What Determines the Entrepreneurial Intentions of Highly-Skilled Women with Refugee Experience? An Empirical Analysis in the Context of Sweden

Nina Lazarczyk-Bilal,Beata Glinka

doi:10.3390/admsci11010002

Abstract

One of the main challenges faced by refugee hosting states is the labour market integration of newcomers, which can be achieved to some extent through the creation of small businesses. This paper analyses the individual level determinants of the entrepreneurial intentions of highly-skilled women with refugee experience. The study adds a new perspective to the conversation about highly-skilled migrant women analysed so far, mostly as family reunion migrants joining economic migrants. It also contributes to the relatively new research on refugee entrepreneurship by adopting an unusual perspective for looking at highly skilled women. The empirical analysis embedded in the context of Sweden is two-fold. First, it is done in SPSS on the sample (N = 98) drawn from the 2017 Swedish Invandrarindex data set with the use of binary logistic regression. Second, the findings from the quantitative analysis are nuanced with the analysis of two case studies based on SSI with Syrian women having refugee experience. The results show that the gender variable does not predict the effect on entrepreneurial intentions. The findings confirm the importance of previous self-employment and leadership experience and indicate the potential importance of entrepreneurial role models, the cultural aspect of entrepreneurial intentions and the role of an encouraging environment in the host country.

Highlights

The global number of refugees, people who are forced to leave their country because of war or fear of persecution, has reached approximately 33.8 million (UNHCR 2020).Education is one of the key determinants in shaping the career trajectory of refugees.Highly skilled refugees are less likely than the non-qualified to suffer from unemployment and they are more likely to start a company after gaining their first work experience in the local labour market (Backman et al 2020)
We do a comparative study between women and men we address the research question: Under what conditions are highly-skilled women with refugee experience likely to have entrepreneurial intentions? To conduct our analysis, we draw upon the human capital theory, which focuses on individual aspects such as gender, age, level of education, qualifications and work experience (Vinogradov and Kolvereid 2007; Bach and CarrollSeguin 1986; Kooli and Muftah 2020)
Our study contributes to the intersection of three strands of literature, i.e., entrepreneurial intentions, refugee migration experience and highly-skilled migrant women

Summary

Introduction

Skilled refugees are less likely than the non-qualified to suffer from unemployment and they are more likely to start a company after gaining their first work experience in the local labour market (Backman et al 2020). Even possessing high qualifications does not necessarily result in the long-term employment of refugees (Backman et al 2020). Highly skilled refugees, often doctors and teachers, face the high risk of “deprofessionalisation” in the host country as a result of national entry requirements into the specific profession, no access to local professional networks and discrimination (Smyth 2010; Pietka-Nykaza 2015)

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Conclusion