Migrants as Co-developers of the Economic Recovery / MigMatch

A matching of regional start-up needs, and start-up offers in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)

In 2019 every fourth German start-up was run by a migrant - that is 160,000 out of 605,000 start-ups (Metzger, 2020). As self-employed persons and founders, migrants are of central economic importance. Starting with the local supply in the quarter and moving from the trade and industry to knowledge-intensive services, migrant businesses are part of all areas of the German economy.

Due to their greater willingness to take risks and entrepreneurial role models, migrants seem in general more business-oriented (Metzger, 2020). Around 61% of the migrant founders had self-employed associates or relatives in 2019, while the proportion of the total population counted only 48% (ibid.). In addition, disadvantages in the labour market are considered the main cause of the high start-up frequency. However, around 32% of migrants founded a business in 2019 due to the lack of employment alternatives, a total of just 23% (Metzger, 2020). According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2020 (Sternberg et al., 2020), the proportion of migrants who want to change the world by starting a business (66%) is compared to the non-migrant founders (42%) relatively high.

North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to many migrants. In 2020 around 5.3 million people with a migration history lived in NRW, around 13.8% of them with foreign citizenship. As is well known, innovation thrives on diversity and creative ideas, which opens the enormous entrepreneurial potential for regions.

To utilize this potential for economic development in NRW, your help as interviewee is needed.

The aim of this study carried out jointly by the Institute for Work and Technology of the Westphalian University Gelsenkirchen and the ISM Mainz, is to determine the regional start-up needs and start-up offers. By answering the questionnaire, you are making an important contribution to better match and balance out regional and target group demands. 

Literature

Metzger, G. (2020): Wieder mehr migrantische Gründungen. Volkswirtschaft Kompakt, Nr. 205. KfW Research.

Sternberg, R. et al. (2020): Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – Unternehmensgründungen im weltweiten Vergleich. Länderbericht Deutschland 2019/20. Eschborn: RKW Kompetenzzentrum.