Nahikari Irastorza

Born Entrepreneurs? : Immigrant Self-Employment in Spain

De toename van wereldmigratie zorgt ervoor dat economen, beleidsmakers en academici steeds meer aandacht besteden aan immigranten en ondernemerschap. Zijn immigranten meer ondernemend dan autochtone Spanjaarden? Hoe succesvol zijn migrantenondernemers ten opzichte van ondernemers in land van herkomst?Born Entrepreneurs? bestudeert hoe het allochtoon-zijn een immigrant beinvloedt om succesvol te gaan ondernemen. Ook komen de mogelijke economische en sociale voordelen van zelfstandige arbeid en de unieke factoren die een rol spelen bij het zogenoemde etnische en immigrante ondernemerschap aan de orde.

Earnings of Immigrants : Does Entrepreneurship Matter?

The economic integration of immigrants has become a challenging topic in the European political agenda. This is especially true for countries that are struggling to survive the economic recession which started in 2008. In this context, entrepreneurship emerges as an alternative to unemployment. While the self-employment propensity of immigrants is well documented, little is known about the performance of these ventures. This article contributes to the literature by comparing and explaining the differential earnings of self-employed versus salaried immigrants in Spain. A binary logistic regression is applied to explore data collected by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project for 2005 and 2006. Our findings show that self-employed immigrants’ income exceeds that of salaried workers. Human capital and location-related environmental variables were found to be the best predictors of both self-employed and salaried immigrants’ earnings.

Toward building a conceptual framework on intermarriage

Increasing migration worldwide and the cultural diversity generated as a consequence of international migration has facilitated the unions of people from different countries, religions, races, and ethnicities. Such unions are often celebrated as a sign of integration; however, at the same time as they challenge peoples idea of us and them, intermarriages in fact still remain controversial, and even to some extent, taboo in many societies. Research and theorizing on intermarriage is conducted predominantly in the English-speaking North American and British contexts. This special issue includes empirical studies from not only the English-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and the UK, but also from Japan, Sweden, Belgium, France, and Spain and demonstrate the increasingly diverse directions taken in the study of intermarriage in regards to the patterns, experiences, and social implications of intermarriages. Moreover, the articles address the assumed link between intermarriage and “integration.”

Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Business Survival during Recession: Evidence from a Local Economy

Empirical evidence suggests that immigrants appear to be more entrepreneurially active than native people. While the formation of new firms by immigrants has been widely studied, the literature about the performance of these new ventures created by immigrants after their inception remains scarce and anecdotal. This study sheds light on firm-internal and firm-external factors that affect the life expectancy of new firms created by immigrants within a local economy during a period of recession, when the creation of firms is particularly important. The results show that immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to quit their businesses earlier than their native counterparts. We argue that this may be partially explained by the liability of foreignness faced by immigrants.

Sustainable marriages? Divorce patterns of binational couples in Europe versus North America

This paper analyses the marital dissolution of binational couples (i.e. couples comprised of immigrants and natives) in countries with traditionally distinct integration models: Canada, the United States and France. Previous studies appeal to cultural differences to explain the higher divorce rates of binational couples but they omit the potential effect of migration or that of environmental factors such as immigration policies and attitudes towards migration and intermarriage. In order to test a model that includes all these factors, an identical online survey was conducted in the cited countries. The concepts ‘binational couples’ and ‘culture’ were disentangled into specific types of couples and variables. While being involved in a binational marriage was not found to be a significant predictor of divorce, being involved in one where both partners are foreign born decreases the risk of divorce. Religion, family values and families’ perception of a relationship are also significantly related to marital stability.