Following the definition given by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the migrant is a “person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons. The term includes a number of well-defined legal categories of people, such as migrant workers; persons whose particular types of movements are legally-defined, such as smuggled migrants; as well as those whose status or means of movement are not specifically defined under international law, such as international students” (IOM, 2019).

As reported in the 2022 World Migration Report (WMR, 2022), Europe is the top destination for international migrants, hosting 87 million people—about 30.9% of the global migrant population. Asia comes next with 86 million migrants (30.5%), followed by North America with 59 million (20.9%). Africa is home to 25 million international migrants (9%). Over the past 15 years, South America and the Caribbean have experienced the fastest growth, with their migrant population rising from around 7 million to 15 million, now accounting for 5.3% of the global total. Oceania hosts approximately 9 million migrants, representing 3.3% of the world’s international migrant population.

Attractiveness plays a vital role for both host countries and immigrants, as it promotes economic growth, social cohesion, and individual well-being, though it also brings challenges that require thoughtful management. For host societies, greater attractiveness can result in a more dynamic labour force, enhanced innovation, and increased economic productivity through diverse skill sets and higher consumer spending. For immigrants, it often translates into better opportunities, improved quality of life, and greater career prospects compared to those available in their countries of origin (European Commission, 2025). From the other side, immigrants can face disadvantages including challenges with integrating into the host society’s labour market and cultural norms, while host societies may experience strains on public services and potential competition for jobs and housing, although immigrants also offer numerous benefits like economic growth and diversity (Verme, 2023).

In host societies, a significant proportion of migrants opt for self-employment as a means to establish themselves. Across OECD and EU28 countries, approximately 12% of all foreign-born migrants are engaged in self-employment, though this percentage may vary between different nations (OECD, 2018; Taddei & Solano, 2020). According to data from Eurostat and OECD, businesses led by migrants exhibit poorer performance than native enterprises across various indicators, highlighting existing disadvantages and untapped potential. For instance, foreign-born entrepreneurs are more likely to run microbusinesses and generate fewer job opportunities, particularly within the formal economy. Moreover, migrant-led businesses are 27% less likely to survive up to five years compared to native-owned enterprises (OECD, 2015; OECD, 2018; Taddei & Solano, 2020; UNCTAD, 2018; Eurostat, 2023).

The potential of migrant entrepreneurs is hindered by several barriers. One of the key challenges they face is the lack of access to essential infrastructure, networks, and credit opportunities that native entrepreneurs typically enjoy when initiating and running their businesses (Desiderio, 2014; Solano et al., 2019). These disparities limit their ability to fully participate in the entrepreneurial landscape.

Immigrants are widely recognized for their strong entrepreneurial spirit, often showing higher business ownership rates than native-born populations in countries like the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia. They have made notable contributions to fields such as technology and engineering, particularly in innovation hubs like Silicon Valley (Fairlie & Krashinsky, 2006; Karren, 2024; Kushida, 2024). Immigrant labour also influences the pace of technological adoption. Highly skilled immigrants—scientists and engineers—advance innovation by creating new products and securing patents. At the same time, lower-skilled immigrants help address labour shortages, enabling innovators to concentrate on more complex, non-routine challenges.

The topic of migrant entrepreneurship has been gaining more and more recognition from policymakers, stakeholders, and researchers (Ram et al., 2017; Solano et al., 2019; 2023). This increasing attention can be attributed to several factors such as the notable growth in the small business sector, which has drawn attention to the contributions of migrant entrepreneurs, as well as the natural inclination demonstrated by migrants towards establishing their own business ventures. Additionally, the prevailing pro-business atmosphere in modern society has also encouraged and facilitated migrant entrepreneurship.

In Solano’s (2022) comparative study, the legal and policy framework for migrant entrepreneurs in EU and OECD countries is thoroughly examined. By analysing laws, policies, and practices, the research reveals that the institutional framework can hinder access to self-employment for specific categories of migrants, depending on their legal status. On the other hand, the policy framework offers a wide range of measures to support migrant entrepreneurs. However, a noteworthy observation is that these measures often treat migrant entrepreneurs as a relatively uniform group, overlooking their diversity and unique needs. It is worth noting as well that the social and economic approach contributes to the emancipation of immigrants (Bužinkić, 2017).

