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Self-employment, internal migration and place embeddedness

Self-employment, internal migration and place embeddedness
Self-employment, internal migration and place embeddedness
Little is known about the individual location behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs. Population geography has not researched this issue and entrepreneurship literature has given it little attention. This paper examines whether self-employed entrepreneurs are ‘rooted’ in place and also whether those who are more rooted in place are more likely to enter self-employment, thereby shedding new light onto the place embeddedness of self-employment. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) 1996–2009 it shows that self-employed entrepreneurs as compared with employees are not more rooted in place and that those who are more rooted in place are not more likely to become self-employed. In contrast to expectations drawn from previous literature, flows into self-employment are positively associated with inter-regional moves. The only finding that supports the assumption of ‘place inertia’ of entrepreneurship is that starting a business is less likely to be linked with internal migration than job changes in the wage and salary sector. It concludes that mobility and immobility and individual and household constraints and preferences are important for understanding those who become self-employed. At the same time, the people–place relations of self-employment are important to understand migration and the functioning of labour markets. More generally, this paper underpins the importance of demographic phenomena for economic outcomes and thus the need for population geography to engage with other disciplines, in this case economic geography and entrepreneurship research.
1544-8444
235-249
Reuschke, Darja
224493ce-38bc-455d-9341-55f8555e7e13
Reuschke, Darja
224493ce-38bc-455d-9341-55f8555e7e13

Reuschke, Darja (2013) Self-employment, internal migration and place embeddedness. Population, Space and Place, 20 (3), 235-249. (doi:10.1002/psp.1759).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Little is known about the individual location behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs. Population geography has not researched this issue and entrepreneurship literature has given it little attention. This paper examines whether self-employed entrepreneurs are ‘rooted’ in place and also whether those who are more rooted in place are more likely to enter self-employment, thereby shedding new light onto the place embeddedness of self-employment. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) 1996–2009 it shows that self-employed entrepreneurs as compared with employees are not more rooted in place and that those who are more rooted in place are not more likely to become self-employed. In contrast to expectations drawn from previous literature, flows into self-employment are positively associated with inter-regional moves. The only finding that supports the assumption of ‘place inertia’ of entrepreneurship is that starting a business is less likely to be linked with internal migration than job changes in the wage and salary sector. It concludes that mobility and immobility and individual and household constraints and preferences are important for understanding those who become self-employed. At the same time, the people–place relations of self-employment are important to understand migration and the functioning of labour markets. More generally, this paper underpins the importance of demographic phenomena for economic outcomes and thus the need for population geography to engage with other disciplines, in this case economic geography and entrepreneurship research.

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More information

Published date: 14 January 2013
Organisations: Geography & Environment

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 399758
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/399758
ISSN: 1544-8444
PURE UUID: 92802db0-7e8a-480a-a619-22a521dad0e8
ORCID for Darja Reuschke: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6961-1801

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 31 Aug 2016 16:53
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:54

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