Paper short abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the values associated to refugee background women's entrepreneurship. In this paper I describe how refugee background women are coming up with their own solutions to livelihood issues and discuss the value entrepreneurship offers to refugee background women themselves.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the values associated to refugee background women's entrepreneurship. Refugees are not chosen under the economic logic of migration and therefore are considered to be a separate category of migration. Refugees are chosen because of legal obligations following humanitarian logic and should therefore be considered according to the forced circumstances of their movement. Studies on refugee entrepreneurship are creating evidence that rather than representing a burden or threat to host societies, as sometimes political discourses may imply, refugees are likely to make positive contributions to the economic life of host countries. The multidisciplinary field of refugee studies is rather policy focused and place much emphasis on the value of refugees to host societies. Alternatively, in this paper, I discuss the value entrepreneurship offers to refugee background women themselves. I present the findings of my multi-sited ethnographic research with refugee background women's entrepreneurs in Brazil and in Australia. I describe how refugee background women are coming up with their own solutions to livelihood issues, especially through informal economy. I then argue that women's income generating practices contain political value and can be interpreted as everyday acts of defiance to integration policies prescriptions, hence, restoring value to refugee women's political and biographical lives.