The aim of this article is to present different approaches for analysing the business climate of a given country and to quantify up to what extend one country can be more attractive for foreigners to start a business. A comparison between three approaches has been presented. The first one is related to the internationally recognized index from the World Bank and Transparency International (EUCHAM 2020). The second one is related to the recent analysis of the migrant integration (Solano & Huddleston, 2020) through the introduction of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). The third one, IMIGRENT, which can be applied for all countries worldwide, is introduced by the author. It is based on a large set of criteria, which cover almost all aspects of the necessary procedure for establish an entrepreneur activity. These criteria are grouped in the following 6 large blocks such as Immigration procedures, Company registration and ownership, Personal affairs and accommodation, Social services, Specific issues, Climatic and natural conditions. A comparison between the three indexes has been performed in order to see how the IMIGRENT one improves the quantification of the attractiveness for entrepreneurship activities of a country.

The methodology employed during this research is based on both quantitative and qualitative methods that combine statistical analysis of data from various official sources such as the World Bank and Transparency International (EUCHAM, 2020), Policies for Migrant Integration (Solano & Huddleston, 2020), OECD and Eurostat, among others.

A comprehensive framework called the IMIGRENT index has been proposed to evaluate a country’s attractiveness for immigrant entrepreneurship. This analysis draws on various sources of national legislation and official data. For the immigration procedure component, information was sourced from the host country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Police departments. Data on company registration and ownership came from the Ministry of Economy and expert publications. Details on personal affairs and housing were gathered from real estate platforms, while social services information was obtained from national Ministries of Social Security. Insights into local friendliness were based on the Internations.org Expat Insider report (2022). Climate and environmental conditions were sourced from national websites and global platforms such as the World Weather Information Service (WMO, 2024). Although some data overlap with the MIPEX analysis, the IMIGRENT index expands on it by including additional indicators such as immigration procedure statistics, company registration data, climate conditions, crime rates, and hate crime statistics for a more comprehensive evaluation.

Additionally, the Datawrapper software has been utilized for enhanced visualization of the results. The use of the Datawrapper has been chosen because it is an open and a user friendly software, which is suitable for a large number of educational purposes.

This section refers to a new way of quantifying the attractiveness for entrepreneurial activities of a given country worldwide, which has been proposed by the author, the so called IMIGRENT index (Migrant Entrepreneurship index introduced by the author). This is the first time, where similar complex measures are reported by introducing in-deep analysis and personal attitude to the different criteria for quantifying the attractiveness of a given country.

As advanced in the Introduction, the index is based on a comprehensive set of criteria grouped into 6 main blocks:

Each block contains several specific questions, each introduced by its values (0, 5, 10 or intermediate between 0 and 10) and by its own weight from 0 to 10. Each question refers to the national legislation of the given country, by providing the link to the corresponding institution. The discrete value from 0 to 10 are given by the legislation, while the corresponding weight is subjective and depends on the importance one is giving to the different aspects. In this way, the overall assessment of attractiveness for entrepreneurship in a specific country will depend on the interests of the entrepreneurs themselves and their estimation of the importance of different aspects (See Appendix).

For example, the question “Does a foreign citizen need a permit to stay in the country indefinitely?” has two values [If No = 10 points; If Yes = 0 points]. Similarly, “Is a foreign citizen allowed to work as an individual entrepreneur?” [If Yes = 10 points; If No = 0 points]. The weight for both should be close to 1 due to their importance.

In the case of some aspects referring to the knowledge of English language, for example, “Do at least 50% of local people know at least one foreign language fluently?” [If Yes = 10 points; If No = 0 points], the weight that will multiply the value may be not so high for somebody who considers that this detail is not very important for his/her decision on establishing an entrepreneur activity in a given country.

The country score is determined by the following formula:

Here, the sum over “i” is across all the questions under investigation, totalling 77 (or 25 in the reduced version presented in the Appendix). Q _i represent the discrete values introduced by these questions (such as 0, 10, or different values), and W _i is the corresponding weight, assigned by the individuals, to each question, ranging between 0 and 1. The maximum score for a country, considering all these aspects, is normalized to 100.

As an illustration an estimation of the IMIGRENT index for different European countries is given in the following Table 1. In the last column, the value of the index is depicted, calculated by the author and based on his criteria of importance assigned to the different aspects.

To illustrate how the above table was created, Bulgaria will be used as an example to demonstrate the quantification process for the case of a European immigrant who wish to start an own business in another European country.

For the questions from the first block, presented in the Appendix, and referring to Immigration procedures, the link to the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior (Min_Interior_BG, 2024) has been used. The first 6 questions from the Appendix, belonging to this block, have been quantified in the following way: Q1 – 10, Q2 – 10, Q3 – 7, Q4 – 5, Q5 – 7 and Q6 – 5. It should be remembered that the author’s preferences are such that the corresponding weights W _i are fixed to unity.

