Sell or Sail: Assessing Entrepreneurship and Self-Reliance Policies for Migrants and Refugees in the MENA Region

By Pablo Pastor Vidal | Issue 25

Many refugees are raising their voices against stereotypical portrayals on global platforms. In many countries, refugees have become synonymous with “burdens”. This does not come as a surprise, as international organisations and NGOs often treat refugees as burdens that need to be taken care of, rather than as human beings capable of taking care of themselves. Is that what you would want if you were in our shoes?” asks the Congolese Joyeux Mugisho. 

Following the issue of the Global Compact for Refugees of 2018, the concept of ‘burden-sharing’ has become highly used. The term is often used to refer to the need for a better repartition of refugees as more than 75% of them are hosted in low- and middle-income countries according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the result of the meetings organised by the UNHCR trying to solve the growing scale of people fleeing from persecution, conflict, violence or other human rights violations around the world. 

The refugee “problem” has become one where the less developed countries need to accept the most refugees, leaving the major crises underfunded. Due to the fact that the countries that welcome the biggest number of refugees are those developing or with more fragile economies, the needs of refugees and the local communities welcoming them become growingly more acute. Therefore, only two options remain, either donor countries increase their funding commitments, which seems unlikely, or refugees and the communities welcoming them find their own solutions. Hence, the surge of self-reliance.

Most refugees' first destinations are nearby countries, for example, Jordan or Lebanon for Syrians, creating a disproportionate burden in already collapsed systems, whereas richer countries constantly close their borders. This is known as externalisation. Given this situation, refugees are constantly looking to resettle or to arrive in countries where they can make a better living. Yet, resettlement is scarce, amounting to less than 5% of the needs of refugees in 2018. Therefore, the needs for refugees to become protected against persecution are rarely met. As a result, they are forced to look for other ways of survival in their countries of destination. If they cannot find a job, they will then resort to ‘self-reliance’, a term that is becoming more and more apparent in developmental programmes that are trying to give refugees tools to be able to exploit their own skills and abilities. 

On refugee self-reliance programmes: why are they becoming popular?

The concept of self-reliance is in itself laudable: the idea is to provide refugees with their own means of survival, to “empower” them. In other words, it is a response to the wrong perception that refugees cannot take care of themselves and that they are waiting to be saved by humanitarian organisations, and it was defended by the Oxford-based professors Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. There is even a Refugee Self-Reliance Index, that attempts to measure the capacity of refugee households to rely on their own means. As Sandhu argues, self-reliance is a relative concept, with reference to those of dependency, vulnerability, resilience, and entrepreneurship.

Yet, the reasons why and the ways refugee self-reliance is promoted leave many questions unanswered. For instance: what does “self-reliance” mean? Does it refer to the fact that refugees can take care of themselves and provide enough for their families or does it mean that refugees are solely responsible for their futures, which completely fails the standards of international protection? Mainly, this is because the concept has entrenched markets and neoliberal logics into refugee economies, without understanding the needs of local economies. Firstly, it has meant a push for formalisation. Secondly, as a result of the lack of success of formalisation, it has instilled the idea that entrepreneurship is the way to go.

Formalising work permits in highly informal economies

One of the most impactful attempts to implement self-reliance for refugees was the Jordan Compact, an agreement between international donors and the government to integrate Syrian refugees into the labour market in Jordan. The agreement brought World Bank-endorsed credit at rates that before were only available to lower-income countries. This was done with the main aim to create the conditions for the formalisation of thousands of Syrians in the hope that they would receive more than 200,000 work permits. The agreement sought to push for the establishment of special economic zones (SEZs) and the inclusion of Syrian women in specific economic sectors such as clothes and garments in the hope that this would be productive enough for selling in Europe.

Lenner and Turner have critically reviewed the deployment of the Compact. They have argued that the policy experiment has become an “indicator-oriented formalisation”; it has also mainstreamed Syrian integration replacing other groups of migrants that were already in the labour market. Most importantly, formalisation by itself has proven to be a blind measure in light of the conditions of the highly informal Jordanian market.

Advancing self-reliance by self-employment

When the refugee labour force cannot be absorbed by the labour market, many refugees then turn to entrepreneurship as a way to make their ends meet. Here, Syrians have also been portrayed as an example of highly promising and successful entrepreneurs, showing the world how everyone can become their own “leader”. Yet, what this argument misses is the fact that for many forced migrants, entrepreneurship is viewed “as a necessity”, not as an “opportunity”. 

This side of self-reliance has been less available to study and yet it seems it is growing day by day. For instance, in an attempt to create more acceptance in local communities, forcibly displaced populations are defined to be “more entrepreneurial” and to invest more than what they receive. Moreover, given the hurdles of red tape and imposed governmental barriers to find ways to work or start a business, developmental approaches are opening their doors to the entrance of the private sector. 

In the surge of self-reliance there seems to be a common denominator. Most initiatives try to give back agency to refugees, but only in a limited way, insofar as the ‘burden’ is kept in the countries of first arrival. However, this does not always create the best opportunities for them, only an image of the refugee as being successful through “entrepreneurship”. But, who can become an entrepreneur, and under which conditions? Formalisation hardly seems to be one of the factors of success and instead it creates more hurdles for refugees in informal economies.

Becoming an entrepreneur is an important goal, but it should not be forced towards refugees and migrants. This is because if refugee entrepreneurs do not succeed, they risk being seen even more as a burden, incapable of achieving the objectives posed by these programmes. Self-reliance can give back humanisation and dignity amid forced displacement, but it should not be an excuse for local governments or international donors to renounce their international responsibilities.

Pablo Pastor Vidal

I am a PhD candidate in Human Rights Law at Lund University (Sweden). I hold a Double Bachelor in Law and Political Science from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, as well as a Master of Arts in European Interdisciplinary Studies of the College of Europe in Natolin. I am co-president of the Mediterranean Youth Council and an affiliate at the Observatory of EU-MENA relations of the European Student Think Tank.