Article Abstract
Scholarly interest in refugee employment often centers on the barriers faced by this group of jobseekers. This study shifts focus to employers, exploring how their practices address recruitment challenges. Our qualitative investigation of 39 Australia-based employers identifies two sets of barriers—proximal and distal—and the corresponding practices employers adopt to overcome them. We find that these barriers differ in the assumed scale, locus of influence, and the nature of impact. Through a practice theory lens, we demonstrate how employers’ responses to these barriers have the capacity to reproduce or alter the socio-structural conditions in which refugee employment takes place. While most employers focus on adaptive practices targeting proximal barriers, transformative practices aimed at tackling the distal barriers play a key role in rectifying structural disparities in the recruitment of disadvantaged groups. Our study advances refugee employment literature by demonstrating how employers’ assumptions around the barriers can deter employer engagement and limit impact. We highlight the managerial implications by demonstrating how employers can drive meaningful change in areas traditionally considered the domain of other actors, effectively addressing challenges in the employment landscape.
Human Relations, September 2025
About the researcher
Dr Eun Su (Jeannie) Lee is a Lecturer in Management at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne. Her research centres on the employment, integration and workplace experiences of refugees and migrants, with a focus on how organisations, communities and policy systems can facilitate meaningful workforce participation and career progression for individuals from forcibly displaced backgrounds.
Dr Lee’s scholarship is rooted in international business and human resource management, bringing an applied lens to global mobility, diversity and inclusion in the labour market. She is also passionate about translating academic insights into practice. She engages with organisational, governmental and community partners to co-create strategies that aid employers to access refugee talent, support workplace integration and reconceptualise recruitment efforts through a diversity and inclusion lens. Her teaching spans management and HRM courses, where she brings her research into the classroom to equip students with critical frameworks to address contemporary workforce challenges in a globalising world.
With a commitment to building more inclusive and equitable labour markets, Dr Lee continues to investigate how refugees and migrants can overcome marginalisation, how organisations can act as enablers of social and economic participation, and how policy and practice can better align to bridge the gap between intention and action in refugee employment.