Highly Skilled Entrepreneurial Refugees: Legal and Practical Barriers and Enablers to Start Up in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article analyses how highly skilled refugees experience barriers and enablers to entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. Using the welcoming talent model, the article claims that material and procedural norms as well as the governance of support for refugee entrepreneurship in the Netherlands needs a new design. Through socio-legal research on the experiences of highly skilled Syrian refugees, private support structures and municipalities with migration, integration and welfare policies and practices, we reveal that financial independence through entrepreneurship requires not just entrepreneurial skills but meeting the right people and not running into municipalities propagating work first. Policies and practices need to be developed in which welcoming entrepreneurial (highly skilled) refugees is key. Welcoming policies and practices are to offer refugees nationwide, equally accessible, transparent support structures, and access to finance instead of barriers towards financial independence.