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Entrepreneurship in constrained immigration contexts – the liminal integration of Syrian refugees
Abstract
Drawing on a qualitative study of Syrian refugees in constrained immigration contexts in the North of England, this article explores refugees’ perceptions of integration and social exclusion through entrepreneurship. By exploring refugee experiences as they engage in entrepreneurship programmes or business start-ups, our findings highlight a divide among refugees with the means to start-up businesses successfully and those without. The article contributes to understanding entrepreneurship as a tool for refugees that indicates dyadic outcomes of idiosyncratic integration among equipped refugees and liminal integration among vulnerable refugees. The article extends our appreciation of the nuance in entrepreneurship, and develops liminality debates by stressing the transformative nature of refugee journeys that involve cross-domain transitions characterized by multiple separations. We call for the acknowledgement of refugee heterogeneity in neoliberal economies in ways that encompass holistic views of integration beyond the current focus on economic contributions at the expense of all else.
... The study identified significant gaps in auditing, monitoring, and analyzing the negative impacts on these businesses. In the same context, Refai et al. (2024) highlighted the challenges faced by small and medium-sized business owners in northern England and their impact on Syrian entrepreneurs. ...
This paper examines the disparity between male and female Syrian university students in enhancing intellectual awareness and developing entrepreneurial skills in the charitable sector. It explores how these influential groups can contribute to activating the roles of institutions and individuals in serving society humanely. The study's hypotheses were based on variables such as entrepreneurial intentions, self-efficacy, perceived social support, moral obligation, and empathy. Results support the existence of gender differences among private university students. Findings reveal that many Syrians have the potential and strong desire to become social entrepreneurs despite facing significant economic and social challenges. The study also underscores the urgent need for systematic education for those addressing social issues in Syria. It recommends that Syrian educational institutions incorporate courses on social entrepreneurship, possibly through relevant elective courses.
... The study identified significant gaps in auditing, monitoring, and analyzing the negative impacts on these businesses. In the same context, Refai et al. (2024) highlighted the challenges faced by small and medium-sized business owners in northern England and their impact on Syrian entrepreneurs. ...
... In contrast, non-inclusive EEs (Hameed et al., 2023) refer to environments that fail to provide equal opportunities and support for all entrepreneurs (Bolzani and Mizzau, 2019). The literature primarily emphasises the positive aspects of EEs, leaving a significant gap in understanding their constraints, especially concerning marginalised communities (Refai et al., 2024). ...
Purpose
The study aims to explore the entrepreneurial agency, focusing on migrant entrepreneurs’ ability to reshape societal structures and initiate endeavours despite limitations in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) with constraints.
Design/methodology/approach
Through 23 qualitative interviews in an EE with constraints and using a grounded theory-inspired abductive approach, the study uncovers coping mechanisms and responses to barriers and imitations and explores entrepreneurial agency within these EEs.
Findings
The findings show that migrant entrepreneurs overcome constraints through a bricolage approach involving seizing opportunities, leveraging family and friend networks, collaborating strategically, adapting and innovating. Moreover, they exhibit a strong “entrepreneurial gene”, displaying resilience and determination to succeed despite challenges.
Research limitations/implications
Interviewees’ subjective perceptions and language barriers may bias the results due to the narrow spatial focus. Advancing the understanding of entrepreneurial agency in EEs with constraints helps practitioners design training programmes fostering adaptive capabilities and forward-thinking mindsets. At the same time, ecosystem actors can implement inclusive practices and strategies to mitigate regulatory hurdles, promote cultural competence and facilitate collaborative initiatives among entrepreneurs.
Originality/value
Delving into the entrepreneurial agency of migrant entrepreneurs reveals the importance of inclusive EEs in fully exploiting migrant entrepreneurs’ economic and societal value.
... How particular forms of agency materialise in response to these structural level variables is an important line of inquiry. Likewise, how variables like immigration (Refai et al., 2023) and ethnicity (Giazitzoglu and Korede, 2023) create rules and norms for entrepreneurswhich impact the way they expression agencyis a line of questioning that should be pursued, with phenomenological voices providing rich insights into these lines of inquiry. ...
