Neither Free nor Forced: Survival Entrepreneurship, Household Governance, and Constrained Labor Among Displaced Syrian Women

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. While the methods section provides helpful basics, several items are missing or underdeveloped: a. When were the interviews conducted? The host country context, particularly Lebanon’s economic crisis, may matter for interpretation. b. It would be helpful to provide the interview duration and settings (e.g., home, workplace, NGO office). c. Please clarify ethics approval and consent procedures, especially when interviewing husbands and relatives.
2. Given the manuscript’s Gionia-inspired analytic approach, it would be helpful to include a data structure figure or table and a brief coding transparency appendix. For example, examples of first-order terms linked to five themes and/or aggregate dimensions. This is important because the theoretical contribution of this paper depends on the credibility of how the analysis moves from interview narratives to claims about relational governance and constrained labour.
3. There is a potential sampling bias concern. The author(s) noted that participants were initially recruited through NGOs supporting refugee women’s start-ups. Did all participants in this study receive support from NGOs? If so, it is likely that these participants who are already connected to programs and/or financing support may face different constrains and household governance dynamics compared to those who are without NGO or external support ties. A brief discussion of what this implies for the transferability and scope conditions of the findings would be helpful.
4. In Section 3.2, the authors mentioned that in addition to the 12 women entrepreneurs, they also interviewed members of participants’ immediate networks to contextualize and corroborate women entrepreneur participants’ accounts. In the analysis, however, these perspectives are incorporated only sparingly (e.g., the brief husband excerpt justifying why he should handle clients/money because his wife is “too young”). I suggest the authors to clarify more explicitly how network-member interviews informed coding and key claims, and if feasible, adding a few more additional corroborating or contrasting excerpts. This would better leverage the study’s multi-perspective design and help readers see how household and kinship dynamics are articulated from both sides.
5. Financing is likely one aspect affecting this paper’s household governance and “difficult-to-exit” claims, yet it is only discussed intermittently. Capital source may create decision right. For example, one participant reported her husband provided funds to open a shop, it could be the case that who finance the start-up has the power to influence who controls revenue and decision making. On the other hand, if start-up money comes as a loan, repayment obligation may make it harder to stop working. If the authors have relevant data, I suggest treating the source of start-up money as an explicit analytic dimension since different capital source may generate different forms of control, obligations and exit costs.
6. While the authors discussed the dual function of kinship networks, one observation worth elevating is the gendered asymmetry surrounding women’s The findings suggests that the practical enabling infrastructure is often provided by other women (e.g., female relatives and neighbours) while husbands often play a role in surveillance and enforcement. A more explicit discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this observation would strengthen the relational governance argument.

Author Response

Answers to Reviewer 1 (changes mostly highlighted in blue cyan in the text)

Comment 1: While the methods section provides helpful basics, several items are missing or underdeveloped: a. When were the interviews conducted? The host country context, particularly Lebanon’s economic crisis, may matter for interpretation. b. It would be helpful to provide the interview duration and settings (e.g., home, workplace, NGO office). c. Please clarify ethics approval and consent procedures, especially when interviewing husbands and relatives.

Response 1:

Thank you for this helpful comment. We have revised the Methods section to clarify these points.

We now clarify that the interviews were conducted in 2025, approximately four years after the onset of Lebanon’s economic crisis. By this stage, many small businesses had undergone substantial adjustment to crisis conditions, and participants’ enterprises had largely moved beyond the initial shock phase. As such, the economic crisis constituted a stabilized background condition rather than an acute disruption shaping day-to-day entrepreneurial practices at the time of data collection. We therefore consider it unlikely that the crisis fundamentally alters the interpretation of our findings. Nevertheless, in response to the reviewer’s concern, we have substantially revised the research context section to more fully situate our analysis temporally and institutionally. This expanded contextualization provides the necessary background to support interpretation of the findings and to deepen understanding of the refugee situation within which the entrepreneurial activities examined in this study are embedded.

We have also added information about interview length (around 60–90 minutes) and where they took place (mainly at participants’ homes or workplaces, based on their preference).

Finally, we clarified our ethical procedures. Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and husbands and relatives provided separate consent. Interviews were conducted in private when possible, and all names were replaced with pseudonyms to protect confidentiality.

