French migratory policy and immigrant entrepreneurship

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to focus on the inequalities facing immigrants in access to the labour market and the impact of these on immigrant entrepreneurship. Unlike in other areas of legislation regarding foreigners, there has been a tendency to increase legal discrimination for over a century. Whereas European states have become the destination countries of immigrants mainly since 1945, France has been a receiving country for much longer. It was a destination for neighbouring Europeans as well as for people from other continents for a long time, with systematic evidence since the second half of the nineteenth century (381,000 resident foreigners in 1851, one million in 1881). Most of the discriminatory measures of the 1930s are still in force today. However, a class of small entrepreneurs of foreign origin has asserted itself in the receiving society during the past three decades, partly compensating for the continuous decrease in the number of French native entrepreneurs.