Entrepreneurs form and grow businesses in relation to the localised context around them (structure) and also through their own choices and actions (agency). In this way, structure and agency intersect in the lived experiences of entrepreneurs. The purpose of this work is to explore entrepreneurial agency in two ecosystems that, as structures, constrain entrepreneurship within them: Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) and Perth (Australia). We add to extant analysis that empirically looks at the active agency entrepreneurs participate in, as they attempt to overcome the structural level constraints they encounter. Methodologically, we draw on phenomenological data, arriving at a highly detailed insight, drawing attention to the strong local entrepreneurial communities and distinctive cognitive mindsets that entrepreneurs in the ecosystems we study have agentically developed and cultivated. We suggest how future analysis of entrepreneurial agency may unfold and consider the implications of our insight from a policy implementation perspective.
... While refugees' entrepreneurial motivation and challenges in the camp are generally unique, resource and market constraints characterize not only refugee camp entrepreneurs but also entrepreneurs in various constrained contexts (Refai, Lever, and Haloub 2024). The most unique contextual aspect of a refugee camp is that it is a liminal space and that refugees' liminality can last for a prolonged period. ...
Refugees fleeing the Russian-Ukrainian war after receiving temporary protection visas in Czechia, which allowed free access to the labour market, found themselves in an ambiguous position between ‘refugees’ and ‘workers’. The new arrivals were mostly women with above-average education, but for a year or more after their arrival they were still working predominantly in jobs that were described as low-skilled. The aim of the article is to understand under what conditions temporary protection visa holders sought work, what jobs were available to them, and how the broader institutional framework shaped their employment trajectories, particularly in relation to their qualifications. Based on biographical narrative interviews with the temporary protection holders, the article shows that only people who received significant and specific support in the area of social reproduction outside of the general support of the Czech state were able to gain more time, which was a key source of their ability to try to get a job that was more in line with their personal aspirations. The paper contributes to the debate on the conditions under which migrants are able (or unable) to acquire skilled work by highlighting the dynamics of social reproduction of skill.
Forced displacement drastically changes the nature of refugees’ connection to their home countries and requires them to build new ties to their host countries. While refugees undergo the dynamic transformation of their embeddedness after arriving in host countries, previous studies on refugee entrepreneurship have not sufficiently examined the dynamic and procedural nature of refugees’ embeddedness and its influence on their entrepreneurial activities. This study seeks to understand how the process of embedding influences refugees’ resource mobilization in their entrepreneurial activities. Based on 20 interviews with refugee entrepreneurs in Germany, this study revealed that forced detachment from home-country contexts led to a loss of certain resources while simultaneously creating opportunities for refugees to develop resources by building new connections. This study challenges the conventional structural deterministic approach of mixed embeddedness and theorizes disembedding and re-embedding processes of refugee entrepreneurs. The findings suggest that these processes require a cognitive process on the part of entrepreneurial agents to become aware of a loss of resources and to reinterpret the value of their resources. Furthermore, this paper discusses how these processes constrain and enable refugees’ access to resources. The findings offer implications for policymakers of refugee-hosting countries and refugee support organizations.
This paper examines how forcibly displaced people cope with prolonged liminality through identity work. Our paper is based on a longitudinal multiple case study of women refugees who fled Syria and experienced liminality in Amman-Jordan, the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan and the United Kingdom. We contribute to the liminality literature by demonstrating how forcibly displaced people respond to extreme structural constraints and maintain cognitive control over their sense of self during liminality with an end date that is unknown. We develop the concept of liminality by illustrating how the actors were pushed into a state of ‘indeterminate liminality’ and coped by co-constructing it through three forms of identity work – recomposing conflicting memories, reclaiming existence and repositioning tradition. This enabled them to stretch the boundaries of indeterminate liminality, symbolically restore their familiar past and narratively construct a meaningful future.