Comment 2: Given the manuscript’s Gionia-inspired analytic approach, it would be helpful to include a data structure figure or table and a brief coding transparency appendix. For example, examples of first-order terms linked to five themes and/or aggregate dimensions. This is important because the theoretical contribution of this paper depends on the credibility of how the analysis moves from interview narratives to claims about relational governance and constrained labour.

Response 2:

Thank you for this helpful suggestion. We have now added a data structure table (Table 2) that shows how we moved from participants’ words (first-order concepts) to second-order themes and aggregate dimensions. This makes the coding process clearer and helps readers see how our findings developed from the interviews.

We also revised the Data Analysis section to explain the coding steps more clearly.

Comment 3: There is a potential sampling bias concern. The author(s) noted that participants were initially recruited through NGOs supporting refugee women’s start-ups. Did all participants in this study receive support from NGOs? If so, it is likely that these participants who are already connected to programs and/or financing support may face different constrains and household governance dynamics compared to those who are without NGO or external support ties. A brief discussion of what this implies for the transferability and scope conditions of the findings would be helpful.

Response 3:

Thank you for raising this important point. Not all participants in this study received NGO support. Only one participant had taken a loan from an NGO, which she had fully repaid long before the interviews were conducted. The remaining participants did not receive any financial support from NGOs.

We have clarified in the methodology section that the NGO was contacted only during the initial phase of the study to facilitate access. Recruitment subsequently resumed purposively and through snowball sampling, as participants referred other eligible women within their networks.

Comment 4: In Section 3.2, the authors mentioned that in addition to the 12 women entrepreneurs, they also interviewed members of participants’ immediate networks to contextualize and corroborate women entrepreneur participants’ accounts. In the analysis, however, these perspectives are incorporated only sparingly (e.g., the brief husband excerpt justifying why he should handle clients/money because his wife is “too young”). I suggest the authors to clarify more explicitly how network-member interviews informed coding and key claims, and if feasible, adding a few more additional corroborating or contrasting excerpts. This would better leverage the study’s multi-perspective design and help readers see how household and kinship dynamics are articulated from both sides.

Response 4:

Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We have incorporated several additional excerpts from husbands in Sections 4.1 and 4.4. These excerpts corroborate and, in some cases, further illuminate how conditions, boundaries, and authority claims are articulated from their perspective. We believe these additions better reflect the study’s multi-perspective design and strengthen the credibility of our claims regarding relational governance and constrained entrepreneurial labor. Further we would like to clarify that interviews with network members informed the coding process. As evidence, please refer to the newly added table (table 2) that shows excerpts and codes related to network members. These were initially incorporated in the findings section.

 Comment 5: Financing is likely one aspect affecting this paper’s household governance and “difficult-to-exit” claims, yet it is only discussed intermittently. Capital source may create decision right. For example, one participant reported her husband provided funds to open a shop, it could be the case that who finance the start-up has the power to influence who controls revenue and decision making. On the other hand, if start-up money comes as a loan, repayment obligation may make it harder to stop working. If the authors have relevant data, I suggest treating the source of start-up money as an explicit analytic dimension since different capital source may generate different forms of control, obligations and exit costs.

 Response 5:

Thank you for this insightful suggestion, which could have provided additional nuance to our findings by revealing potential differences in levels of control across funding sources. However, the current dataset does not permit such an analysis, as information on funding sources was not collected and was beyond the original scope of the study.

Comment 6: While the authors discussed the dual function of kinship networks, one observation worth elevating is the gendered asymmetry surrounding women’s The findings suggests that the practical enabling infrastructure is often provided by other women (e.g., female relatives and neighbors) while husbands often play a role in surveillance and enforcement. A more explicit discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this observation would strengthen the relational governance argument.

 Response 6:

Thank you for this valuable observation. We agree and have addressed this explicitly in our revised manuscript.

In Section 5.3, we now state clearly that the enabling infrastructure: childcare, domestic support, financial assistance, and emotional encouragement, was overwhelmingly provided by other women (mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, sisters, and female neighbors), while husbands predominantly occupied positions of surveillance, gatekeeping, and enforcement, controlling financial flows and retaining authority to revoke permission to work.

