The structural crisis experienced generally in post-industrial society since the last third of the 20th century has been characterised by the continuous dismantling of jobs and workplaces, with no compensation in sight. This has prompted some intellectuals and policy makers to speak in terms of the ‘economically redundant’, in much the same way that industrialisation discourse of the 19th century spoke of a ‘surplus population’.

Also, however, in the eyes of neoliberal economists, a sector of the migrant population in industrial societies seems to have shown itself to be crisis-resistant: entrepreneurial migrants who subsist in an ‘ethnic’ economy. On the basis of their niche economies, these ethnic groups seem able to develop economic resources out of ethnic networks, ethnic skills and ethnic financing models (Gold and Light, 2000). These resources provide for co-ethnics and pave the way to economic sectors that have been abandoned by members of the dominant society. The possible demand for social assistance seems to be replaced by the hope for ‘ethnic succession’; in other words, hope for advancement for and with the ethnic group as well as within the ethnic group itself.

How influential should this model be in rethinking the European social system? Is it capable of providing answers to crisis-ridden developments in post-industrial societies? What sorts of relationships exist between the specific founding conditions of so-called ‘ethnic economies’ and current European welfare state models?

In the 1990s, the EC initiated a series of programmes intended to secure economic survival for individuals and social groups that had been forced to the outer fringes of the employment market. These policies offered opportunities for access to specific educational and promotional measures developed to realise self-employment and small business projects. In fact, since the mid-1990s, the number of independent businesses founded by migrants has dramatically increased all over in Europe. According to the results of the German microcensus conducted in 1998, the number of self-employment businesses in Germany owned by German men increased by 16% between 1985 and 1998, while those owned by German women increased by 44%; the number of independent businesses owned by non-German men increased by 86%, while those owned by non-German women increased by 119% (Apitzsch, 2000a,p 4). Should these figures be read as an indication of the success of so-called new entrepreneurship in Europe?