Creating opportunities. Policies aimed at increasing openings for immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands

Since the 1980s, subsequent Dutch governments have promoted self-employment of immigrants to reduce their unemployment rates. These policies have been focused on the (potential) actors themselves, i.e. the immigrants who have started or who may want to start a business. Taking mixed embeddedness as a point of departure, entrepreneurship and self-employment cannot be solely understood by focusing on the micro-level but has to include the larger macro and meso structures that impact on these actors' choices. In this paper, therefore, the focus is on the opportunity structure and on the policies that affect this set of options for starting a (small) business. A typology of policies that may alter this opportunity structure is offered.