In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants, this article argues that the hostile environment is a specific policy approach, and one with profound significance for the UK’s border practices. We trace the ‘hostile environment’ phrase, exposing its origins in other policy realms, charting its evolution into immigration, identifying the key components and critically reviewing the corresponding legislation. The article analyses the impact and consequences of the hostile environment, appraising the costs to public health and safety, the public purse, individual vulnerability and marginalisation, and wider social relations. We conclude by identifying the fundamental flaws of the policy approach, arguing that they led to the 2018 Windrush scandal and risk creating similar problems for European Economic Area nationals after Brexit.
Recognizing the importance of refugees as potential entrepreneurs was the main reason that impelled the launch of small business start-up programmes. In Britain, The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (TERN) was the principal institution concerned with refugees as potential entrepreneurs, whereas in Australia, the programme was run by the Ignite Small Business Start-Ups. The research question was based on investigating to what extent the British initiative programmes are immersed in supporting refugees’ transformation into entrepreneurs, and to answer this question the researcher investigated how these programmes provide funds, training, and technical assistance. To place this in context, we compared the case of Britain with what has been achieved in Australia where the first worldwide experimental programme was applied. The aim of this comparison was to draw any lessons learned that could profitability be considered by the British programmes. Data was abstracted from the annual reports, and in addition, interviews conducted with the principals to ask about the size of loans granted, dates of loans, type of projects and the number of loans. It was noticeable that Ignite and TERN took a great interest in training, consulting, and advising their applicants. Both programmes were similar, even in number of beneficiaries. However, in Britain there was more interest in offering loans to potential entrepreneurs, especially the finance offered by the New Enterprise Allowance (NEA). Moreover, some businesses have been distinguished in their achievements, including such well-run successes as Dama Cheese and Fagee Fashion. On the other hand, the Start Up Loan Company offered financing compatible with the principles of Islamic Sharia which encourages more refugees to ask for finance.
In the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees. Through a focus on Jordan's Za‘tari refugee camp, which has been deemed a showcase for refugees’ ‘entrepreneurship’, this article argues that the designation of Syrian refugees as ‘entrepreneurs’ is a positioning of Syrians within colonial hierarchies of race that pervade humanitarian work. For many humanitarian workers in Jordan, Syrians' ‘entrepreneurship’ distinguishes them from ‘African’ refugees, who are imagined as passive, impoverished, and dependent on humanitarian largesse. Without explicit racial comparisons, humanitarian agencies simultaneously market Syrian refugees online as ‘entrepreneurs’, to enable them to be perceived as closer to whiteness, and to thereby render them more acceptable to Western audiences and donors, who are imagined as white. This article extends scholarly understandings of the understudied relationship between race and humanitarianism. Furthermore, it asks critical questions about the political work and effects of vision of the ‘refugee entrepreneur’, which it locates within the context of the increasingly neoliberalised refugee regime. ‘Refugee entrepreneurs’ do not need political support and solidarity, but to be allowed to embrace the forces of free-market capitalism.
This paper examines the identity work of a budding entrepreneur through a longitudinal case study based on his ongoing personal reflections as he tries to construct an entrepreneurial life. In particular, we investigate the role of emotional reflexivity and liminality, concepts that give us analytical purchase in exploring the complex dynamics of this identity work. The liminal condition of multiple identity positions enables our informant to experiment with and integrate several parallel identity narratives as he tries on socio-political constructions of 'the entrepreneur' for size; and it is the permanence of the liminal condition that makes emotional reflexivity necessary in order to handle both the creative potential and the stresses of liminality. The analysis of our entrepreneur's email diaries thus allows us to formulate a conceptual explanation which foregrounds the dynamic role emotional reflexivity plays in identity work within more or less permanent liminal conditions. 2
Recent research views the proliferation of citizenship-by-investment schemes primarily as a manifestation of the commodification of citizenship by states succumbing to the logic of the market. I argue that these schemes exceed mere processes of commodification. They are part of a neoliberal political economy of belonging. This political economy prompts states to include and exclude migrants according to their endowment of human, financial, economic, and emotional capital. I show how the growing opportunities for wealthy and talented migrants to move across borders, the opening of humanitarian corridors for particularly vulnerable refugees, and the hardening of borders for “ordinary” refugees and undocumented migrants all stem from the same neoliberal rationality of government. In doing so, I challenge mainstream understandings of neoliberalism as a process of commodification characterized by the “retreat of the state” and “domination of the market.” I approach neoliberalism as a process of economization, which disseminates the model of the market to all spheres of human activity, even where money is not at stake. Neoliberal economization turns states and individuals into entrepreneurial actors that attempt to maximize their value, not just in economic and financial but also in moral and emotional terms. This process, I conclude, undermines political notions of citizenship grounded in reciprocity, equality, and solidarity, not by replacing these principles with economic ones but by rewriting these principles in economic terms.
