The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The findings show that the prevalence of health problems differs not only between natives and immigrants but also across groups of immigrants who moved to the UK for different reasons.

This paper explores differences in the likelihood of engaging in self-employment among migrants who moved for different reasons to the UK. The results suggest that, conditional on being in employment, those who initially migrated for asylum reasons are six percentage points more likely to engage in selfemployment than the UK-born, while those who migrated for work reasons are not significantly different from UK-born workers in this regard. We also find that mediating factors, such as the presence of networks and years since migration, relate differently to the likelihood of self-employment for each group of migrants. Finally, there are also differences when looking at the number of persons employed by the self-employed and the skill level associated with the activity of self-employment. Those who migrated for asylum are not significantly different from the UK-born in their likelihood of employing someone else, while those who migrated for work are two percentage points less likely to employ others relative to the UK-born.

No abstract