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Self-Employment and Immigrants' Incorporation: The Case of Turks in Germany

This essay discusses the impact of self-employment on immigrants' incorporation in the host society. It focuses on empirical material coming from Turkish migrants' business activities in Germany. After introducing the main features of contemporary German-Turkish entrepreneurship, the essay presents its socio-economic and cultural consequences for the Turkish minority. Relying on the numerous debates that can be found in the literature, it argues that this impact is ambivalent. In some cases, business ownership may constitute a way of achieving upward social mobility and a path towards a harmonious and pluralistic integration. But it is also frequently a reaction to disadvantage that fosters immigrants' socio-professional vulnerability and that may then lead to ghettoization. The essay then attempts to understand the reasons behind these divergent interpretations and suggests that they lie in the intermediary nature of trade, which is an activity that may connect people from different backgrounds but only in a limited way. Ethnographic observations and the concept of ‘plural societies’ are used to address this aspect of business. The conclusion suggests that, given the globally inferior position of Turkish immigrants, business might not be enough to enable them to catch up.