Krisztina Gulyás

Doctoral School of Regional and Business Administration Sciences, Széchenyi István University,

Hungary

krisztinagulyas1981@gmail.com

ORCID 0000-0003-0719-2124

Immigrant workforce integration and entrepreneurship in Austria, Italy and Hungary: A comparative mixed-methods study

Márta Konczos Szombathelyi

Department of Humanities and Human Resources,

Széchenyi István University,

Hungary

kszm@sze.hu

ORCID 0000-0001-5248-7752

Abstract. Immigrant labour-market integration and entrepreneurship are increasingly decisive for the economic resilience of ageing, small- and medium-enterprise-dominated European economies. However, the institutional conditions shaping immigrant economic participation remain unevenly understood, and integrated cross-country comparisons within Central Europe are scarce. This study examines how and why the labour-market integration and entrepreneurial participation of immigrants differ across Austria, Italy, and Hungary. It adopts an exploratory, theory-informed comparative mixed-methods design based on a most-similar-systems logic, combining two evidence layers. The first consists of a battery of explicitly defined relative indicators calculated for each country, insofar as harmonised official data permit: the immigrant-to-native self-employment ratio (RSE), employment-rate and unemployment-rate gaps (Δ 𝐸𝑅, ΔER), and sectoral over-representation. These indicators are interpreted alongside the necessity indicators presented in the OECD International Migration Outlook 2024–2025. The second layer comprises primary qualitative evidence from thirty mother-tongue, in-depth interviews with family small- and medium-enterprise owners across the three countries. The interviews were thematically analysed and triangulated with secondary data. The analysis identifies three institutionally distinct integration regimes; demonstrates that immigrants’ relative propensity for self-employment tracks the openness of wage employment rather than the general business climate, once the native baseline and immigrant-group composition are taken into account; and derives three culturally grounded resilience types: institutional-professional (Austria), adaptive-improvisational (Hungary), and community-emotional (Italy). The Austrian entrepreneurial ecosystem proves markedly more receptive to immigrant entrepreneurs than those of Hungary or Italy. The study contributes the first integrated mixed-methods comparison of these cases, a transferable relative-indicator framework, and a resilience typology linking institutional configuration to immigrant economic participation.

Received: June, 2025

1st Revision: May, 2026

Accepted: August, 2026

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2026/19-3/3

JEL Classification: J61, J15, L26, F22

Keywords: immigrant integration, immigrant entrepreneurship, mixed embeddedness, entrepreneurial resilience, comparative mixed-methods