We theorize this as a differentiated relational system in which enabling and disciplinary functions are distributed along gendered lines. Women's solidarity constitutes the informal infrastructure making entrepreneurial labor materially possible, yet this infrastructure operates within and does not disrupt the overarching patriarchal framework. Female kin absorb care deficits through their own unpaid reproductive labor, subsidizing household survival, while male authority over permission, income, and visibility remains intact.

In the theoretical implications (Section 6.1), we explicitly identify this gendered division as extending scholarship on family involvement in entrepreneurship beyond dyadic spousal relations to broader kinship networks where gendered roles of support and control are structurally distributed.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a very well written article. You have captured the complexity of refugee women's lives and have set this firmly within the literature. You have made a convincing argument which demonstrates the need for a more nuanced approach to entrepreneurship amongst refugee populations and your focus on women using a feminist lens is clear and strong. The inclusion of the women's voices as part of the findings is one of the many strengths of this paper. Their stories are communicated in a way which has clarity and set against the deeply theoretical approach, resonates through the writing. You make important recommendations for policy makers and for NGOs which, if followed, could have a direct impact on the lives of women refugees. 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for this generous and thoughtful assessment of our work. We are grateful for the recognition of the paper’s theoretical grounding, feminist framing, and attention to the lived experiences of refugee women. We particularly appreciate the reviewer’s acknowledgement of the role of women’s voices in the analysis and of the policy and NGO implications, which were central to our aims. This encouragement has been deeply motivating and confirms the relevance of a more nuanced approach to refugee entrepreneurship.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Neither Free nor Forced: Survival Entrepreneurship, Household  Governance, and Constrained Labor among Displaced Syrian Women

The issue of entrepreneurship among refugees, especially women, is a very important one, as it concerns both sides of the migration process: refugees and host countries. In the first stage of refugeehood, the most important thing is to save lives and ensure safety (humanitarian considerations). In the next stage, the host country faces a dilemma: what next? Who will pay for the maintenance of refugees and their families? Should they be given access to the labour market? On what terms? Will they compete with local workers?

It should be remembered that financial assistance for refugees from their host country and the international community is often insufficient to ensure them a decent life in a foreign country. Therefore, a good idea not only to earn a living but also to integrate into the local community is for refugees to enter the labour market, including by starting their own business. However, activities in this area must be legally regulated by the host country. Only then can both sides benefit: refugees, by creating a safe place to live for their families, and the host country, by stimulating the economy through the creation of new jobs. The article raises the issue of patriarchal relations in refugee families and the underestimation of the role of women, who become the main breadwinners of the family by deciding to run their own businesses, which is more of a sociological than an economic issue.

The authors examined how displacement conditions and family relationships affect the entrepreneurship of female refugees. In addition, they analysed the conditions under which survival-oriented activities lead to vulnerability to occupational hazards and limited employment opportunities. The data for the analysis was obtained from 12 semi-structured interviews conducted with Syrian refugee women running businesses in Lebanon and members of their immediate social network. The researchers sought to determine how women's entrepreneurial efforts to escape precariousness are transformed in domestic and social relationships.

Comments:

1. The article should begin with an introduction: a few words about refugees from Syria, for example: how many Syrian refugees are there in the world? What are the main migration routes (countries that have accepted refugees)? What is the size and structure of the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon, and what percentage of all immigrants in Lebanon are Syrians? Including women?

The answer to the above question would allow for the estimation of a statistically significant research sample. Unfortunately, 12 interviews is a small sample that does not allow for the extrapolation of results to the entire population (the sample is not statistically significant).  It can only serve as a starting point for broader (quantitative) research and help to determine further directions for research. 

Furthermore, the study focused exclusively on women from Beirut, which does not give a true picture of the situation of refugees and can only be considered a case study. Female refugees from other regions of Lebanon, e.g. rural areas, have completely different opportunities for finding work.

2. The article lacks research questions/hypotheses that could be verified. Perhaps formulating them would allow the authors to obtain answers that would bring new elements to the discussion. The conclusions are not innovative and are easy to predict without analysing the interviews and reviewing the literature.
3. Lebanon's policy on the employment of immigrants should also be described, in particular:

- What are the restrictions on entry into the Lebanese labour market for Lebanese and Syrians?

