Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

If your registration for this course is successful you will registered automatically for the course Perspectives on Entrepreneurship - V/Ü (Michael Gielnik, Elke Schüßler).

Mass displacement, refugee crises, and the establishment of refugee camps have become defining features of the contemporary global landscape. These contexts highlight pressing challenges of inequality, marginalization, and limited access to resources, while also serving as spaces of creativity, resilience, and entrepreneurial agency. Refugees and displaced communities engage in diverse forms of entrepreneurship, ranging from survival- and necessity-based ventures to transformative social and cultural initiatives. At the same time, refugee entrepreneurs navigate tensions between dependency and self-determination, exclusion and inclusion, and inequality and empowerment.
This seminar explores these dynamics through the lens of entrepreneurship research. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, we examine how entrepreneurial activities unfold under conditions of crisis and constraint, and how they reshape our understanding of agency, innovation, and value creation in fragile and crisis contexts.

The course aims to foster both analytical and reflective competencies. Students will:
• Analyze the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship from multiple theoretical perspectives.
• Assess how conditions of displacement and crisis shape opportunities, constraints, and meanings of entrepreneurial action.
• Critically engage with the paradoxes of entrepreneurship as both a mechanism of survival and a vehicle of empowerment.
• Reflect on how insights from refugee contexts can enrich broader debates on entrepreneurship, resilience, and social innovation.

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