What Drives the Entrepreneurial Intentions of Migrant Students in a New Destination Country? A Case Study of Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland

ABSTRACT This study explores the factors shaping the entrepreneurial intentions of migrant students in a new destination country, Ukrainians and Belarusians studying in Poland. By addressing a relatively underexplored topic, the research implements an abductive approach and develops a hierarchical model of factors influencing these students' entrepreneurial aspirations, identifying antecedents, classifying them as driving, linkage, dependent, or autonomous factors, and mapping both direct and transitive links among them. The study employs a mixed‐method qualitative approach in two stages: (i) focus groups to identify antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions; (ii) data collected based on survey responses were analysed using TISM and MICMAC to classify these antecedents according to their interrelationships and hierarchical structure. The research uncovers 11 antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions of migrant students, and based on their interrelationships, constructs a four‐level hierarchical model that maps how these factors influence and connect with one another. Legal and formal issues, such as stay legalisation, financial conditions, and business regulations, are three driving forces of entrepreneurial intentions, consistent with earlier research on migrant entrepreneurship. We also identified three dependent factors: partnerships, cultural attitudes, and attitudes towards migrants, likely due to students' integration within academic communities.