Ivan Light

Immigrant and Ethnic Enterprise in North America

Examines the advantages that immigrant and ethnic minority groups have in small business in the United States. In twentieth-century America, the concentration of foreign-born ethnic and minority groups involved in small business was significantly greater than disadvantaged native minorities. Specific attention is placed on the case of native-born African Americans. Using the works of previous researchers, several theories are offered to explain this phenomenon. The reason for this difference is argued to be largely a result of access to ethnic resources which allows immigrants to outcompete native workers. Ethnic resources are different than class resources in that groups with class resources are individualistic whereas groups with ethnic resources are collectivisitic. These ethnic resources are based on pre-modern values and solidarities. If these values and solidarities can continue to exist, the foreign-born groups can continue to maintain an advantage over the native groups. Two potential causes for the destruction of these ethnic resources are ethnic capitalism and cultural assimilation. This destruction is usually slow to happen because ethnic business owners often earn substantial profits which encourage them to maintain their ethnic enterprise. (SRD)

Disadvantaged Minorities in Self-Employment

T WO GENERATIONS of social scientists have described self employment as an economic anachronism in the process of disappearance (Lynd and Lynd 1937: 69; Mayer 1947; Vidich and Bensman 1960: 305-306; Castles and Kosack 1973: 465; Weber 1947: 427). Following Marx on this point, they observed that urbanization and the concentration of firms into ever larger units has continuously reduced the once numerous class of free enterprisers in the last century (Corey 1964: 371). Indeed, a quarter-century ago, Mills (1951;

Through the eye of the needle : immigrants and enterprise in New York's garment trades

To many who hear, the deaf world is as foreign as a country never visited.Deaf World thus concerns itself less with the perspectives of the hearing and more with what Deaf people themselves think and do. Editor Lois Bragg asserts that English is for many signing people a second, infrequently used language and that Deaf culture is the socially transmitted pattern of behavior, values, beliefs, and expression of those who use American Sign Language. She has assembled an astonishing array of historical sources, political writings, and personal memoirs, from classic 19th-century manifestos to contemporary policy papers, on everything from eugenics to speech and lipreading, the right to work and marry, and the never-ending controversy over separation vs. social integration. At the heart of many of the selections lies the belief that Deaf Americans have long constituted an internal colony of sorts in the United States.While not attempting to speak for Deaf people en masse, this ambitious platform anthology places the Deaf on center stage, offering them an opportunity to represent the world--theirs as well as the hearing world--from a Deaf perspective. For Deaf readers, the book will be welcomed as a gift, both a companion to be savored and, as often, an opponent to be engaged and debated. And for the hearing, it serves as an unprecedented guide to a world and a culture so often overlooked.Comprising a judicious mix of published pieces and original essays solicited specifically for this volume, Deaf World marks a major contribution.

Beyond the Ethnic Enclave Economy

The terms “ethnic economy” and “ethnic enclave economy” designate an immigrant or minority business and employment sector that coexists with the general economy. Users often treat these terms as synonymous. In fact, they are not. The concept of ethnic enclave economy derives from the labor segmentation literature, whereas the concept of ethnic economy derives from the middleman minorities literature. The derivations have shaped the problems that both concepts address. The strenuous debate about relative wages in the ethnic enclave versus the general economy is a case in point. When conceptualized in terms of an ethnic economy, the salience of this debate greatly diminishes. Agreeing that the concept of ethnic enclave economy is useful, we nonetheless claim that it is less general than the older concept of the ethnic economy. Indeed, we show that the ethnic enclave economy is really a special case of the ethnic economy. Evidence for this conclusion derives, in part, from our survey of Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles, the results of which fit the older ethnic economy concept but cannot be squeezed into the concept of an ethnic enclave economy.

Boundaries of Social Capital in Entrepreneurship

Our research begins with a theoretical critique of the social capital literature, and then focuses on Old Harbor, Alaska. In this remote outpost, mainly populated by Alutiiq people, all entrepreneurs self–identified as Euro–Americans or multi–ethnic, not Alutiiq. Although Alutiiq people have abundant social capital, which they employed for economic purposes, they did not employ their social capital for commercial entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that social capital promotes entrepreneurship only when supportive cultural capital is in place.

Ethnic Entrepreneurs in America's Largest Metropolitan Areas

Using 1990 census data, the authors compare 77 immigrant and ethnic groups in the 16 largest metropolitan regions in the United States. They find that the interaction effect of location and ethnicity on ethnic entrepreneurship is evident not only in self-employment rates but also in niche concentrations and niche competition. Their results reveal a distinction between main-stream groups and nonmainstream groups. Compared to mainstream groups, nonmainstream groups are more context resistant. That is, they concentrate in few entrepreneurial niches and display high niche continuity across metropolitan regions. Group competition influences niche concentrations, but an adverse impact on black entrepreneurship is not apparent.

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles.

Stressing the networks facilitation of immigrants’ searches for jobs and housing, migration network theory has conceptually overlooked the manner in which immigrants’ social networks also expand the supply of jobs and housing in target destinations by means of the ethnic economy. An expanded migration network theory takes into account the ethnic economys role in creating new resources in the destination economy. However, the power of this objection wanes in the context of working-class immigrations that generate few entrepreneurs. Introduced here, the concept of immigrant economy responds to this contingency. Unlike ethnic economies, in which co-ethnics hire co-ethnics, immigrant economies arise when immigrants hire non-co-ethnic fellow immigrants. This situation usually arises when very entrepreneurial immigrant groups coexist in a labor market with working-class immigrant groups that generate few entrepreneurs of their own. Using evidence from the garment industry of Los Angeles, this paper estimates that only a third of immigrant employees found their jobs in a conventional ethnic economy. Half owed their employment to the immigrant economy in which, for the most part, Asian entrepreneurs employed Latino workers.

Numbers Gambling Among Blacks: A Financial Institution

Mainstream financial institutions have never been able to provide generally prevailing service levels in poor communities. In the resulting partial-service vacuum, blacks invented numbers gambling. Numbers-gambling banks became sources of capital and a major savings device of urban black communities. In conjunction with the usury industry, numbers banks framed an alternative institutional system for the savings-investment cycle in the slum. Numbers banking illustrates the conjoint contribution of institutional and cultural causes in analysis of poverty.

The Ethnic Vice Industry, 1880-1944

It was convenient for big cities to house prostitution in non-white, ethnic communities, but blacks and Chinese organized prostitution differently.

Protest or Work: Dilemmas of the Tourist Industry in American Chinatowns'

In the compettitio between institutional and cultural theories of American poverty, the success of Chinese-Americans has provided telling evidence for the cultural view. However, recent events in American Chinatowns show that the cultural interpretation was overdrawn. The dependence of Chinatowns upon the tourist in dustry has constrained residents to suppress visible manifestations of social unrest and pathology in order to attract customers. The inability of the tourist industry to keep pace with recent immigrations is now bringing these previously suppressed manifestations to the surface. The Chinatown case suggests that the industrial division of labor will prove a fruitful place to seek a synthesis of cultural and institutional theories.