Barriers to the Entrepreneurial Process during the Refugee Crisis : Focus on Sweden

Sammanfattning: The refugee crisis has escalated significantly in Europe, becoming one of the main destinations for refugees. Sweden is one of the largest European recipients for asylum applications and was taking in the largest number of refugees in Europe in 2015 in terms of per capita; at 15 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. With this large flow of refugees into Sweden, a large number of needs arise among the refugees along with a number of challenges concerning integration. These needs and challenges could potentially become attractive business ideas and Sweden should, theoretically, be seeing a significant increase in entrepreneurial activity with a focus on these issues. However, the phenomenon that is observed is that this does not appear to be the case with this crisis. Entrepreneurial activity does not appear to have increased significantly in relation to the refugee crisis in Sweden. Why is that? What are the underlying barriers that hinder individuals from engaging in the entrepreneurial process during the refugee crisis in Sweden? This study finds that the three main barriers after having collected 52 responses are 1) no time/ other priorities, 2) capital requirements and 3) lack of information. Furthermore, many of the barriers that were identified have to do with the individuals’ reluctance to enter the entrepreneurial process. A total of 21 respondents identified such a barrier - that is 40.4% of the responses collected. If the majority of individuals in Sweden are unwilling or reluctant to present innovative ideas, then the difficulty that arises is finding an efficient solution that reaches a large part of the population.