Immigrant Self-Employment. Testing Hypotheses About the Role of Origin- and Host-Country Human Capital and Bonding and Bridging Social Capital

Abstract

Using large-scale data on immigrants in the Netherlands, the authors tested competing arguments about the role of origin- and host-country human capital and bonding and bridging social capital in immigrants' self-employment. When taking job-skill level into account, immigrants with a higher level of origin- and destination-country education are less likely to be self-employed than salary employed. Likewise, the likelihood of self-employment decreases with origin-country work experience but not with host-country work experience. The presumed positive effect of bonding social capital is not found, but this study's results suggest that immigrants with an access to bridging social capital are more likely to be self-employed than those without such contacts.