- What percentage of Syrian women are economically active in Lebanon and what was/is this percentage in Syria?

4. In addition, researchers should clarify the definitions of entrepreneurship. The authors did not specify what specific activities they consider to be entrepreneurship. It would be good to clarify:

- what is the relationship between gainful employment and working from home?

In the case of Syrians, the traditional division of responsibilities stems from religion and tradition – this can be emphasised, but it has no connection with entrepreneurship or self-employment. The problem is the new division of household responsibilities between spouses after a woman takes up employment.

- In the article, entrepreneurship is defined as illegal business activity, without paying taxes and dues to the treasury of the host country. Therefore, the host country does not derive any financial benefits from this activity. The only beneficiaries are the families of entrepreneurial refugee women.  Unfortunately, the consequence of this is that although their families survive, they are not supported by the legality and (appropriate regulations) of the host country. This aspect is completely overlooked by the authors, and in my opinion it is important. So is illegal business entrepreneurship or a crime?

5. It seems that the issue of entrepreneurship has been forcibly linked to migration (in this case, forced migration, i.e. refugee status). Entrepreneurship is presented by the authors as the feminisation of Syrian refugee women who took up work despite their husbands' reported dissatisfaction. However, it was only thanks to their taking up work that their families survived. Therefore, entrepreneurship is a result of war, poverty and the desire to survive, not of refugee status. It would also have taken place in Syria if the family's financial situation had deteriorated and there had been nothing to eat.

The problem is the lack of acceptance of women taking up professional work. Male refugees are reluctant to recognise the role of women as people capable of running a business and supporting a family.  It is more a question of mentality, tradition, religion and upbringing in a traditional division of roles, where women take care of the home and family, and men earn a living (work). This is a social problem. In the refugee context, these beliefs create a barrier to women entering the labour market and earning money. The problem is not related to either refugee status or women's entrepreneurship. Rather, it concerns a change in traditional family roles, where financial responsibility for the family is taken on by women rather than men.

Entrepreneurship is understood in a broader sense than running a business. It is limited to people who are uneducated but motivated to survive.  In addition, the problem of economic violence is highlighted – women work, but it is men who take the money they earn and have contact with customers. So are they entrepreneurs or a labour force exploited by those closest to them, including their husbands? In Syria, if a wife earned money, would her husband take her money and continue to make her perform household duties as if she did not work?

6. Training will not help if it is up to the husband and his decision whether his wife can work. What is needed here is a change in men's mentality and state support for women's efforts to enter the labour market, in this case in Lebanon.

Author Response

Answers to Reviewer 3 (changes highlighted in yellow)

Comment 1: The article should begin with an introduction: a few words about refugees from Syria, for example: how many Syrian refugees are there in the world? What are the main migration routes (countries that have accepted refugees)? What is the size and structure of the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon, and what percentage of all immigrants in Lebanon are Syrians? Including women?

The answer to the above question would allow for the estimation of a statistically significant research sample. Unfortunately, 12 interviews is a small sample that does not allow for the extrapolation of results to the entire population (the sample is not statistically significant).  It can only serve as a starting point for broader (quantitative) research and help to determine further directions for research.

Furthermore, the study focused exclusively on women from Beirut, which does not give a true picture of the situation of refugees and can only be considered a case study. Female refugees from other regions of Lebanon, e.g. rural areas, have completely different opportunities for finding work.

Response 1:

We thank the reviewer for this valuable comment. In response, we have substantially revised the manuscript to clarify the research context, as suggested. The introduction and the research context section have been expanded to outline the global scale of Syrian displacement, identify the main regional host countries, and specify the size and gender composition of the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon, including Syrians’ proportion relative to the total population.

Regarding sample size, we clarify that this study is explicitly qualitative and interpretive in design. Its objective is not statistical representativeness or population-level extrapolation, but rather in-depth, theory-driven understanding of refugee women’s entrepreneurial livelihoods under conditions of displacement and household mediation. The sample of 12 interviews was purposively constructed to capture variation in entrepreneurial activities and household arrangements, and data collection continued until analytical saturation was reached. Accordingly, the findings are analytically rather than statistically generalizable and are intended to inform theory-building and guide future quantitative or mixed-method research.

