Mehdi Bozorgmehr

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.

Immigrant entrepreneurship and business patterns : A comparison of Koreans and Iranians in Los Angeles

There are currently two theoretically controversial issues concerning immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship in the literature, one on its causes and the other on its consequences. The first is the debate about whether ethnic or class resources are more central to the establishment of immigrant/ethnic businesses. The second issue is whether there is a causal connection between ethnic business and ethnic solidarity. Based on a comparison of the two most entrepreneurial immigrant groups in Los Angeles (Koreans and Iranians), this article addresses both issues. Korean immigrants rely more on ethnic resources, whereas Iranians depend more on class resources. Relative utilization of class vs. ethnic resources determines the patterns of immigrant/ethnic businesses rather than their development in the first place. Korean businesses on average are smaller, more concentrated, and serve more co-ethnic and low-income minority customers, while Iranian immigrants are larger, more dispersed, and largely serve white customers. As a result, Koreans have encountered severe intergroup conflict, whereas Iranians have sidestepped it. Our comparison of these two groups suggests that only middleman businesses strengthen ethnic solidarity, although all types of immigrant/ethnic businesses may contribute to ethnic attachment. Paying special attention to business patterns (e.g., size, type, and location) — much neglected variables in research on immigrant/ethnic entrepreneurship — helps in resolving both theoretical issues.

Middle East and North Africa

Intensifi ed violence, sectarian strife, and an escalation of human traffi cking and people smuggling in 2016 led to increasing levels of displacement across the Middle East and North Africa region. Of the estimated 67.7 million people worldwide of concern to UNHCR, more than 28 per cent are in this region, including 2.6 million refugees, 15.1 million IDPs and returnees, and an estimated 372,500 stateless.

Internal Ethnicity: Iranians in Los Angeles

Case studies of immigrant groups have contributed significantly to theoretical developments in the fields of immigration and ethnic studies. The focus on the immigrant group as a whole has resulted in ignoring immigrant subgroups, reducing ethnicity to national-origin. Ethnically diverse immigrant groups contain more than one type of ethnicity. Internal ethnicity refers to the presence of ethnic groups within an immigrant group. It is argued that, in the destination country, the immigrant subgroups who were already minorities in the country of origin are less assimilated than the immigrant subgroup which was part of the majority population. Survey data collected in a probability sample of Iranians in Los Angeles allow us to address this issue. Ethnicity of the Muslim majority in the United States is compared with that of Armenian, Bahai, and Jewish ethno-religious minorities from Iran. The data analysis supports the argument, and further shows that pre-migration ethnicity is an important and neglected aspect of post-migration ethnicity.

Internal ethnicity in the ethnic economy

Abstract Internal ethnicity refers to ethnic subgroups within an immigrant group. An ‘ethnic economy’ includes the self‐employed and their co‐ethnic workers. Although most research treats the boundaries of ‘ethnic economy’ and its variant, the ‘ethnic enclave economy’, as though they were coterminous with those of national‐origin immigrant groups, this assumption is unreliable. Ethnic boundaries need not coincide with those of nationality origin when internal ethnicity exists. To test this hypothesis, we utilize survey data collected from a sample of Iranians in Los Angeles. Because this national‐origin immigrant group contains four ethno‐religious subgroups (Armenians, Bahais, Jews and Muslims), the Iranians in Los Angeles operated four distinctive ethnic economies, not one. Each ethno‐religious subgroup had its own ethnic economy, and these separate economies were only weakly tied to an encompassing Iranian ethnic economy.

Success(ion): Second-Generation Iranian Americans

More than a generation has passed since the substantial immigration of Iranians to the United States in the late 1970s, resulting in a sizable second-generation population (defined by convention as persons born in the United States and those who immigrated under the age of thirteen). This article presents a first look at the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the second generation at the national level, and compares them with those of the first generation (Iran- or foreign-born population). It uses the 2005–07 merged data set compiled by the United States Census in the American Community Survey (ACS). The results indicate a preliminary continuation of economic and educational success from the first- to the second-generation Iranians. Moreover, this achievement has become more balanced across gender lines in the second generation. Specifically, in terms of educational attainment and labor force participation, females have quickly closed the gap with their male counterparts. Because the second generation is still young, it is premature to assess the extent of intergenerational mobility among Iranians. But given this generations initial achievements, one can only expect an upward trajectory.