This paper contributes to creative entrepreneurship studies through exploring ‘liminal entrepreneuring’, i.e., the organization-creation entrepreneurial practices and narratives of individuals living in precarious conditions. Drawing on a processual approach to entrepreneurship and Turner’s liminality concept, we study the transition from un(der)employment to entrepreneurship of 50 nascent necessity entrepreneurs (NNEs) in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The paper asks how these agents develop creative entrepreneuring practices in their efforts to overcome their condition of ‘necessity’. The analysis shows how, in their everyday liminal entrepreneuring, NNEs disassemble their identities and social positions, experiment with new relationships and alternative visions of themselves, and (re)connect with entrepreneuring ideas and practices in a new way, using imagination and organization-creation practices to reconstruct both self and context in the process. The results question and expand the notion of entrepreneuring in times of socioeconomic stress
In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next.
The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigration. The authors set out to explore the effects of such performances: on policy, on public debate, on pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. This book presents their findings, and provides insights into the practice of conducting research on such a charged and sensitive topic.
The e-book is online! http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=625583
OPEN ACCESS: available to read online www.oapen.org/search?identifier=625583
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526113221/
This article examines the role of migrant workers in meat-processing factories in the UK. Drawing on materials from mixed methods research in a number of case study towns across Wales, we explore the structural and spatial processes that position migrant workers as outsiders. While state policy and immigration controls are often presented as a way of protecting migrant workers from work-based exploitation and ensuring jobs for British workers, our research highlights that the situation ‘on the ground’ is more complex. We argue that ‘self-exploitation’ among the migrant workforce is linked to the strategies of employers and the organisation of work, and that hyper-flexible work patterns have reinforced the spatial and social invisibilities of migrant workers in this sector. While this creates problems for migrant workers, we conclude that it is beneficial to supermarkets looking to supply consumers with the regular supply of cheap food to which they have become accustomed. Keywords civilising process, invisibility, liminality, meat processing, migrant workers, outsiders, Wales
Through our grounded theory qualitative research, we explore how women begin to construct and react to images of possible multiple selves as professionals and mothers during the liminal period of pregnancy. Our study makes a contribution to identity transition scholarship by introducing and exploring the intricacies of cross-domain identity transitions, which we define as those identity transitions that occur when an individual's established work identity must be adapted to be integrated with a change in a nonwork identity (e.g., becoming a mother). Our work also contributes to workfamily scholarship by demonstrating how women begin to experience and address inherent conflicts and enrichments between their maternal and professional identities during pregnancy, long before a child is born. We do so by demonstrating how organizational and personal context color the vision a woman builds of her possible multiple selves as mother and professional.
