Refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs
Immigrant entrepreneurs and refugee entrepreneurship appear on 13 recent papers, while immigration as a topic is rising fast in the economics journals. Millions of recent refugees and migrants have started businesses. Do their firms grow, hire natives and survive, and which policies (work permits, credit, recognition of qualifications) make the difference?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, "immigrant entrepreneurs" appears on 6 papers, "immigrant entrepreneurship" on 4 and "refugee entrepreneurship" on 3, while papers with any immigration keyword rose to 42 in July–September 2026 from about 30 per quarter earlier. Sixteen of the 73 papers with an immigrant or diaspora keyword also carry an entrepreneurship, startup, self-employment or founder keyword.
Questions
- Do businesses started by recent refugees (Ukrainians in Europe, Syrians in Turkey and Germany, Venezuelans in Latin America) survive and grow at the same rate as natives' businesses of the same type?
- Does faster access to work permits and bank accounts raise business formation, and does it reduce informal work?
- Do immigrant-founded firms hire natives, and in which sectors?
Data that could help
Business registers with founder nationality, refugee registration data, and employer-employee records.
Next step
Compare business registrations by Ukrainian nationals across EU countries with different speeds of work permit access since 2022.