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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alrawadieh, Z., Karayilan, E., & Cetin, G. (2019). Understanding the challenges of refugee entrepreneurship in tourism and hospitality. The Service Industries Journal, 39(9–10), 717–740.
Betts, A., Bloom, L., Kaplan, J. D., & Omata, N. (2014). Refugee economies: rethinking popular assumptions. Humanitarian Innovation Project. University of Oxford.
Bizri, R. M. (2017). Refugee-entrepreneurship: a social capital perspective. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 29(9), 847–868.
Bonacich, E., & Modell, J. (1980). The economic basis of ethnic solidarity. Small business in the Japanese American community. University of California Press.
Centre for Entrepreneurs. (2018). Starting afresh: How entrepreneurship is transforming the lives of resettled refugees [Online]. Accessed January 27, 2021, from https://centreforentrepreneurs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CFE-Migrants-Report-March-2018-WEB.pdf
Colic-Peisker, V., & Tilbury, F. (2007). Refugees and employment: the effect of visible difference on discrimination (Final Report). Centre for Social and Community Research, Murdoch University.
Collins, J. (2003a). Australia: Cosmopolitan Capitalists Down Under. In R. Kloosterman & J. Rath (Eds.), Immigrant entrepreneurs: venturing abroad in the age of globalisation (pp. 61–78). New York University Press & Berg Publishing.
Collins, J. (2003b). Cultural diversity and entrepreneurship: policy responses to immigrant Entrepreneurs in Australia. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 15, 137–149.
Collins, J. (2016). From Refugee to Entrepreneur in Sydney in Less Than Three Years. University of Technology Sydney.
Collins, J., Castles, S., Gibson, K., Tait, D., & Alcorso, C. (1995). A shop full of dreams: ethnic small business in Australia. Pluto Press.
Collins, J., & Krivokapic-Skoko, B. (2011). Attraction and retention of new immigrants in regional and rural Australia. Rural Industry Research and Development Corporation.
Collins, J., & Low, A. (2010). Asian female immigrant entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized businesses in Australia. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 22(1), 97–111.
Collins, J., & Shin, J. (2014). Korean immigrant entrepreneurs in the Sydney restaurant industry. Labour and Management in Development, 15, 1–25.
Collins, J., Watson, K., & Krivokapic-Skoko, B. (2017). From boats to businesses: the remarkable journey of Hazara refugee entrepreneurs in Adelaide (Full Report). Centre for Business and Social Innovation, University of Technology Sydney.
Cooper, S., Olejniczak, E., Lenette, C., & Smedley, C. (2017). Media coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in regional Australia: a critical discourse analysis. Media International Australia, 162(1), pp. 78–89.
Cope, J. (2005). Researching entrepreneurship through phenomenological inquiry: philosophical and methodological issues. International Small Business Journal, 23(2), 163–189.
Curry, O., Smedley, C., & Lenette, C. (2018). What Is ‘Successful’ Resettlement? Refugee Narratives from Regional New South Wales in Australia. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16(4), 430–448.
De Fina, A. (2009). Narratives in interview – the case of accounts. For an interactional approach to narrative genres. Narrative Inquiry, 19(2), 233–258.
De Tona, C. (2006). Narrative Networks: Italian Women in Dublin. (IIIS Discussion paper, No 152). Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
Dempsey, K. (1992). Mateship in country towns. In E. Carroll (Ed.), Intruders in the Bush: The Australian Quest for Identity (2nd ed., pp. 131–142). Oxford University Press.
Department of Immigration and Border Protection. (2016). Australia’s offshore humanitarian programme: 2015–16. Australian Government [Online]. Accessed April 21, 2018, from https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/statistics/australia-offshore-humanitarian-programme-2015-16.pdf
Department of Parliamentary Services. (2011). Seeking asylum: Australia’s humanitarian program. Parliament of Australia [Online]. Accessed January 9, 2017, from http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/158141/upload_binary/158141.pdf;fileType=application/pdf#search=%222010s%22
El-Gack, N., & Yak, G. (2016). A degree doesn’t count for South Sudanese job seekers. The Conversation [Online]. Accessed August 28, 2019, from https://theconversation.com/a-degree-doesnt-count-for-south-sudanese-job-seekers-64667
Feist, H., Tan, G., McDougall, K., & Hugo, G. (2015). Enabling rural migrant settlement: a case study of the Limestone Coast. Australian Population and Migration Research Centre (APMRC), University of Adelaide.
Fong, R., Busch, N. B., Armour, M., Heffron, L. C., & Chanmugam, A. (2007). Pathways to self-sufficiency: successful entrepreneurship for refugees. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 16(1), 127–159.
Fozdar, F., & Hartley, L. (2013). Refugee resettlement in Australia: what we know and what we need to know. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32(3), 23–51.
Henoch, B. T. (2006). An innovation framework for analysing and facilitating diasporas contribution to poverty reduction in developing countries. World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 13, 17–36.