We acknowledge that refugee women’s work opportunities may vary across regions in Lebanon, particularly between urban and rural settings. The empirical material in this study reflects women operating in Beirut, and we have clarified in the manuscript that the findings should be interpreted as context-specific rather than representative of all refugee women in Lebanon. We further note that women residing in other regions may encounter distinct opportunity structures, which we identify as an important avenue for future research. In line with the reviewer’s recommendation, we have explicitly incorporated this point into the limitations and future research section.

Comment 2: The article lacks research questions/hypotheses that could be verified. Perhaps formulating them would allow the authors to obtain answers that would bring new elements to the discussion. The conclusions are not innovative and are easy to predict without analyzing the interviews and reviewing the literature.

Response 2:

We thank the reviewer for this comment and for the opportunity to clarify the positioning of the study. In response, we have revised the introduction to explicitly articulate the research questions guiding the analysis. These questions are now clearly stated and frame the empirical and theoretical focus of the article.

We would also like to clarify that the study adopts an inductive, qualitative research design. Consistent with this approach, the analysis is not driven by a priori hypotheses to be tested, but rather by an in-depth examination of interview data aimed at generating theoretical insights into underexplored processes and relational dynamics. The objective is therefore not hypothesis verification, but theory development grounded in empirical material.

Regarding the perceived predictability of the conclusions, we respectfully invite the reviewer to consider the revised discussion and contribution sections, where we articulate both the theoretical and practical contributions of the study. In particular, the findings advance existing debates by unpacking how entrepreneurial labor among refugee women is relationally organized, negotiated, and constrained within households under conditions of displacement-induced precarity. We believe these insights extend beyond descriptive accounts and offer novel contributions to scholarship on refugee entrepreneurship, labor vulnerability, and gendered livelihoods.

We hope these revisions clarify the analytical approach, strengthen the framing of the study, and more clearly communicate its contributions.

Comment 3: Lebanon's policy on the employment of immigrants should also be described, in particular:

- What are the restrictions on entry into the Lebanese labour market for Lebanese and Syrians?

- What percentage of Syrian women are economically active in Lebanon and what was/is this percentage in Syria?

 Response 3:

We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. In response, we have expanded the research context to explicitly describe Lebanon’s labor market regulations governing refugee employment, including restrictions on access to formal work and the resulting reliance on informal labor arrangements. We have also added comparative data on women’s labor force participation, reporting both pre-displacement rates in Syria and the proportion of Syrian refugee women who are economically active in Lebanon. These additions strengthen the contextual grounding of the study.

Comment 4: In addition, researchers should clarify the definitions of entrepreneurship. The authors did not specify what specific activities they consider to be entrepreneurship. It would be good to clarify: what is the relationship between gainful employment and working from home?

In the case of Syrians, the traditional division of responsibilities stems from religion and tradition – this can be emphasized, but it has no connection with entrepreneurship or self-employment. The problem is the new division of household responsibilities between spouses after a woman takes up employment. In the article, entrepreneurship is defined as illegal business activity, without paying taxes and dues to the treasury of the host country. Therefore, the host country does not derive any financial benefits from this activity. The only beneficiaries are the families of entrepreneurial refugee women.  Unfortunately, the consequence of this is that although their families survive, they are not supported by the legality and (appropriate regulations) of the host country. This aspect is completely overlooked by the authors, and in my opinion, it is important. So, is it illegal business entrepreneurship or a crime?

Response 4:

We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion. In response, we have clarified the definition of entrepreneurship in both the introduction and the literature review. The revised manuscript now defines refugee entrepreneurship as self-employment or business creation undertaken as a livelihood-generating strategy under host-country constraints, explicitly situating it in relation to exclusion from formal gainful employment.

We also clarify the relationship between entrepreneurship and home-based work, emphasizing that in this context working from home reflects legal and institutional constraints rather than a voluntary preference, and occupies an ambiguous position between gainful employment and domestic labor. In addition, we clarify that our analysis focuses on how women’s engagement in entrepreneurial activity under displacement reshapes pre-existing household authority structures, and that refugee entrepreneurship is not conceptualized as criminal activity but as shaped by Lebanon’s restrictive labor and residency regime. We believe these revisions strengthen conceptual clarity and interpretation of the findings.