Critique can be located anthropologically in liminality, particularly the experience of communitas wherein everything is open to question and structures appear as external and meaningless. Rather than an intellectual preserve or an individual achievement, I argue that critique emerges from crises; that it diffuses proliferates and extends these liminal events and can be observed in contemporary politics, economics, media and everyday life. This anthropology of critique is situated alongside the emergent sociology of critique of Boltanski and others, and is historically grounded within chronic crises in modernity characterized by Szakolczai as 'permanent liminality'. Thus, modernity is constituted by critique and has become, amongst other things, a critical society. © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
In recent years, organization studies have become increasingly aware of the concept of liminality. In our review and critique of this reception of liminality in organization studies, we emphasize that liminality involves a fundamental suspension of ordinary social structures. Although the prevailing use of the concept in anthropology as well as in organization studies has conceptualized liminality as a temporary state, we focus on permanent liminality. Yet the idea of permanent liminality leads to an inevitable paradox, because the concept, by
definition, is a temporary state. Conceptualizing liminality as a constant state of social limbo, we show that the paradox in permanent liminality stems from the impossibility of drawing clear distinctions between different social spheres, especially as they apply to modern work–life. Examining a case study about a management consultant, we illustrate the paradox of liminality in terms of a zone of indistinction between work and life as it is reflected in an empirical selfnarrative about a consultancy ‘lifestyle’. We further link these findings to a possible transition from disciplinary societies to societies of control.
In this paper, we develop a process model of trajectory shifts in institutional entrepreneurship. We focus on the liminal periods experienced by institutional entrepreneurs when they, unlike the rest of the organization, recognize limits in the present and seek to shift a familiar past into an unfamiliar and uncertain future. Such periods involve a situation where the new possible future, not yet fully formed, exists side-by-side with established innovation trajectories. Trajectory shifts are moments of truth for institutional entrepreneurs, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms of how entrepreneurs reflectively deal with liminality to conceive and bring forth new innovation trajectories. Our in-depth case study research at CarCorp traces three such mechanisms (reflective dissension, imaginative projection, and eliminatory exploration) and builds the basis for understanding the liminality of trajectory shifts. The paper offers theoretical implications for the institutional entrepreneurship literature.
Harnessing entrepreneurship in deprived urban neighbourhoods (DUNs) is a key aspect of enterprise development policy. The aim of this article is to explore the barriers to entrepreneurship in DUNs, and how policy can help tackle these barriers. To do this, it reports the results of a face-to-face survey with 459 respondents and a further 18 in-depth follow-up interviews with those identifying themselves as entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs in the Leeds Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) area. This provides evidence that individuals living in these DUNs face both direct barriers to engaging in entrepreneurial endeavour, such as lack of self-belief and confidence, and lack of affordable workspace, as well as indirect barriers such as perceptions of place, fear of crime and financial lending hurdles. The article concludes by arguing for a holistic policy approach towards harnessing entrepreneurship in DUNs that tackles not only the direct but also the indirect barriers to entrepreneurship.
This paper offers a revised understanding of intentional cultural change. In contrast to prevailing accounts, we suggest that such change can take place in the absence of initiating jolts, may be infused in everyday organizational life, and led by insiders who need not hold hierarchical power. Drawing on data from field studies and in-depth interviews, we develop a model of cultural change in which everyday occurrences such as meetings or workshops are constructed symbolically as “liminal” phenomena, bracketed from yet connected to everyday action in the organization. The construction of these occurrences as liminal illuminates the symbolic realm, creating possibilities for people to experiment with new cultural resources and invite different interpretations that hold potential for altering the cultural order. Our analyses contribute to the literature on culture by developing liminality, a process that brings forward the symbolic and invites recombination, as a cultural explanation of cultural change, to complement prevailing political or social structural explanations. We discuss implications and boundary conditions for this type of intentional cultural change.
The paper proposes the value of theatricality as an addition conceptual tool to aid analysis and understanding of the entrepreneurial process. It explores the application of dramatism and dramaturgy and argues that the application is a useful addition to our repertoire. In particular, the idea of spanning the boundaries of space and time, of truth and fiction, the liminality, of entrepreneurship lends itself to such theatrical analysis. This allows a fuller appreciation of the entrepreneurial act in the duality of concepts of the world as stage and the world as staged. The metaphors of theatricality offer an alternative medium for understanding.
This important new book provides a framework for understanding the dynamics underpinning recent unprecedented levels of migration across, and loss of life in, the Mediterranean, casting new light on the 'migration crisis' and challenging politicians, policy makers and the media to rethink their understanding of why and how people move.
