"Choice or necessity? Immigrants' propension toward self-employment: evidence from the European social survey."

Several countries have performed studies on the variations in self-employment rates between immigrants and natives (Aldén et al., 2021). Aside from identifying differences in self-employment rates between immigrants and natives, significant emphasis has been dedicated to determining the drivers of self-employment entrance among immigrants. Some studies emphasized immigrants' distinctive entrepreneurial character (Francine & Zolin, 2013), while others highlighted their necessity (Chrysostome & Arcand, 2009). We used European social survey data (ESS) from 2010 to 2018 (5 rounds) combined with Eurostat economic and labor market data to determine the variables associated with immigrants' propensity for self-employment and whether this tendency is driven mainly by immigrants' desires or are forced on them. We develop a micromodel using individual-level data with regional controls to evaluate the association between immigrant self-employment with immigrant characteristics and demographic variables on the one hand and native sentiments and discrimination on the other. Our findings clarifying association, not causality, favored the choice side, as we discovered that self-employment is more prevalent among males who arrived early in the country, particularly before 2000. Additionally, our findings underlined the importance of immigrants' human capital, as we discovered that education years are strongly associated with self-employment probability. We discovered a link between married immigrants whose fathers were self-employed and their propensity to be self-employed. On the other hand, native attitudes do not appear to significantly associate with immigrant self-employment, except for their sentiment about the immigrant effect on the economy, which could be a reversal effect. However, discrimination does not affect the likelihood of self-employment. Finally, when active immigrant unemployment is used as the dependent variable, the results are like self-employed models, but the region's unemployment rate is substantially associated with immigrant unemployment.