DIY Entrepreneurship? – Self-reliance for Women Refugees in Australia

In this paper, we call for a re-examination of the self-reliance ideology based on a neoliberal perspective to make policies for refugee women's (self-)employment and integration. We use a social constructionist perspective to conduct a narrative analysis of data from the lived experience of twelve women refugee entrepreneurs. Three prominent themes emerge from the women’s own narratives of their entrepreneurial journey – self-reconstruction, social capital, and resilience. Our findings reveal the complexities of self-reconstruction and socialization as experienced by refugee women entrepreneurs – for whom “push” factors take precedence over “pull” factors with the explicit understanding that the onus is on them to survive with their own resilience. We argue that offering people hope of a new life means offering them meaningful choices, built on forms of economic activity whose sustainability over the long term is evidenced by the positive supports available to make sure economic activity succeeds.