{"id":6073,"date":"2021-12-13T16:16:38","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T14:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/escp.eu\/thechoice\/?p=6073"},"modified":"2023-02-17T16:52:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:52:00","slug":"what-refugee-entrepreneurs-teach-us-about-growing-a-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/escp.eu\/thechoice\/choose-to-lead\/what-refugee-entrepreneurs-teach-us-about-growing-a-business\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cRefugees bring a lot to the table\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Yi Dragon Jiang<\/a> is an associate professor of entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School. Her research and teaching interests revolve around challenges met during the new venture creation processes. Yi is passionate about observing how entrepreneurs behave under uncertainty, and has worked closely with Chinese high-tech entrepreneurs and refugee entrepreneurs in Europe.<\/em> In this interview, she explains why, and why she thinks that with the proper support, they can be an asset for the countries that take them in.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"Professor<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

You recently published some research about refugee entrepreneurs. Why did you decide to study this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entrepreneurship may not suit all, but it is definitely a crucial issue for the integration into the labour market<\/strong> of the almost 7 million refugees who have made it to Europe over the past few years<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you tell us a bit more?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are success stories. Take for example Suzanna Kiliani and her husband, Nabil Attar (pictured above, right, editor\u2019s note), a software engineer who worked in banking, fled the war in Syria and eventually made it to France with their kids, where they were granted refugee status. After washing cars for a car rental company, he opened a restaurant<\/a> in 2018 which is one of the best-ranked in the town of Orl\u00e9ans and has become a poster-child of refugee-turned-entrepreneur for the UNHCR (<\/a>the UN’s refugee agency). How did he manage? The answer lies in a mix of factors: his passion for cooking (he made cheese in his cellar in Damascus), his networking at the Refugee Food Festival<\/a> organised jointly with UNHCR, as well as his will to build a new life for himself.<\/mark> These factors, which can be formalised as knowledge<\/strong> (cooking), motivation<\/strong> (willingness to start over) and social networks<\/strong>, are precisely the ones I explored with Caroline Straub, Kim Klyver and Ren\u00e9 Mauer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theory could not explain entrepreneurial success in the case of refugees, who leave behind everything, including human ties, and whose skills don’t necessarily apply in their host countries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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