Welcoming talent? A comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurs’ entry policies in France, Germany and the Netherlands

Comparative Migration Studies, Sep 2018

This article explores the admission policies for self-employed non-EU immigrants wanting to start or move their business to the European Union (EU). Selecting immigrant entrepreneurs is a specific and understudied policy strand in the battle for talent. No common EU policy is available (yet) and although national policies do show some similarity, they differ in respect of how and who decides if an entrepreneur serves a national economic interest. By presenting a first-time model for defining the level of welcoming, this study adds an instrument to the toolbox of both scholars and policy makers for evaluating immigration policies. Whether a policy is welcoming depends on material criteria, such as entry conditions giving the entrepreneur a fair chance and on the formal criteria of the applicable procedures and the actors involved in the decision-making process. The body of the article constitutes of a legal comparison between French, German and Dutch entry policies for non-EU entrepreneurs. The article concludes that a future EU policy on welcoming immigrant entrepreneurs must set standards for a large variety of entrepreneurs, allow for the economic interest to be broadly defined and have, at the least, transparent and practical procedures.

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Welcoming talent? A comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurs’ entry policies in France, Germany and the Netherlands

Comparative Migration Studies December 2018, 6:27 | Cite as Welcoming talent? A comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurs’ entry policies in France, Germany and the Netherlands AuthorsAuthors and affiliations Tesseltje de Lange Open Access Original Article First Online: 18 September 2018 Received: 06 November 2017 Accepted: 30 May 2018 6 Shares 118 Downloads Abstract This article explores the admission policies for self-employed non-EU immigrants wanting to start or move their business to the European Union (EU). Selecting immigrant entrepreneurs is a specific and understudied policy strand in the battle for talent. No common EU policy is available (yet) and although national policies do show some similarity, they differ in respect of how and who decides if an entrepreneur serves a national economic interest. By presenting a first-time model for defining the level of welcoming, this study adds an instrument to the toolbox of both scholars and policy makers for evaluating immigration policies. Whether a policy is welcoming depends on material criteria, such as entry conditions giving the entrepreneur a fair chance and on the formal criteria of the applicable procedures and the actors involved in the decision-making process. The body of the article constitutes of a legal comparison between French, German and Dutch entry policies for non-EU entrepreneurs. The article concludes that a future EU policy on welcoming immigrant entrepreneurs must set standards for a large variety of entrepreneurs, allow for the economic interest to be broadly defined and have, at the least, transparent and practical procedures. KeywordsImmigrant entrepreneurs Highly skilled migration National economic interest Migration law Comparative law  Abbreviations BA Bachelor of Science EU European Union MA Master of Science PBS Points Based System TCN Third Country National Introduction Although immigrant entrepreneurs have received plenty of academic attention over the past decades (Beckers & Blumberg, 2013; Kloosterman, 2010; Kloosterman & Rath, 2003; Mahuteau, Piracha, Tani, & Vaira-Lucero, 2011; Shahin, Nijkamp, & Suzuki, 2014; Solano, 2016), the admission policies for non-EU, also called Third Country National (TCN) self-employed workers or entrepreneurs into EU member states is a rather understudied topic. In recent years academic attention has been paid to these admission policies, but with a strong focus on investor visas for the ‘super rich’ (Dzankic, 2015; Surak, 2016; Torkian, 2015). With the OECD (2014, 2016) call for more labor migration from outside the EU and the increased flexibilization on many European labor markets, it’s likely not just migrant employees, but also self-employed migrants that are to fill future labor market needs. This possible increasing need for welcoming TCN entrepreneurs calls for research attention into this policy field and its implementation in practice. This article starts filling this gap. Most migration policy today is coined as restrictive or at least selective (Shachar, 2016) and not often as welcoming. In the battle for talent, a ‘welcoming’ policy can be an important asset. Referring to the fact that migrants founded 52% of start-ups created in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005 the European Commission’s EU Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan (European Commission, 2012) called for the EU member states to remove legal obstacles to the establishment of businesses by legally resident migrants and to facilitate access to information and networking prospective immigrant entrepreneurs. A not so ambitious call if you consider that migration policy is an important barrier for entrepreneurs who want to expand (Startup Genome, 2017). There is a lively battle for multinational headquarters and foreign investment going on in most western EU countries. In 2017 France ‘attracted a total of 1,298 new job-creating foreign investments […] that created or maintained 33,489 jobs.’ (Business France, 2017).1 The Netherlands attracted 357 foreign businesses such as Netflix, which created 12,686 jobs (NFIA, 2018). Less advertised are the numbers and the results of smaller businesses, run by individual TCNs, self-employed or small enterprises. They may not be welcomed by a foreign investment recruitment team, rolling out an ‘orange carpet’ as the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency does.2 They are welcomed by immigration policies. In this article, these immigration policies for TCN entrepreneurs are scrutinized on their level of welcoming. By presenting a first-time model for defining the level of ‘welcoming’, this study adds an instrument to the toolbox of both scholars and policy makers for evaluating migration policies. The model will be tested on the immigration policies of three Western- European countries ranked in the top-20 of the Global Innovation Index, The Netherlands, Germany and France.3 Three elements have been selected to define the ‘welcoming’ nature (...truncated)


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Tesseltje de Lange. Welcoming talent? A comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurs’ entry policies in France, Germany and the Netherlands, Comparative Migration Studies, 2018, pp. 27, Volume 6, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1186/s40878-018-0092-4