Survey Research among Middle Eastern Immigrant Groups in the United States: Iranians in Los Angeles

Immigration research poses special problems, but survey researchers studying immigrant groups rarely write about the problems they encounter in the design and conduct of their surveys (Hurh and Kim 1984). Three areas of particular importance are: (1) securing the approval of community leaders or persons of influence; (2) identifying adequate frames for relatively small immigrant populations, from which random samples can be selected; and (3) conducting the fieldwork, including recruiting and training interviewers fluent in immigrant languages. The main objective of this paper is to describe various stages of our recently completed survey of Iranians in Los Angeles (see Figure 1). We pay particular attention to the problems we have faced in carrying out this study, and how resolving some of them reshaped our original research design.

Panethnicity revisited: contested group boundaries in the post-9/11 era

ABSTRACT Existing theories of panethnicity in the USA concentrate on Asian Americans and Latinos, two umbrella groups that originally coalesced during the 1960s civil rights era. Although the role played by the state is recognized as central to panethnic development, we argue that the influence of this pivotal variable is contingent on historical context. Through a case study of emerging minority groups (Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in the post-9/11 era), we re-examine the existing conceptualization of panethnicity at a time when the state plays a more punitive than compensatory role. Using a methodology that draws on a range of novel sources, we document the way that pre-existing ethnic, religious and national-origin labels have been reinforced instead of panethnic labels for the populations under study. Accordingly, we develop an updated conceptualization of group formation that incorporates historical context and the role of the state in the post-9/11 era.

Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11

Perhaps it is the C. Wright Mills legacy, run through forty-some years of my teaching Introduction to Sociology, contrasting ‘‘troubles’’ with ‘‘issues,’’ biography with history, but I find myself particularly intrigued when a sociologist turns to (auto)biography. And not just any sociologist. This is Peter Berger who, along with Thomas Luckmann, changed my life and made me who I am— or at least let me understand who I am. I took my undergraduate theory class in the summer of my freshman year. And after reading Berger’s biography, I was shocked to learn that was just three years after Berger and Luckmann published The Social Construction of Reality. I still own that book; it is one of the few ‘‘theory’’ books that made the cut when I downsized my library to an apartment from a big house. That copy of The Social Construction of Reality, with its highlighting, underlining, exclamation points and scribbles all over the margins, is the document of my birth as a sociologist. So this is the most intimidating book review I have ever faced. I know just about nothing about the sociology of religion, nothing about many of the areas in which Berger has worked and published. I am, as almost anyone would be, impressed with his long list of books, the many areas in which he has worked and contributed, all around the world. A review of his work requires a group effort, just the kind of research group he himself has been so successful at convening. Berger’s tone, the engaging humor, reminds me of one of my elderly uncles. He describes his arrival at the New School to learn sociology as a kind of accident, not realizing how totally marginal it was to mainstream American sociology, offering us the old Jewish joke about the Chinese waiter speaking Yiddish. When a customer is surprised, the owner hushes him: ‘‘He thinks he’s learning English!’’ And we’re off—I am listening to one of my beloved uncles. As he recounts his extraordinarily productive life, I am sometimes in awe, but much as with my uncles, sometimes wincing with embarrassment. This is, as titled, a book of Berger’s adventures as a sociologist, not an autobiography of his life in full. A first marriage comes and goes in a sentence—his children do the same. Brigitte Berger, his wife, does show up now and again throughout the book, but his family life is dismissed with this reference to his early years at the Hartford Seminary Foundation: ‘‘The Hartford years were biographically important both personally and intellectually. I started life with Brigitte, and our two sons were born there.’’ He continues with a sentence or two on her writing, and his own leaving behind of neoorthodox theology and coming to ‘‘liberal Lutheranism’’ (p. 77). Berger spends some time explaining that his religious life is a very important part of who he is, but separate from his life as a sociologist, using as one of many Jewish references (those of us who did not follow his work in the sociology of religion can be forgiven for having thought he was Jewish): a Weberian notion of kosher cooking, keeping fleshy science separate from milky religion. I can respect and appreciate that, both the separation and the places where the separation utterly falls apart. What is most interesting is that it really does not even occur to him that other parts of his life/identity may be worth attending to in his intellectual development. He is, after all, a white man—and I gather that that identity and its privilege do not strike him as noteworthy. Berger was one of the gods of my life, but like many others, he crashes when feminism comes in. His tales of ‘‘militant feminists’’ in a chapter (wince) called ‘‘Politically Incorrect Excursions’’ all but breaks my heart. Militant? As one of my friends asked when