Comment 5: It seems that the issue of entrepreneurship has been forcibly linked to migration (in this case, forced migration, i.e. refugee status). Entrepreneurship is presented by the authors as the feminization of Syrian refugee women who took up work despite their husbands' reported dissatisfaction. However, it was only thanks to their taking up work that their families survived. Therefore, entrepreneurship is a result of war, poverty and the desire to survive, not of refugee status. It would also have taken place in Syria if the family's financial situation had deteriorated and there had been nothing to eat.

The problem is the lack of acceptance of women taking up professional work. Male refugees are reluctant to recognize the role of women as people capable of running a business and supporting a family.  It is more a question of mentality, tradition, religion and upbringing in a traditional division of roles, where women take care of the home and family, and men earn a living (work). This is a social problem. In the refugee context, these beliefs create a barrier to women entering the labor market and earning money. The problem is not related to either refugee status or women's entrepreneurship. Rather, it concerns a change in traditional family roles, where financial responsibility for the family is taken on by women rather than men.

Entrepreneurship is understood in a broader sense than running a business. It is limited to people who are uneducated but motivated to survive.  In addition, the problem of economic violence is highlighted – women work, but it is men who take the money they earn and have contact with customers. So, are they entrepreneurs or a labour force exploited by those closest to them, including their husbands? In Syria, if a wife earned money, would her husband take her money and continue to make her perform household duties as if she did not work?

Training will not help if it is up to the husband and his decision whether his wife can work. What is needed here is a change in men's mentality and state support for women's efforts to enter the labor market, in this case in Lebanon.

Response 5:

We appreciate the reviewer's thorough engagement. We improved the discussion (section 5.3) and implications (6.1 and 6.2) sections accordingly.

We address each concern below.

1. "Entrepreneurship is a result of poverty and survival, not refugee status"

We agree. In Section 5.3, we explicitly state that women's entry into entrepreneurial activity was driven fundamentally by poverty, collapsing male breadwinning capacity, and the imperative to survive rather than by displacement alone. We further acknowledge these conditions could, in principle, arise independently of refugee status. However, we argue that displacement adds a compounding layer: legal exclusion from formal labor, absence of institutional protections, and informality as the only available economic mode. The key analytical point is that displacement does not create patriarchy but reconfigures the conditions under which it operates by removing institutional counterweights such as formal employment, legal protections, and state social services.

2. "The problem is mentality, tradition, and gender roles, not refugee status"

In Section 5.3, we state explicitly that the core barrier to women's economic autonomy is not refugee status but the patriarchal organization of household authority rooted in cultural norms, socialization, and gendered expectations regarding the division of roles, citing Kamla (2014), Kelly and Breslin (2010), and Al-Dajani and Marlow (2013). What matters analytically is that displacement eliminates the institutional safeguards that might otherwise enable women to negotiate more favorable terms or exit exploitative arrangements.

3. "Are they entrepreneurs or exploited labor?"

This is precisely our paper's central contribution. In Section 5.3, we argue these women occupy a liminal position that existing categories fail to capture: neither fully autonomous entrepreneurs nor straightforwardly coerced workers, but laboring within relationally governed arrangements where productive contribution and patriarchal appropriation coexist. We name the appropriation of earnings and male mediation of customer relations as a form of economic violence embedded within intimate relations, and we theorize this through the concept of constrained labor within self-employment.

4. "Training won't help; what's needed is changing men's mentality and state support"

We agree. In Section 6.2 (Practical Implications), we argue that programs channeling resources through household units without addressing intra-household power asymmetries risk reinforcing the very dynamics that constrain women. We call for facilitating women's independent access to financial services and creating support mechanisms that do not depend on male household intermediation. At the structural level, we identify host-country labor market reforms expanding legal access to formal employment as the most consequential intervention, which would reduce dependence on survival entrepreneurship and strengthen women's bargaining position within households.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the revised manuscript and detailed responses. You have addressed all of my previous questions and concerns, and the revisions have improved the clarity and strength of the paper. I have no further substantive comments at this time.