This article explores the refugee journeys of Hindu Sindhi women who were displaced during the 1947 Partition, and the continuing sense of liminality, or ‘in-between-ness’, engendered by their displacement. Refugee journeys are most often framed as a transformative, connective phase between homeland and hostland. However, in these life narratives, the journey did not emerge as an ‘in-between’ connective phase but instead stretched beyond arrival and settlement in India. This article thus proposes the concept of ‘indeterminate’ liminality for the protracted refugee journey, through a focus on its spatial and temporal aspects. The idea of journey emerges as a scaffolding for these women’s life narratives, as a series of multiple movements and claims to home spaces as they navigated gendered threats and uncertainties. The connection and intersections between past and present in their life narratives demonstrate how the liminal experience is not temporally bound between departure and arrival but extends across the life course.
This article conceptualises refugees’ endeavours for upward social mobility through subentrepreneurship. Subentrepreneurship refers to various self-employment forms that are undeclared to relevant authorities to escape superimposed historical, temporal, spatial, institutional and social contexts, which constrain actors’ entrepreneurial activities. Using a mixed theoretical underpinning combining Mixed Embeddedness (ME) with Weber’s Iron Cage of Rationality (ICR), we signify liquidity of refugee subentrepreneurship, which is neither linear nor long-term rational. A liquid cage is envisaged to allow more freedom as refugees become embedded within intersections between transformative journeys and Constrained Institutional Contexts (CICs). This new theorising signifies a pronounced emphasis on agency whereby refugees cleverly contemplate implicit skills (i.e. unrecognised or downgraded skills), opportunities and processes to escape CICs. The article adds clarity as to how contexts become part of the production of entrepreneurial actions through two-way interactions that promote liquidity, enabling a strong foundation for future research exploring subentrepreneurship.
This article draws on biographical interviews with migrants to assess their aspirations and capabilities to become entrepreneurs. By augmenting mixed embeddedness’ (Kloosterman, 2010) emphasis on contextual factors with Sen’s capabilities framework, we contribute to extant sociological debates on the interaction of structure and agency, the conceptualisation of aspirations, the non-pecuniary aspects of entrepreneurship, and the role of institutions in neoliberal Britain. We argue that structural barriers drive the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs whilst at the same time limit their capabilities to do so. Entrepreneurial agency must be seen as relative autonomy, effective in strategic decision-making but limited to the weak financial position in which migrant entrepreneurs operate.
This article employs Stones’ (2005) Strong Structuration Theory (SST) to contextualise rural entrepreneurship. Through shadowing a single case study of a woman entrepreneur from rural Sweden, we propose gendered-local agency as operationalisation of active agency in practice. While SST positions active agency as a property of agents, we demonstrate it is as a property that is intertwined with both agents and structure. Simultaneously enabled and constrained, gendered-local agency itself becomes contextualised within gender-related and locality-related rural-specific interplay that modifies, preserves and challenges rural structures. The article contributes to the literature on contextualising entrepreneurship through a structuration lens by signifying gendered-local agency as a manifestation of rural-specific interplay between contexts as environments (out there) and context as constructed (through entrepreneurs). This conceptualisation proposes everyday entrepreneurship as a demonstration of agency in action, thus setting a foundation for exploring entrepreneurship through the context-specific agent-structure interplay in the rural context and others.
This article introduces the concept of collective liminality, a shared condition of heightened threat and uncertainty experienced by immigrant detainees and their families, as they wait, caught between two possible outcomes: their loved one's (temporary or permanent) release into the US or deportation. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic data collection between 2015 and 2017 that included accompanying families to visitation at three Southern California detention facilities, and in‐depth interviews with former detainees and their relatives, I demonstrate the broader “collateral consequences” that immigration detention inflicts on detainees' loved ones. I find that not only does the detained individual experience liminality, but the detention of a loved one places the family in a state of shared liminality, which is experienced at two levels: material and emotional. These hardships materialize even before the detainees' deportation and can persist even after their release back into the US. This research extends scholarship on the impacts of detention on detainees, and on the consequences of deportation for families. The concept of collective liminality highlights how immigration detention functions as a critical tool of immigrant surveillance, punishment, and exclusion.
