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Being Global and Being Regional: Refugee Entrepreneurship in Regional Australia

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The Rural-Migration Nexus

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Abstract

Branka Krivokapic-skoko, Katherine Wilson and Jock Collins in this chapter illustrate the way refugees engage in entrepreneurship to overcome restrictive labour market mobility. Presenting data gathered from interviews with 15 African female refugee entrepreneurs currently living in regional and rural Australia, the chapter investigates the reasons why female refugees started-up their own business, their strategies for overcoming the massive obstacles they faced setting up the business and the extent to which their businesses are embedded in their family and community. The chapter further denotes how experiences of formal and informal discrimination has blocked their access to the labour market, and influenced moving into specific ethnic niche industries, as well as the contradictions embedded in the refugee entrepreneurship paradox in Australia.

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Krivokapic-skoko, B., Watson, K., Collins, J. (2023). Being Global and Being Regional: Refugee Entrepreneurship in Regional Australia. In: Kerrigan, N., de Lima, P. (eds) The Rural-Migration Nexus. Rethinking Rural. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18042-2_7

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