Hugo, G. (1999). A new paradigm of international migration in Australia. New Zealand Population Review, 25(1), 1–39.
Hugo, G. (2008). Australia’s state-specific and regional Migration Scheme: an assessment of its impacts in South Australia. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 9, 125–145.
Hugo, G. (2011). Economic, social and civic contributions of first and second generation humanitarian entrants. Australian Government.
Hugo, G., Feist, H., Tan, G., & Harris, K. (2015). Population dynamics in regional Australia. Regional Australia Institute.
Hugo, G., Khoo, S.-E., & McDonald, P. (2006). Attracting skilled migrants to regional areas: what does it take? People and Place, 14(3), 26–36.
Immonen, R., & Kok, S. (2016). Diamonds are made under pressure: unravelling the phenomenon of transnational entrepreneurs with a refugee background through the lens of effectuation. Unpublished bachelor dissertation. Linnaeus University.
Jones, T., and Ram, M. (2013). Entrepreneurship as ethnic minority liberation. Research Papers 0011. .
Jones, T., Ram, M., & Villares-Varela, M. (2019). Diversity, economic development and new migrant entrepreneurs. Urban Studies, 56(5), 960–976.
Kloosterman, R., & Rath, J. (2001). Immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies: mixed embeddedness further explored. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(2), 189–201.
Koff, H. (2008). Fortress Europe or a Europe of fortresses? The integration of migrants in Western Europe. Peter Lang.
Krivokapic-Skoko, B., Reid, C., & Collins, J. (2018). Rural cosmopolitism in Australia. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 153–163.
Kuemmerle, W. (2002). Home base and knowledge management in international ventures. Journal of Business Venturing, 17, 99–122.
Legrain, P., & Burridge, A. (2019). Seven steps to SUCCESS: enabling refugee entrepreneurs to flourish. Centre for Policy Development.
Lencho, T. R. (2017). The Potential Contribution of Ethiopian Diaspora in Development: The Presenting Absent Partners. Humanities and Social Sciences, 5(1), 14–25.
Lentin, R. (2006). Migrant women’s networks and intercultural Ireland. (IIIS Discussion paper, No 148). Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
Lever-Tracy, C., Ip, D., Kitay, J., Phillips, I., & Tracy, N. (1991). Asian Entrepreneurs in Australia. Australian Government Publishing Service.
Light, I. (2007). Global entrepreneurship and transnationalism. In L. P. Dana (Ed.), Handbook of research on ethnic minority entrepreneurship (pp. 3–15). Edward Elgar.
Light, I., & Gold, S. J. (2000). Ethnic Economies. Academic Press.
Light, I., & Rosenstein, C. (1995). Expanding the interaction theory of entrepreneurship. In A. Portes (Ed.), The economic sociology of immigration: essays on networks, ethnicity, and entrepreneurship (pp. 166–203). Sage.
Lyon, F., Sepulveda, L., & Syrett, S. (2007). Enterprising refugees: contributions and challenges in deprived urban areas. Local Economy, 22(4), 362–375.
Mackenzie, C., McDowell, C., & Pittaway, E. (2007). Beyond ‘do no harm’: the challenge of constructing ethical relationships in refugee research. Journal of Refugee Studies, 20(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fem008
Marr, D. (2011). Panic. Black Books.
Marr, D., & Wilkinson, M. (2003). Dark victory. Allen & Unwin.
McCauley, D. (2019). More refugees to be settled in country towns as 'megacities' feel the strain. The Sydney Morning Herald [Online]. Available from https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/more-refugees-to-be-settled-in-country-towns-as-megacities-feel-the-strain-20190922-p52tqs.html
Meister, A. D., & Mauer, R. (2019). Understanding refugee entrepreneurship incubation - An embeddedness perspective. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 25(5), 1065–1092.
Mungai, N. (2014). Resettling Refugees in Rural Areas: Africans, Burmese, Bhutanese and Afghans in the Riverina NSW, Australia. In A.T. Ragusa (Ed.), Rural Lifestyles, Community Well-Being and Social Change: Lessons from Country Australia for Global Citizens (pp. 145–205). Sharjah, UAE: Benham Science Publishers.
Nakhoul, G. (2011). Overboard: you would not believe what really triggered Australia's controversial policy on boat people. Dar Meera.
Newland, K., & Patrick, E. (2004). Beyond remittances: the role of diaspora in poverty reduction in their countries of origin. Migration Policy Institute.
Newland, K., & Tanaka, H. (2010). Mobilizing diaspora entrepreneurship for development. Migration Policy Institute.
Nielsen, T. M., & Riddle, L. (2009). Investing in peace: the motivational dynamics of diaspora investment in post-conflict economies. Journal of Business Ethics, 89(4), 435–448.
Nzabonimpa, J. P. (2018). Quantitizing and qualitizing (im-)possibilities in mixed methods research. Methodological Innovations, 11(2), 1–16.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2015). International Migration Outlook 2015. OECD Publishing.
