Immigration and the City by Eric Fong & Brent Berry

Author:Eric Fong & Brent Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745690056
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

For immigrants, owning a business or working in a co-ethnic business has long been an important path to economic survival. As the socioeconomic backgrounds of immigrants have diversified, the industrial sectors of immigrant businesses have also diversified. Scholars have suggested a few different models to clarify the increasingly complex patterns of immigrant businesses. Each of these concepts focuses on different aspects of ethnic business, yet all of them take ethnic businesses as a group to understand their economic behavior as a whole. Following the same line of inquiry, this chapter explored the locational distribution of immigrant businesses of different size involved in diverse industrial sectors in major cities with increasing racial and ethnic diversity. To accommodate the demands that stem from different racial and ethnic compositions, immigrant businesses of certain sizes or involved in certain industrial sectors are more likely found in neighborhoods with different racial and ethnic compositions in order to successfully match the needs of their businesses with the unique sets of needs in the neighborhoods. Finally the chapter discussed the economic returns of individuals participating in ethnic businesses. Overall patterns show that city context can directly or indirectly, through their socioeconomic background, influence the economic returns of individuals involved in immigrant businesses.

The discussion clearly demonstrates that the economic well-being of individuals involved in immigrant businesses is closely linked with the city in which they reside. The implication is a sort of ecological understanding of human behavior. Individuals are embedded in the social and economic context of the city, and therefore their social and economic behavior is closely linked to the context. It is a reflection of the larger debate in urban studies that began in the 1980s about the importance of city and neighborhood contexts to understand social and economic outcomes. Immigrants are no different from other residents; their economic wellbeing is shaped by the city context in which they work.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.