This study examines refugee entrepreneurship as a community-driven pathway for integration that balances cultural preservation, traditional entrepreneurial knowledge with economic adaptation and practices in the United States. Grounded in Putnam’s Social Capital Theory and guided by a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach, the research explores how interactions between refugee entrepreneurs and host-community members generate trust, networks, and opportunity structures. The study centers refugees as knowledge holders who leverage cultural assets, generational entrepreneurial knowledge while navigating local markets, institutions, and regulatory systems. Findings contribute to community development practice by highlighting how place-based, relational strategies can support inclusive economic growth that fosters positive integration for newcomers.
This study explores how immigrant and refugee entrepreneurship functions as a community-embedded integration strategy that balances cultural preservation with adaptation to economic and institutional change. Anchored in Putnam’s (1993) Social Capital Theory and informed by a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) framework, the research examines how social bonding and bridging capital emerge through interactions between immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs and host-community members, organizations, and institutions.
Rather than conceptualizing integration as a linear process of assimilation, this study highlights how immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs draw upon cultural knowledge, community practices, and transnational ties while simultaneously building relationships within local markets and governance systems. Through CBPR, immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs and community partners are engaged as co-creators of knowledge, shaping research questions, interpretation, and practical implications. This approach ensures that the study reflects lived experience and community-defined priorities while strengthening trust between researcher and participants.
The study investigates how trust, trustworthiness norms, and institutional relationships influence refugees’ access to information, resources, and entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly in contexts marked by limited human and financial capital and structural barriers to formal employment. It also explores how community-based networks help mitigate these constraints and foster economic participation, social belonging, and mutual accountability.
By centering place-based interactions and participatory knowledge production, this research contributes to community development scholarship on inclusive growth, immigrant integration, and entrepreneurship. Practically, findings offer guidance for practitioners, policymakers, and community organizations designing refugee self-sufficiency and economic development programs that honor cultural heritage while supporting pathways integration to their new social and cultural context.