Parsons, R. (2013). Assessing the economic contribution of refugees in Australia. Multicultural Development Association.
Phillips, J. (2015). Asylum seekers and refugees: what are the facts? (Research Paper Series, 2014–15; updated 2 March 2015). Parliament of Australia [Online]. Accessed May 5, 2017, from http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/AsylumFacts
Portes, A. (Ed.). (1998). The economic sociology of immigration: essays on networks, ethnicity, and entrepreneurship. Sage.
Portes, A., & Jensen, L. (1987). What’s an ethnic enclave? The case for conceptual clarity. American Sociological Review, 52, 768–771.
Qui, R., & Gupta, V. (2015). A conceptual study of immigrant born globals and their multinationalization process. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40497-015-0018-7
Rath, J. (Ed.). (2002). Unravelling the rag trade: immigrant entrepreneurship in seven world cities. Berg.
Refugee Council of Australia. (2010). Economic, civic and social contributions of refugees and humanitarian entrants: A literature review. Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Commonwealth of Australia.
Refugee Council of Australia. (2020). How generous is Australia’s Refugee Program compared to other countries? Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Commonwealth of Australia.
Regional Australia Institute. (2019). National population plan for regional Australia [Online]. Accessed March 8, 2021, from http://www.regionalaustralia.org.au/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019_RAI_NationalPopulationPlanForRegionalAustralia_Final.pdf
Rezaei, S. (2011). Royal delicacies at peasant prices: cross–national differences, common grounds – towards an empirically supported theory of the informal economic activities of migrants. World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 7(2), 109–154.
Riddle, L., Hrivnak, G. A., & Nielsen, T. M. (2010). Transnational diaspora entrepreneurship in emerging markets: bridging institutional divides. Journal of International Management, 16(4), 398–411.
Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Sage.
Sampson, R. C. (2016). Caring, Contributing, Capacity Building: Navigating Contradictory Narratives of Refugee Settlement in Australia. Journal of Refugee Studies, 29(1), 98–116.
Schech, S. (2014). Silent Bargain or Rural Cosmopolitanism? Refugee Settlement in Regional Australia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(4), 601–618.
Shepherd, D. A., Saade, F. P., & Wincent, J. (2020). How to circumvent adversity? Refugee-entrepreneurs’ resilience in the face of substantial and persistent adversity. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.06.001
Stilwell, F. (2003). Refugees in a region: Afghans in Young, NSW. Urban Policy and Research, 21(3), 235–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/0811114032000113635
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2002). Refugee resettlement: an international handbook to guide reception and integration (Putting Principles into Practice, Part One) [Online]. Accessed December 4, 2020, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/protection/resettlement/4a2cfe336/refugee-resettlement-international-handbook-guide-reception-integration.html
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2017). Figures at a glance. ‘[W]e are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. An unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18’ [Online]. Accessed May 5, 2017, from http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2018). Global trends: forced displacement in 2017 [Online]. Accessed September 2, 2020, from https://www.unhcr.org/5b27be547.pdf
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2019). Worldwide displacement tops 70 million, UN refugee chief urges greater solidarity in response [Online]. Accessed September 2, 2020, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2019/6/5d03b22b4/worldwide-displacement-tops-70-million-un-refugee-chief-urges-greater-solidarity
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2020a). Figures at a glance [Online]. Accessed September 2, 2020, from https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2020b). Global trends: forced displacement in 2019 [Online]. Accessed September 2, 2020, from https://www.unhcr.org/5b27be547.pdf
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2021). Dadaab Refugee Complex [Online]. Accessed February 2, 2021, from https://www.unhcr.org/ke/dadaab-refugee-complex
van Kooy, J. (2016). Refugee women as entrepreneurs in Australia. Forced Migration Review, 53, 71–73.
Viviani, N., Coughlan, J., & Rowland, T. (1993). Indo-Chinese in Australia: the issues of unemployment and residential concentration. Australian Government Publishing Service.
Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H., & Ward, R. (1990). Ethnic entrepreneurs: immigrant business in industrial societies. Sage.
Wauters, B., & Lambrecht, J. (2006). Humanitarian immigrant entrepreneurship in Belgium: potential and practice. The International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 2(4), 509–525.
Wauters, B., & Lambrecht, J. (2008). Barriers to refugee entrepreneurship in Belgium: towards an explanatory model. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(6), 895–915.
Westoby, P., & Ingamells, A. (2010). A critically informed perspective of working with resettling refugee groups in Australia. British Journal of Social Work, 40, 1759–1776.
Zohry, A. (2005). Cairo: a transit city for migrants and African refugees [Conference presentation]. Colloque: Circulations migratoires et reconfigurations territoriales entre l’Afrique noire et l’Afrique du Nord, CEDEJ, Cairo, Egypt.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18042-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-18041-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-18042-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)