Self-Employment of Immigrants: A Cross-National Study of 17 Western Societies

This study examines the role of immigrants’ country of origin, country of destination and combinations thereof (settings or communities) in the likelihood of immigrants being selfemployed. I pooled census data from three classic immigrant countries (Australia, Canada and the United States) and labor-force surveys from 14 countries in the European Union for a cross-national data set. Using multilevel techniques, I find that (1) immigrants from non-Christian countries of origin have higher odds of self-employment, (2) higher levels of unemployment among natives increase the odds of self-employment, and (3) selfemployment is more frequent among immigrant communities that are small, highly educated and have a longer settlement history.

Destination-Language Proficiency in Cross-National Perspective: A Study of Immigrant Groups in Nine Western Countries

Immigrants’ destination-language proficiency has been typically studied from a microperspective in a single country. In this article, the authors examine the role of macrofactors in a cross-national perspective. They argue that three groups of macrolevel factors are important: the country immigrants settle in (“destination” effect), the sending nation (“origin” effect), and the combination between origin and destination (“setting” or “community” effect). The authors propose a design that simultaneously observes multiple origin groups in multiple destinations. They present substantive hypotheses about language proficiency and use them to develop a series of macrolevel indicators. The authors collected and standardized 19 existing immigrant surveys for nine Western countries. Using multilevel techniques, their analyses show that origins, destinations, and settings play a significant role in immigrants’ language proficiency.

Denomination, Religious Context, and Suicide: Neo-Durkheimian Multilevel Explanations Tested with Individual and Contextual Data

In Suicide, Durkheim found that involvement in religious communities is inversely related to suicide risk. In this article, two explanations for this relationship are examined. One is that religious networks provide support. The other is that religious communities prohibit suicide. To examine these hypotheses, individual-level data on suicide in the Netherlands from 1936 to 1973 are used. The results show that with an increase in the proportion of religious persons in a municipality, the chances of committing suicide decrease for every denomination in that municipality, as well as among nonchurch members. Furthermore, along with the secularization of Dutch society, the impact of religious composition on suicide wanes. These results contradict the network-support mechanism and confirm the notion that religious communities have a general protective effect against suicide.

Bensaïdi of Veenstra? : Een experimenteel onderzoek naar discriminatie van Marokkanen in Nederland

In deze studie wordt gekeken naar discriminatie van Marokkanen in Nederland. Dolfing en Van Tubergen bestuderen de reacties van werkgevers op Marokkaanse en autochtone proefpersonen die over de telefoon solliciteren naar een stageplaats in het mbo en vergelijken de uitkomsten voor verschillende bedrijfstakken. Uit ons onderzoek blijkt dat Marokkanen vaker worden afgewezen voor een stageplek. De mate van discriminatie verschilt echter per bedrijfstak. Veruit de sterkste discriminatie van Marokkanen is in de bouw.