Refugee Entrepreneurship : Towards a Nuanced Understanding of the Phenomenon

Forced cross-border migration and entrepreneurship have persisted as perennial themes throughout the annals of human history. However, the recent ‘refugee crisis’ has sparked a resurgence of interest in their interplay under the rubric of ‘refugee entrepreneurship’. While its territory is not entirely uncharted, a surge in scholarly urgency and heightened scientific production have significantly expanded the corpus of refugee entrepreneurshipliterature. Yet, despite the contributions to date, this research area faces several challenges—spanning domain-specific and methodological issues to theoretical concerns—calling for further scholarly endeavour.This thesis ventures into this emerging yet rapidly progressing research area, providing a nuanced investigation of the phenomenon and unravelling its complexities through a weave of systematic, methodological, theoretical, and empirical analyses across four interlinked studies. Systematically, it navigates the landscape of refugee entrepreneurship research, mapping its intellectual territory across various academic disciplines and consolidating existing knowledge. Methodologically, the thesis introduces an innovative sampling approach that pertains to the specificity of entrepreneurial refugees in terms of their ‘hidden’ nature and initial placement within the host country post-relocation. Theoretically, it offers a balanced perspective on the agency-structure dialectic, capturing the dynamics of refugee entrepreneurship through the interplay between refugees’ voluntary pursuit of entrepreneurship and adverse circumstances and structural constraints linked with forced migration.This dissertation is a testament to the growing recognition of refugee entrepreneurship as a specific area of scholarship, underscoring its contributions to research, policy, and practice. Through its comprehensive analysis, this volume lays the groundwork for further investigations, striving for a deeper understanding of this intricate phenomenon

Wound Healing and Antioxidant Properties of 80% Methanol Leaf Extract of Verbascum sinaiticum (Scrophulariaceae):An Ethiopian Medicinal Plant

Wounds account for severe morbidity, socioeconomic distress, and mortality around the globe. For several years, various herbal products are used to expedite and augment the innate wound healing process. In Ethiopian folkloric medicine, Verbascum sinaiticum L. (V. sinaiticum) is commonly applied as a wound-healing agent. The present study investigated the potential wound healing and antioxidant properties of hydroalcoholic leaf extract of V. sinaiticum. The 80% methanol extract, formulated as 5% (w/w) and 10% (w/w) ointments, was evaluated in excision and incision wound models using nitrofurazone and simple ointment as positive and negative controls, respectively. Parameters such as wound contraction, period of epithelialization, and tensile strength were determined. Moreover, its in vitro antioxidant property was evaluated using a DPPH assay. In the excision model, both doses (5% and 10% w/w) of the extract showed a significant (p<0.001) wound healing efficacy compared to the negative control as evidenced by enhanced wound contraction rate and shorter epithelialization time records. In the incision model, the lower dose (5% w/w) ointment formulation of the extract exhibited the maximum increment in tensile strength (85.6%) that was significant (p<0.001) compared to negative and untreated controls. Animals treated with 5% w/w ointment, furthermore, showed a significantly (p<0.05) higher percentage of tensile strength than nitrofurazone treated ones. Moreover, the hydroalcoholic extract of the plant showed a noticeable free radical scavenging property. The result of the present study upholds the folkloric use of V. sinaiticum in the treatment of wounds

Refugee entrepreneurship : systematic and thematic analyses and a research agenda

Refugee entrepreneurship has recently entailed increased scholarly mobilization and drastic growth in the volume of salient scientific research. However, this emerging research stream is marked by fragmentation and incoherence, primarily due to the multidisciplinary and context-specific nature of its extant findings. While this process is natural for emerging fields, the current state of research necessitates a comprehensive review, synthesis, and organization of its subject matter. Hence, this study systematically and thematically explores the landscape of refugee entrepreneurship research and its intellectual territory across diverse disciplines to take stock of a repository of the literature and trace its emergence, nature, and development. By analyzing 131 publications, this paper thus lays a collective research foundation for building a coherent theory, making incremental adjustments, and forming the ontological and epistemological basis for refugee entrepreneurship research. The study also identifies gaps in the literature and opens pathways for future scholarly endeavors

Taking stock and moving forward in research on refugee entrepreneurship : A systematic review of the current field and future research directions

Problem: Refugee entrepreneurship has recently garnered a growing academic and political interest around the world. The rate of scientific publication has soared in the last few years due to the scholarly urgency on the topic following the ‘global refugee crises’. Nevertheless, the research field is currently underdeveloped with existing knowledge dispersed across various and often disconnected disciplines, which adopt different concepts, sample characteristics and methodologies. This makes it complex for interested scholars to find guidance in identifying compelling research opportunities. Purpose: This paper is a formative academic endeavour to systematically overview the current knowledge on the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship and provides direction for future developments. The rationalisation for this effort stems from the recurrent calls for establishing the scientific domain of ‘refugee entrepreneurship’ as its own field of scholarship. Methodology: The methodological framework, that is, systematic review (Tranfield et al., 2003), includes a total of 90 academic papers dealing with entrepreneurial self-employment and small business activities of refugees since the mid-1980s, when the first scholarly efforts on the topic emerged. Findings: The analysis reveals that current research is characterized by an over-representation of social science scholars, a large use of ethnographic and descriptive methods, limited theorisation and strong reliance on ethnic minority entrepreneurship theories. The absence of few influential outlets for disseminating results and limited efforts of collaboration among scholars have resulted in a lack of coherent knowledge about refugee entrepreneurship. The domination of social scientists has particularly affected the research focus and direction. While a significant body of the literature focuses on the characteristics and sociocultural and structural determinants of refugee entrepreneur/ship, very little is known regarding entrepreneurial decisions, actions and processes. Originality/value: This paper provides a research ground that will serve to build meaningful theory, identify coherent assumptions and questions and form the ontological and epistemological base for the scientific domain of ‘refugee entrepreneurship’. Research direction: Future research benefits from the focus on the entrepreneurial agency, behaviour and process of refugees

Entrepreneurial Beliefs of Refugees : It’s Not Where They’re From, But Where They Go

This paper investigates whether structuralist and culturalist approaches to migrant entrepreneurship can explain the early-stage entrepreneurship of recently arrived refugees. Specifically, we empirically test three hypotheses on how refugees’ current geographical location and ethnic origin matter for their entrepreneurial beliefs, which provide the cognitive and affective foundations for entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour. The sample comprises 884 observations collected from working-age refugees from four different ethnic backgrounds recently relocated to four Austrian and seven Swedish cities. We find that the location where refugees resettle in the aftermath of their forced migration is relevant to refugee entrepreneurship, but their country of origin is not. Hence, the arguments made by advocates of structural theory are more applicable to understanding refugee entrepreneurship than arguments associated with cultural theory. We discuss implications for theory, policy and practice, and suggest avenues for future research

Entrepreneurial learning in venture acceleration programs

This study aims to better understand entrepreneurial learning in the context of venture acceleration programs.A qualitative research strategy was used based on multiple in-depth interviews with 21 lead entrepreneurs complemented with participatory observations and secondary sources. The data were inductively analysed following the Gioia methodology (Gioia et al., 2012).The authors build on experiential learning theory to generate a process-focussed model exploring the learning dynamics that venture acceleration programs can facilitate. In this model, the authors identify three catalysts that trigger processes of experiential learning and two contingencies that alleviate the effects of the catalysts on learning outcomes. The findings suggest that the potential of venture acceleration programs to be effective learning environments pends on the presence and quality of these catalysts and contingencies.The findings provide novel insights on how venture acceleration programs trigger entrepreneurial learning, thereby offering a deeper understanding of the learning dynamics in this setting