ABSTRACT

Migrants have often been found to be key leading entrepreneurs throughout history, and others have suggested that migrants were more likely to be risk-taking entrepreneurs than non-migrants. The census database allows migrants (defined by their birthplace) to be compared with the rest of the population of entrepreneurs. Analysis is undertaken at a number of levels: international migration, national migration (between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) and those living in a different county to that of their birth. It reveals substantial differences in the entrepreneurship rates of different groups of immigrants. However, these differences were driven more by different demographic characteristics and differential levels of access to waged labour markets than by traits supposedly inherent to migrants. Irish migrants are shown to have had lower entrepreneurship rates than the English and Welsh population, again driven by their ability to enter waged labour, while Scottish and internal English and Welsh migrants had rates similar to those of the static English and Welsh population. Higher-status entrepreneurs and merchants have a strongly contrasted pattern.