Abstract:

The issue of immigration and the involvement of immigrants in working and cultural life in EU countries are currently discussed topics. Immigrants' unemployment is burdening the social system. On the other hand, the employment of immigrants in various forms can lead to many benefits. The main aim of this article is to identify some specificity in self-employment of foreigners in EU countries and to find out whether the differences in self-employment of foreigners between countries are diminishing. Within the main objective, we have set two sub-objectives. The first sub-objective is to compare EU countries on the basis of the following indicators: 1/ number of self-employment of foreigners and 2/ share of self-employment of foreigners on employed persons from foreign countries. The second sub-objective is to determine whether the EU countries converge in the number of self-employment of foreigners. In the case of unproven convergence, we divide the EU countries according to the initial state and the growth of the number of self-employment of foreigners. The highest number of self-employment of foreigners was in 2010 in Germany and in 2016 in the United Kingdom. The number of self-employment of foreigners in Slovakia was the second lowest in the EU. However, the share of self-employment of foreigners in employed persons from foreign countries in Slovakia was the highest among the analysed EU countries. EU countries did not have a tendency to convergence in regard to self-employment of foreigners. Countries Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and the United Kingdom tended to move away from other countries in the self-employment of foreigners indicator. Countries the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary and Slovakia tended to lag behind others in the self-employment of foreigners indicator. However, it should be noted that the countries in this group had a relatively low number of foreigners. Therefore, even though Slovakia had the second lowest number of self-employment of foreigners, its share of self-employment of foreigners in employed persons from foreign countries was the highest.