"I'm not a refugee girl, call me Bella" : professional refugee women, agency, recognition, and emancipation

Dimitria Groutsis, Jock Collins, Carol Reid

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The notion of refugees as a viable source of labor to address skill shortages in the destination country’s labor market has rarely been the dominant discourse on refugee entrants. Bella’s1 lived experience as a professional woman who arrived as a Syrian conflict refugee to Australia in 2017 presents an outlier in refugee research and challenges conventional scholarly wisdom and public discourse. A combination of human capital, a purposeful use of networks, supported by her desire for recognition and a deep sense of self-worth allowed her to navigate the formalized and structured Australian business landscape. Accordingly, she was able to overcome the stigma of being a refugee: Less worthy of employment status in a position representative of her overseas skills and qualifications. In drawing on an outlier methodology and critical theory, we develop a more nuanced understanding of the agency of skilled and qualified refugee women drawing attention to lessons for business which typically takes a “one size fits all” approach to labor integration.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-241
Number of pages29
JournalBusiness and Society
Volume63
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2024

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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