New study on “The start-up potential of refugees”

Self-employment only plays a subordinate role on the German labour market, accounting for around 10 percent of the working population. Surveys also show that people in Germany are comparatively reluctant to set up their own business and that the willingness to do so has declined in recent years. This does not bode well for the future. Business start-ups are a key driver of economic dynamism, growth, innovation and employment.
This makes it all the more important to maximise society's potential for entrepreneurship. Many of the people who came to Germany in the course of refugee migration from 2013, and then especially from 2015, were self-employed in their home countries or came from countries where self-employment and business start-ups are much more common than in German society. In addition, they do not always have the prerequisites for rapid and optimal integration into the German labour market. Wouldn't self-employment and setting up a business be an obvious option for this target group in particular?

This background explains the research questions underlying the study “The start-up potential of refugees”. On the one hand, it aims to provide information about the start-up potential among refugees. Secondly, it discusses the extent to which starting a business can be a promising path to labour market integration for this group of people. The research team from the University of Mannheim analysed both academic literature on the topic and a large amount of data that was compiled and collected specifically for the study.

Even if labour market integration via business start-ups or self-employment only plays a limited role in Germany, the researchers' findings show that there are good reasons to address this topic politically and to remove existing obstacles for refugees when starting a business. These could then make an even greater contribution than before to the successful labour market integration of this target group and – incidentally – also strengthen Germany as a business location as a whole.