Analysis of the large rise in the numbers of self-employed in the UK reveals high levels of in-work poverty, especially among those coming off of social security benefits. Policies that are developed to alleviate social and economic risk regularly lead to behavioural responses to perceptions about the nature of such risk and to make individuals more accountable. Informed by accounting, finance and economic theories of risk, interviews with key informants who are experiencing self-employment and poverty, along with professionals from business and community development and poverty alleviation, are used to explore the support available to new entrepreneurs. Findings include that policy push from unemployment to self-employment shifts the social risks and responsibilities of employment from state and employers to those individuals with least capacity to bear them. Measures to mitigate resource disadvantage, including the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme, are found to be wanting and inadequate for the main client groups, and fail to reduce the social and economic risks faced in starting up a new business.
Numbering over 5 million people, Palestinians comprise one of the longest-standing refugee populations in modern history. This article argues that the ongoing dispossession of Palestinian refugees is the result of the liminality they have been accorded within international law and global politics. This liminality includes Palestinians being the only refugee cohort not explicitly protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mandate; and their right to return to their homeland – one of the most widely recognised basic rights under refugee law – occluded and reframed as a matter for political negotiation with Israel. The liminality of Palestinian refugees, this article demonstrates, results from the dominant narrative concerning the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland in 1947–8; the role this narrative plays in the hegemonic discourse shaping Israeli-Palestinian relations more widely; and how this narrative and wider discourse are mutually reproducing, resulting in significant intergenerational injustice for Palestinian refugees.
This article is concerned with enterprise policy and its effectiveness when applied to those experiencing social exclusion through unemployment and poverty. In particular, the article focuses on the introduction of the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme designed to support the transition from employment to enterprise, and it explores the extent to which knowledge about previous similar schemes has been used to inform this. Findings suggest that lessons learned from previous schemes have had little impact on decisions made in recent years. Scholarly evidence of and knowledge about the relationships between social exclusion, poverty and enterprise are not referenced and this suggests that policy understanding of the connection between social exclusion, unemployment and enterprise has developed little in the time period studied.
This book establishes asylum seekers as a socially excluded group, investigating the policy of dispersing asylum seekers across the UK and providing an overview of historic and contemporary dispersal systems. It is the first book to seek to understand how asylum seekers experience the dispersal system and the impact this has on their lives. The author argues that deterrent asylum policies increase the sense of liminality experienced by individuals, challenges assumptions that asylum seekers should be socially excluded until receipt of refugee status and illustrates how they create their own sense of 'belonging' in the absence of official recognition. Academics, students, policy-makers and practitioners would all benefit from reading this book.
This paper aims to contextualise the entrepreneurial identity of Syrian refugees living outside refugee camps in Jordan. The research adopts a social lens to consider the situation Syrians find themselves in by drawing on the work of Bourdieu. A qualitative design is applied to explore the different experiences and perceptions that pervade refugee stories and the work of refugee aid agencies. By contextualising entrepreneurial identity in the Jordanian context, the paper reveals how a destabilized refugee habitus based on an embodied disposition of survivability is emerging. The paper makes an empirical and conceptual contribution by highlighting how the entrepreneurial activities of Syrian refugees are driven by their experiences of the harsh social conditions they find themselves in.
This paper seeks to identify the characteristics of refugee-entrepreneurial startups, which distinguish them from other immigrant entrepreneurial ventures. The author employed a single case analysis as a means of qualitative research into the phenomenon under study, from the perspective of social capital theory. A typical case of a refugee entrepreneur was selected based on his propensity to tell his story in a way that transparently reveals the various peculiarities of his entrepreneurial behavior. The case study involved the use of interviews with key individuals, the review of printed materials, and member checking. The findings revealed five distinctive attributes that characterized that startup and which corresponded to the three dimensions of social capital. Those attributes were: a ‘one-way-ahead’ attitude, a pseudo family business perception, collective bootstrapping, a distinct network structure, and opportunity-seizing proliferation, thereby depicting how social capital is used by refugee-entrepreneurs to maximize the pool of opportunities in their host nations.
