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“Home Away From Home”: Displaced Migrant Entrepreneurship in Times of Covid-19

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Disadvantaged Minorities in Business

Part of the book series: Contributions to Management Science ((MANAGEMENT SC.))

Abstract

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic crisis has put entrepreneurship at bay. Scholars swiftly started investigating the impact of the pandemic on entrepreneurship in all possible manners. However, there is a distinct entrepreneurial agent; displaced migrant entrepreneurs (DME) are often understudied and underrepresented in the entrepreneurship literature. Against this background, this study explores the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on the displaced migrant entrepreneurship. Two research questions were raised in this study: i) What are the challenges faced by displaced migrant entrepreneurs during the Covid-19 pandemic? and ii) How are displaced migrant entrepreneurs dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic? To answer these research questions, this qualitative study conducted 10 in-depth interviews with DME in developing countries and identified three distinct mechanisms: i) Disconnectedness from their homeland, ii) Rootlessness in host county, and iii) Reassessing the resource in hand. The study findings reveal that DME have a double disadvantage, unlike other migrant entrepreneurs, since it is hard for them to use the host and home country resources. It also demonstrates that DME show resilience during the pandemic by utilising the resource at hand. This study contributes to the discussion on DME by exploring the unique context and highlighting the DME responses during the pandemic.

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Acknowledgments

Tenzin Yeshi would like to express his gratitude for his doctorate financial support from the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Tenzin Yeshi

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  1. Tenzin Yeshi
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Correspondence to Tenzin Yeshi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Léo-Paul Dana

  2. ICD Business School, Paris, France

    Nada Khachlouf

  3. IPAG Business School, Paris, France

    Adnane Maâlaoui

  4. Department of Management and Marketing, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Vanessa Ratten

Appendix

Appendix

Table 1 Overview of the interviews
Full size table

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Yeshi, T. (2022). “Home Away From Home”: Displaced Migrant Entrepreneurship in Times of Covid-19. In: Dana, LP., Khachlouf, N., Maâlaoui, A., Ratten, V. (eds) Disadvantaged Minorities in Business. Contributions to Management Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97079-6_10

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