop their own businesses and potentially begin to access parts of the formal EE.

Recent refugees in the Netherlands face barriers on the road to starting their own business. Few studies have looked at barriers specific to recent refugees. In this article, these barriers are analysed through the eyes of support programmes that aim to help recent refugees to become an entrepreneur.

The experiences of seven support programmes were explored using in-depth interviews to evaluate how the approaches were supporting recent refugees. The programmes were mostly private initiatives with public funding, focused on local support for recent refugees. They were first interviewed in 2017, followed by in-depth interviews in 2018. Their narratives were used to gain in-depth impressions of the route recent refugees have to follow to start a business.

The results strongly suggest that the most prominent obstacles recent refugees face are connected to the political-institutional context of Dutch society. National provisions and the local implementation of these provisions have created a complicated web that is hard to untangle for newcomers. Language skills and network formation are additional barriers.

These barriers are not overcome by using traditional education and training programmes focused around skills and motivation of the potential entrepreneur. Support programmes should focus on support to understand or overcome the bureaucratic complexity. The trainings should also increase language skills and offer support in network formation.

The empirical data in this study reveal that the focus of training programmes may have to shift to overcome barriers in the political-institutional context.

This study aims to understand the challenges facing Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in Jordan and offers professional support to refugee entrepreneurs, with a view to improve their economic and social status, aid cultural integration and ultimately to help turn their business idea into reality.

A total of 62 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Syrian refugees in Jordan.

The study reveals that refugee entrepreneurs are both entrepreneurs of necessity and opportunity. Refugee entrepreneurship improves social welfare and drives economic growth. Nevertheless, refugee entrepreneurship faces many challenges and difficulties, mainly in terms of financing difficulties, cultural differences and a lack of business management skills.

Future studies could investigate if the research results can be generalised to global refugee entrepreneurship by gathering data from other countries and comparing the subsequent results with this research.

The research shows that programmes and instruments should be created to support refugee entrepreneurship. It is also suggested that both social and economic support is needed to prompt refugee entrepreneurs. International cooperation and international organisations are important to support refugees and support countries that receive them, with a view to reduce the economic burden on these countries, which will in turn improve the quality of life for refugees.

The increasing number of refugees is becoming a very serious social issue. The international community should contribute to helping those refugees through economic, social and cultural integrations.

This paper focuses refugee entrepreneurship to understand refugees’ entrepreneurial behaviour and any challenges facing Syrian entrepreneurship in Jordan.