MINDSET Project: Mapping the Capacity and Realities of Young Migrant Entrepreneurship in Cyprus and Italy
Generation for Change CY, in partnership with Oltre i Confini (Italy), has published the Research Report “Mapping the Capacity and Realities of Young Migrant Entrepreneurship in Cyprus and Italy”, produced under the Erasmus+ project MINDSET: Migrant Integration through Digital Skills and Entrepreneurship Training.
The 97-page report maps the entrepreneurial landscape for young migrants and refugees in Cyprus and Italy: the legal, tax and social insurance frameworks for starting a business or working as a freelancer, the funding opportunities at EU and national level, the digital tools and support mechanisms available, and the sectors and market opportunities open to migrant entrepreneurs. It combines desk research in both countries with two focus groups of young migrants and ten interviews with established entrepreneurs, six of them of migrant background, and it captures their motivations, challenges, and digital readiness in their own words.
The findings show entrepreneurship as a pathway to independence and belonging, while revealing the barriers young migrants face: legal restrictions linked to status, administrative hurdles, limited access to finance, and gaps in mentorship, networks and digital literacy. A comparative analysis of the two countries closes the report with recommendations for organizations, policy makers and future research.
The report provides the evidence base for the MINDSET Entrepreneurship Toolkit for Youth, published in three editions (Cyprus in English, Italy in English and in Italian), and for the training of professionals and the entrepreneurship workshops for young migrants delivered in both countries in 2026. It is published under open access and may be used, shared, and adapted freely with attribution to the MINDSET project and the EU funding.
See also: the Entrepreneurship Toolkit for Youth
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them. Project Number: 2024-3-CY01-KA210-YOU-000280305.
