Refai, D orcid.org/0000-0001-6805-7466 and McElwee, G (2023) Refugee Subentrepreneurship: The Emergence of a Liquid Cage. Work, Employment and Society, 37 (4). pp. 1032-1051. ISSN 0950-0170
Abstract
This article conceptualises refugees’ endeavours for upward social mobility through subentrepreneurship. Subentrepreneurship refers to various self-employment forms that are undeclared to relevant authorities to escape superimposed historical, temporal, spatial, institutional and social contexts, which constrain actors’ entrepreneurial activities. Using a mixed theoretical underpinning combining Mixed Embeddedness (ME) with Weber’s Iron Cage of Rationality (ICR), we signify liquidity of refugee subentrepreneurship, which is neither linear nor long-term rational. A liquid cage is envisaged to allow more freedom as refugees become embedded within intersections between transformative journeys and Constrained Institutional Contexts (CICs). This new theorising signifies a pronounced emphasis on agency whereby refugees cleverly contemplate implicit skills (i.e. unrecognised or downgraded skills), opportunities and processes to escape CICs. The article adds clarity as to how contexts become part of the production of entrepreneurial actions through two-way interactions that promote liquidity, enabling a strong foundation for future research exploring subentrepreneurship.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | administration based on discipline, agency, constrained entrepreneurship, Iron Cage of Rationality, Max Weber, Mixed Embeddedness, refugees, subentrepreneurship |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Enterprise & Entrepreneurship (LUBS) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Leverhulme Trust SRG1819\191522 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2021 13:01 |
Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2024 14:01 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/09500170211062817 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:180102 |
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