Clusters in foreign-born vs. native self-employment in Europe: do we look alike?

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we analyse the existence of clusters in self-employment rates, segregating by place of birth, i.e. native vs foreign-born, in a group of 17 European countries. The analysis suggests that natives behave differently in peripheral and core countries, whereas their foreign-born self-employed counterparts show a similar behaviour irrespective of the characteristics of the recipient economy. These findings augment the scant available evidence about this topic in Europe (as most previous studies have focused on the United States) and confirm the existence of important differences in the entrepreneurial skills and mindset of native and migrant populations.

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Self-employment
• entrepreneurship
• migration
• Europe
• cluster analysis

JEL CODES:

• F20
• F22
• L26

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge comments from two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ A cluster is a group of observations with similar characteristics. Thus, they hold a high degree of both internal homogeneity (inside cluster) and external heterogeneity (among clusters).

² In our analysis, we denote as “peripheral” countries the Mediterranean ones (Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain) plus Ireland, while the “core” countries refer to the remaining ones.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universitat Jaume I (Grant number UJI-B2019-15); Generalitat Valenciana (Grant numbers AICO2021/005 and CIAICO/2021/006), and from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant number RTI2018-100983-B-100, MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU).