A leading entrepreneurship specialist shone a light on the experiences of female refugees turning to business to help their families survive.

Dr Sophie Alkhaled, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Lancaster University Management School, presented her work at the Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business (RENT) Conference 2024 at Audencia Business School in Nantes, France.

Dr Alkhaled delivered a keynote address based on her decade-long research, encompassing the experiences of female Syrian refugees in camps around the Middle East as they turn to entrepreneurship to help their families survive.

“It is estimated there are millions of refugee entrepreneurs around the world, living in refugee camps and urban areas, and yet we know very little about them, particularly women refugee entrepreneurs,” said Dr Alkhaled.

“The majority of the 13.8 million Syrian refugees live in camps and urban areas of neighbouring countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt – without work permits and with dwindling international humanitarian aid. Talking to them makes you appreciate how they essentially have no means of economic survival.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) numbers forcibly displaced people worldwide at more than 100 million. It estimates there will be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.

The UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees (2018) pledges a ‘thrive not just survive’ principle. This aims to ease pressure on host countries by supporting governments in offering refugees economic pathways to building self-reliance through entrepreneurship.

Dr Alkhaled added: “In my work, I have seen a rising number of women refugee entrepreneurs, using whatever materials they have to support their family.

“The men are pressured to immediately find illegal work such as labouring or working out of sight in sweatshops or restaurant kitchens.

“The women told me they couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, so they started making money by making and selling heritage craftwork and home-kitchen cooking. This led to an important sense of national identity and campaigning for equality.

“On a national level, they should be valued as contributing to the local economy rather than just being seen as burdens on the economy.

“Entrepreneurship has bright and dark sides. On the one hand, it has empowered these women economically and allowed them to feed their families. It has also helped them mentally cope with living in never-ending limbo.

“But the darker sides can be seen in their continuous daily struggle to sustain their businesses, with a lack of training, funding, networks, resources and with various forms local exploitation due to a lack of labour rights.”

Dr Alkhaled’s work on this area can be seen in the articles Syrian women refugees: Coping with indeterminate liminality during forcible displacement and Something borrowed, something new: Challenges in using qualitative methods to study under-researched international business phenomena.