Refugee entrepreneurship: systematic and thematic analyses and a research agenda

Abstract

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.