September 11 and the Rise of Necessity Self-Employment Among Mexican Immigrants

Chunbei Wang and Magnus Lofstrom

Eastern Economic Journal, 2020, vol. 46, issue 1, No 2, 5-33

Abstract: Abstract Since the September 11 attacks (9/11), the USA has seen a tightening of immigration policies. Previous studies find that stricter immigration enforcement has the unintended effect of pushing undocumented immigrants into self-employment. This paper builds on the literature to better understand the changes in the types of self-employment among Mexican immigrants triggered by the tightened immigration enforcement after 9/11. Using a difference-in-differences approach, and the recently developed measures by Fairlie and Fossen (Opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship: two components of business creation, 2018) to distinguish between necessity and opportunity self-employment, we find that both necessity and opportunity self-employment increased among Mexican immigrants after 9/11. However, the effect is most prominent on necessity self-employment, consistent with the hypothesis that they are pushed into self-employment as a survival alternative.

Keywords: Mexican immigrants; Self-employment; 9/11; Tightened immigration policies; Necessity; J15; L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41302-019-00142-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: September 11 and the Rise of Necessity Self-Employment among Mexican Immigrants (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:easeco:v:46:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41302-019-00142-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/41302

DOI: 10.1057/s41302-019-00142-7

Access Statistics for this article

Eastern Economic Journal is currently edited by Allan Zebedee and Cynthia Bansak

More articles in Eastern Economic Journal from Palgrave Macmillan, Eastern Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().