Refugee entrepreneurship: taking a social network view on immigrants with refugee backgrounds starting transnational businesses in Sweden

Susanne Sandberg, Rebecca Immonen and Sara Kok

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2019, vol. 36, issue 1/2, 216-241

Abstract: The global world of today is characterised by movement, both voluntarily and forced. Still few studies have focused on immigrant entrepreneurs with refugee background and how they start and run transnational businesses in their country of residence. The purposes of the paper are: 1) to identify characteristics of refugee entrepreneurs; 2) to examine how the social network is utilised for starting up and running the business. Four refugee entrepreneurs, who started business with transnational characteristics in Sweden, are studied. Findings identify a time span before becoming self-employed, an urge to start own business, strong transnational ties, importance of COR ties and knowledge of the native language and legislation, as key for refugee entrepreneurs. Through positioning refugee entrepreneurship to existing research, and by taking a social network view on transnational business of refugees, novel theoretical and empirical contributions and implications are given.

Keywords: refugee; immigrant; diaspora; transnational; international; social network; entrepreneurship; social capital; human capital. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:36:y:2019:i:1/2:p:216-241

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