Entrepreneurial identity and business success: Former refugee women’s navigation of (in)visibility paradoxes

Nadeera Ranabahu, Huibert P. de Vries and Zhiyan Basharati

Journal of Management & Organization, 2025, vol. 31, issue 4, 1958-1973

Abstract: Former refugee women’s entrepreneurial journeys are embedded in social, cultural, and legal environments in their home, transition, and host countries. Their multiple context embeddedness creates contradictions and identity issues. Thus, women adopt behaviours that make them visible or invisible simultaneously when navigating these contradictions. Using intersectionality and translocational positionality lenses, this study explored this phenomenon. We collected narrative data using semi-structured interviews from refugee women resettled in New Zealand. The findings illustrate that multi-country social processes, that is, ‘translocational’ experiences, create (in)visibility paradoxes for women entrepreneurs. Women dynamically create visibility for themselves through reliance on or defiance of ethnic, cultural or refugee identities in their ventures and by creating a business identity aligning with the host country’s values. In contrast, cultural conformity and playing a role behind the ‘shopfront’ make women invisible. This study synthesises these paradoxical entrepreneurial strategies, develops a conceptual framework and contributes to women’s entrepreneurial identity studies.

Date: 2025
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