新作坊

Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies

摘要：

Despite the growth of new ethnic populations on both sides of the Atlantic, scholarly work existing at the outset of the 1990s had not presented consistent findings on the determinants and implications of the spread of ethnic enterprise. Most studies had generated, but not tested, hypotheses. The present studies examine ethnic entrepreneurship by presenting and using a model of immigrant enterprise. The primary focus is on migrant experience in Western industrial societies of the post-World War II period. Chapter 1, "Opportunities, Group Characteristics, and Strategies," presents a model of immigrant enterprise that serves as a context for the subsequent chapters. The model offers an explanation for immigrant enterprise that emphasizes the interaction between the opportunity structure of the host society and the group characteristics and social structure of the immigrant community. The entry barriers into small-scale enterprises are lowered to immigrants with limited capital. Opportunities for ownership arise in the process of ethnic succession, as older groups move into higher social positions and leave behind vacancies for new small business owners. Two kinds of group characteristics that promote recruitment into entrepreneurial positions are identified: first, the situational constraints faced by immigrants, as well as certain groups' cultural norms, breed a predisposition toward efficient performance in work settings, especially in small business; second, resource mobilization is facilitated if immigrant firms can draw on their connections with a supply of family and ethnic labor. Chapter 2, "Trends in Ethnic Business in the United States" and Chapter 3, "European Trends in Ethnic Business," use the model developed in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 discusses small business and ethnic entrepreneurship trends in the US and compares the experiences of four ethnic groups: African Americans, Chinese, Koreans, and Cubans. Chapter 3 applies the model to four European countries: England, France, West Germany, and the Netherlands. Chapter 4, "Spatial Dimensions of Opportunity Structures," discusses the influence of spatial arrangements on ethnic business; it examines the effects of the variations in opportunity structures on the pattern of business development. Chapter 5, "Ethnic Entrepreneurs, and Ethnic Strategies," examines the strategies employed by ethnic entrepreneurs to create solutions to problems facing their enterprises. These strategies include: obtaining information through personal networks; acquiring training and skills on the job; using family and co-ethnic labor; building special relationships with and delivering special services to customers; dealing with competition through self-exploitation, business expansion, supporting ethnic associations, and strengthening ties with other families through marriage; and seeking protection from governments officials and owners outside their ethnic communities through bribery, paying penalties, searching for loopholes, and organizing protests. Ethnic entrepreneurs need these distinctive strategies for three reasons: first, it allows them to exploit distinctive sociocultural resources; it allows them to compensate for the typical background deficits in respect to wealth, valid educational credentials, political power, and influential contacts; third, it helps them to overcome political and economic obstacles that they face as social outsiders, and that majority entrepreneurs escape. The analysis reveals that very different and widely separated ethnic groups pursue rather similar strategies. Chapter 6, "Business on the Ragged Edge: Immigrant and Minority Business in the Garment Industries of Paris, London, and New York," analyzes the interaction of opportunity structures and group characteristics in the same industry in three different societies. Chapter 7, "Conclusions and Policy Implications," reviews and assesses the po