The questions from 7 to 14, referring to Company registration and ownership, have been quantified by using information from the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy and Industry (Min_Economy_BG, 2024). The questions from this block give the following quantification: Q7 – 0, Q8 – 3, Q9 – 10, Q10 – 10, Q11 – 10, Q12 – 5, Q13 – 8, Q14 – 0.

The next block referring to Personal Affairs and Accommodation is quantified from specific sites concerning real estate (ImotBG, 2024) and the scores for the corresponding three questions are as follows: Q15 – 5, Q16 – 8, Q17 – 5, Q18 – 2.

The scores corresponding to the questions of the block Social services, are based on the information available from the Bulgarian National Social Security Institute (NSSI_BG, 2024) and are Q19 – 7, Q20 – 5.

Finally, the last two blocks, i.e. Specific issues (questions 21-23) and Climatic and other natural conditions (questions 24-25) are based on the information cited in (Expat Insider, 2022) and (WMO, 2024), respectively. The corresponding scores are: Q21 – 8, Q22 – 5, Q23 – 10, Q24 – 8, Q25 – 10. The application of the formula gives a total normalized to 250 scores of 66 points (100 being the maximum).

The comparison between the results of the quantification proposed by the IMIGRENT index and those of the other two indices shows similar results in the three cases. However, some additional aspects, taken into consideration in the IMIGRENT index, have improved the quantification. For example, the issues referring to company registration, online access, different aspects of personal affairs and accommodation as well as natural conditions, have introduced further important details. This is well observed in the case of Finland when referring to climate conditions or to Bulgaria in the case of the quota for foreign workers. In the case of Spain it can be observed that malfunctioning institutions and ambiguous rules are lowering the total index, while in the case of Germany results are generally good except where indirect barriers are artificially created for economic reasons.

Poland benefits from flexible banking and business practices and ranks higher than Hungary, largely due to its stronger social support system. Italy scores lower because of its complex bureaucracy and the extra steps required to recognize foreign qualifications. While France lacks advanced e-services, it still outperforms Italy in terms of overall flexibility. Denmark and Sweden show strength in many areas of flexibility, but their scores are slightly lowered by restrictions on property ownership and challenging weather conditions—though they remain among the highest-rated countries. Ukraine, on the other hand, ranks relatively low, mainly due to restrictions on foreigners without permanent residency, adverse climate, and the ongoing armed conflict.

The present paper deals with the attractiveness for an entrepreneurship activity in different countries and its quantification. The analysis is based on the internationally recognized index introduced by the World Bank and Transparency International as well as on the migrant integration index derived for the MIPEX countries. In addition, the author introduced a new, third index for quantification of how a country results attractive for doing business. This new approach is universal for all countries worldwide and introduces the Migrant Entrepreneurship index (IMIGRENT), which is compared to the rest of the indexes. This new measure shows an improvement of the quantification of the attractiveness for an entrepreneurship activities of a country due to the additional aspects it takes into consideration. They refer to an in-depth analysis, which includes numerous details concerning company registration, different aspects of personal affairs and accommodation as well as natural conditions, among others. The introduction of distinct inquiries, centred on the national legislation of the respective country, give a suitable measure of the attractiveness of the country under consideration. Consequently, the overall evaluation of a country’s appeal for entrepreneurship is contingent on the preferences and assessments made by entrepreneurs themselves, taking into account the perceived importance of diverse elements.

The IMIGRENT index is designed to be universal, meaning it applies regardless of an immigrant’s citizenship and is grounded in the local policies of prospective host countries. Of the six components that make up the index, several align with existing frameworks. It draws elements from the EUCHAM20 index, such as the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business score and the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, particularly in relation to business start-up and tax procedures. It also incorporates aspects of the MIPEX index, reflecting key areas of immigrant integration like family reunification, education, healthcare, permanent residence, and access to citizenship.

It is worth noting that the IMIGRENT index extends beyond conventional indicators, offering a more comprehensive view of the immigrant experience across countries. This broader perspective provides valuable data for comparative analysis and can support both policymakers and prospective immigrants in making more informed, practical decisions about immigration strategies.

As a general conclusion it can be said that the IMIGRENT index is a suitable measure for entrepreneurship activities attractiveness of a country as it adapts itself to the proper necessity and the vision of the interested entrepreneurs to start an activity in a new country worldwide depending on the citizenship of the subject.

Future research will also explore the origin of the differences between the MIPEX and the IMIGRENT indices, the dynamic evolution of a country’s attractiveness score for entrepreneurial activities within the IMIGRENT based on the full set of 77 questions as well as the case of non-EU immigrants who want to start an own business in Europe.