Asylum seekers are not welcome in Europe. But why is that the case? For many scholars, the policies have become more restrictive over recent decades because the asylum seekers have changed. This change is often said to be about numbers, methods of travel, and reasons for flight. In short: we are in an age of hypermobility and states cannot cope with such volumes of ‘others’.
This book presents an alternative view, drawing on theoretical insights from Third World Approaches to International Law, post- and decolonial studies, and presenting new research on the context of the British Empire. The text highlights the fact that since the early 1990s, for the first time, the majority of asylum seekers originate from countries outside of Europe, countries which until 30-60 years ago were under colonial rule. Policies which address asylum seekers must, the book argues, be understood not only as part of a global hypermobile present, but within the context of colonial histories.
The transitional state of Southeast Asian refugees in refugee camps has, since the late 1970s, been viewed by the international community as an opportune time to prepare refugees for resettlement in western countries. Americans have established extensive programs in language training and cultural orientation to transform refugees into economically self-sufficient and well-adjusted members of the United States. An anthropological perspective of one specific processing center suggests that the liminality of refugess is reinforced by refugee camp activities. -from Author
Transitions in work memberships, relationships, and roles can result in work-related identity loss. This article contributes to a growing body of research examining identity transitions by providing a dynamic model to explain these identity losses. Our model incorporates principles from identity research and grief research to predict how employees will react to the loss of a work-related identity. We conceptualize the transition period as one of liminality, during which individuals engage in sensemaking and emotion regulation to determine who they were and who they are becoming. Specifically, the process involves cognitive and emotional processing in two domains: loss orientation and restoration orientation. We propose that emotions experienced ( and their associated regulatory foci) are critical for determining whether individuals experience adaptive or maladaptive identity-related outcomes.
Using grounded theory as an example, this paper examines three methodological questions that are generally applicable to all qualitative methods. How should the usual scientific canons be reinterpreted for qualitative research? How should researchers report the procedures and canons used in their research? What evaluative criteria should be used in judging the research products? The basic argument we propose is that the criteria should be adapted to fit the procedures of the method. We demonstrate how we have done this with grounded theory and suggest criteria for evaluating studies done in this mode. We suggest that other qualitative researchers might be similarly specific about their procedures and evaluative criteria.
Using grounded theory as an example, this paper examines three methodological questions that are generally applicable to all qualitative methods. How should the usual scientific canons be reinterpreted for qualitative research? How should researchers report the procedures and canons used in their research? What evaluative criteria should be used in judging the research products? We propose that the criteria should be adapted to fit the procedures of the method. We demonstrate how this can be done for grounded theory and suggest criteria for evaluating studies following this approach. We argue that other qualitative researchers might be similarly specific about their procedures and evaluative criteria.
Notions of social inclusion and the need to combat social exclusion have become popular areas of attention in academic and policy circles. The importance of small firms and entrepreneurship as a means to raising inclusion has been emphasized in these new agendas. A priori, there are a number of reasons why small businesses may be regarded as providing opportunities for social inclusion. However, in this paper we argue that the recent expectations of the role of small firms and entrepreneurship in combating social exclusion are over optimistic. Some of the assumptions on which these expectations are based are questioned. Instead, we suggest that attention should start by a clearer understanding of the concept of social exclusion. Individual economic strategies, in the form of small business activity, can make some contribution but because of the complex multidimensional nature of social exclusion, over-inflated claims should be avoided. When these claims are not achieved there may be a danger of a policy backlash against the promotion of business ownership and disaffection amongst those who fail to realize their goals. This paper draws on secondary evidence and concludes with implications for policy and suggestions for further research.
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
- A Betts
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- Betts A.
Betts, A., and P. Collier. 2017. Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. London: Penguin Books.
How Entrepreneurship is Transforming the Lives of Resettled Refugees
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CFE. 2018. "How Entrepreneurship is Transforming the Lives of Resettled Refugees." Centre for Entrepreneurs [Online].
Hostile Environment: The UK Government's Draconian Immigration Policy Explained
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Rule Britannia and the End of Empire
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