This dual-method dissertation-based paper combines a diary study with a multi-sited reflexive ethnography to explain how entrepreneurs displaced in the second phase of the genocide against the Rohingya people by the military regime in Myanmar maintain well-being by balancing resourcefulness and religiousness in the extreme context of the Kutupalang refugee camp. A 12-point, 6-week diary study of 70 refugee entrepreneurs lends support to both direct and dignity-mediated effects of resourcefulness on well-being. A multi-sited reflexive ethnography reveals limits to the well-being benefits of resourcefulness in extreme contexts by showing the negative moderating effects of religiousness. In a context where religious values and practices are both strong and visible, and religiousness offers a common modality of both individual and communal coping with enduring hardship, even small deviations from rituals can attenuate the direct and the dignity-mediated benefits of resourcefulness. The theorized trade-offs between resourcefulness and religiousness are empirically robust: they replicate for refugee entrepreneurs of different ages and genders; across types and locations of ventures; and at multiple levels of experienced distress and social obligations. This paper highlights two important boundary conditions for the literature on well-being. First, it reveals the previously under-theorized role of dignity in the maintenance of well-being by those who entrepreneur while displaced, explaining why refugee entrepreneurs who vest their ventures with the provision of peace, respect and/or stability derive supplementary benefits from the same acts of resourcefulness. Second, it suggests that acts of resourcefulness compete with acts of religiousness, especially for dignity-mediated paths to well-being maintenance.
