Determinants of self-employment among Polish and Romanian immigrants in Germany

Abstract

This empirical study investigates the determinants of self-employment propensity of Polish and Romanian immigrants in Germany. The German economy is an important object of analysis, as it is the most important destination for international migrants in the European Union. In the paper, we use the recently collected M sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine which personal, country of birth-specific socio-economic and cultural factors influence the self-employment propensity of immigrants. The results of binominal logit regression show that the Central European migrants exhibit different self-employment propensity than migrants from former Yugoslavia, Russian and Kazakhstan, Turkey and Italy, with the self-employment aversion especially strong among Romanians. These differences remain substantial even after controlling for social and human capital endowment of the individuals. This study offers important policy recommendations, showing the potential obstacles in encouraging entrepreneurial activity of immigrants. This topic is becoming increasingly important with the current migration crisis in the EU, caused by intensive inflow of asylum-seeking foreigners in 2015.

Keywords:

• immigrant self-employment
• entrepreneurship
• self-employment determinants
• economic integration
• international migration
• Germany

JEL Classification:

• J15
• J24
• J61
• F22
• L26

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marek Szarucki

Marek SZARUCKI is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategic Analysis at the Cracow University of Economics (Poland). His scientific interests concentrate on the methodology of management science, strategic management, entrepreneurship in Eastern and Central Europe, business start-up motivations.

Jan Brzozowski

Jan BRZOZOWSKI an Assistant Professor at the Department of European Studies at Cracow University of Economics. He works in the field of international migration and socio-economic development. His research focuses on the economic implications of international migration for the sending countries, especially at the regional level.

Jelena Stankevičienė

Jelena STANKEVIČIENĖ is a Professor at the Department of Finance Engineering at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania). Her main research topics include assets and liability management, regulation of financial institution, financial management for value creation, value engineering.