“Ethnic segregation has increased in Sweden since the 1990’s but so has the share of self-employment among immigrants”, said Mats Hammarstedt, Linnéuns University and affiliated researcher to IFN, at the seminar "Segregation and refugees’ entrepreneurship" (SNS). Henrik Andersson, Uppsala University, presented a study on the effects of ethnic segregation on self-employment. Andersson finds in his study that refugees that were placed in municipalities with a greater share of self-employed individuals from the same country of origin as themselves were more likely to become self-employed.
One explanation as to why that is the case might be that local ethnic networks bear knowledge and know-how on local market conditions, thereby aiding newly arrived immigrants in starting their own companies.
Hammarstedt highlighted Andersson’s methodological contribution to the field and discussed several aspects of the study, among others the results’ generalizability and the differences (or lack therefore) in definition between ethnic networks and enclaves.
Read the report
Translation from Swedish: Marcos Demetry
Published December 14 2018
