New Migrants in the Marketplace

Boston’s Ethnic Entrepreneurs

Edited by Marilyn Halter

Foreword by Peter L Berger

University of Massachusetts Press / Amherst

Contents

Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xi
One Introduction—Boston’s Immigrants Revisited: The Economic Culture of Ethnic Enterprise 1
Marilyn Halter
Two Ethnic Economy or Ethnic Enclave Economy? 23
Ivan Light. Georges Sabagh, Mehdi Bozorgmehr. and Claudia Der-Martirosian
Three Ethnicity and the Entrepreneur: Self-Employment among Former Soviet Jewish Refugees 43
Marilyn Halter
Four Culture, Economic Stability, and Entrepreneurship: The Case of British West Indians in Boston 59
Violet Johnson
Photo Essay: Boston’s Immigrants in Business 81
Steven J. Gold and Marilyn Halter
Five Greek-American Economic Culture: The Intensification of Economic Life and a Parallel Process of Puritanization 97
Caesar Mavratsas
Six A Todos Les Llama Primo (I Call Everyone Cousin): The Social Basis for Latino Small Businesses 120
Peggy Levitt
Seven The Culture of Entrepreneurship among Khmer Refugees 141
Nancy ]. Smith-Hefner
Eight “Staying Close to Haitian Culture”: Ethnic Enterprise in the Immigrant Community 161
Marilyn Halter
Contributors 175
Index 177

Chapter 1

Introduction — Boston’s Immigrants Revisited: The Economic Culture of Ethnic Enterprise

Marilyn Halter

More than 160 years ago American society reached its zenith in levels of self-employment. During the 1820s and 1830s, great religious upheavals coincided with a wide-ranging flurry of small business activity to create what has been called “a shopkeeper’s millennium,” particularly in the Northeast (Johnson 1978).1 As the early nineteenth-century market economy expanded, the proportion of free white Americans owning their own businesses soared to 80 percent (Corey 1966). Since that time entrepreneurship of this type has been in steady decline. However, the growth and significance of ethnic entrepreneurialism in recent American socioeconomic life is a phenomenon that has generated much contemporary interest across a broad political and ideological spectrum and among scholars, policymakers, and community activists alike.

Within social scientific scholarship, most had predicted that small businesses in the United States would all but disappear by the late twentieth century; still others projected that the significance of ethnicity in relation to economic success would greatly diminish by this stage of advanced capitalism.2 Interestingly, the giants of modem sociology, including Marx and Weber, all underestimated the vitality of entrepreneurialism in the modem state, and none have contributed theoretical models that could account for its continued importance.3 Thus, an unlikely consensus evolved among scholars on the right, left, and center that entrepreneurship would simply become obsolete in advanced economies. Yet the entrepreneurial spirit has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient in a postindustrial economy, particularly in the case of ethnic-based enterprises. The small business owner as folk hero in American culture endures.

Ethnic entrepreneurialism exemplifies an alternative path to socio-economic adjustment and mobility in America, representing an avenue directly opposite to that which had crystallized in the literature derived from the perceived experience of turn-of-the-century newcomers. Popular views often held that immigrants of the earlier wave succeeded by joining the mainstream as rapidly as possible, by losing their distinctive group characteristics. The strategies exhibited by members of today’s ethnic economies, just as in the past, reflect considerable cultural co-hesiveness and continuity. The road to successful adaptation and upward mobility depends precisely on not assimilating too much. Social resources based on a common cultural identity are maintained as a way to compensate for other disadvantages such as racial discrimination or a lack of sufficient start-up capital. Thus, the recent scholarship documenting the development of successful ethnic enterprise constitutes a formidable challenge to prevailing theories of both immigrant incorporation and the workings of a postindustrial society.

Sociologists studying immigrants who have arrived in the United States since 1965 first drew attention to the sizable number of new immigrants opening and operating small businesses. Wider public awareness of this phenomenon has also spread, often the result, unfortunately, of well-publicized conflicts between foreign-born shopkeepers and their native-born (often minority) customers. At the same time, particularly in the wake of the devastation resulting from the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and in response to the entrenchment of urban poverty in pockets throughout the United States, programs to promote local entre-preneurship are being put forth from a broad range of political perspectives as possible remedies. Proponents of entrepreneurial initiatives come from the private sector as well as from community bases such as black nationalist self-help groups, and federally sponsored programs, such as urban enterprise zones. As incongruous as it may initially appear, even the political left has gotten into the act, as sociologist Steve Gold (1992,167) pointed out in his study of refugee communities in California. Gold noted that some individuals with a more traditionally collectivist approach to questions of economic success are recognizing the community value of ethnic-based business activity. Local antipoverty agencies now sponsor microenterprise training programs staffed by organizers known as “enterprise agents,” and networks of nonprofit grassroots lending programs designed to bolster self-employment are being implemented in low-income communities across the country. The appeal of successful immigrant entrepreneurship as a response to the challenges of a multiracial, multiethnic urban environment can be viewed as compatible with a variety of sociopolitical outlooks.

New immigrants and their ventures have already been credited with revitalizing decaying and depopulated neighborhoods in America’s cities and older suburbs, rejuvenating crumbling business districts overrun with vacant storefronts, restoring dilapidated residences, and, through the repopulation process, expanding the tax base of metropolitan areas that have been dying out with the decline of the industrial city and in the aftermath of the failures of urban renewal. In an era of massive layoffs by large firms, small and midsize companies in the 1990s have been shown to be increasingly important in creating employment opportunities. Numerous contemporary analyses demonstrate that small business rather than the large corporation provides most jobs in the United States today and that these enterprises are leading the economy out of recession.4

Indeed, since the 1880s, immigrants have been overrepresented in American small business endeavors, and the latest wave of newcomers to our shores are again infusing this sector of the economy with renewed vitality. Since the passage of the landmark Hart-Celler Act of 1965, immigrants, particularly from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, have been streaming into the United States in ever-increasing numbers. Legislation passed in 1990 reinforced the likelihood that the borders of this country will be kept relatively open. Under the 1990 act, legal immigration has averaged about 1 million people a year until 1994 and is unlikely to go below 500,000, even if calls for restriction are heeded. In addition, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, illegal migration to the United States has totaled approximately 300,000 annually in recent years. Immigrants produced roughly 39 percent of the overall U.S. population growth in the 1980s. At this rate, the closing years of the twentieth century will become the decade of immigration surpassing even the high-water mark of mass migration reached during the first decade of the century. Currently, the United States and neighboring Canada are the only major industrial societies that have successfully absorbed large numbers of immigrants from just about anywhere in the world—with very few exceptions, which have specific historical explanations.

More than fifty years ago, Oscar Handlin, the father of modern immigration studies, chose Boston as the site for his pioneering investigation of immigrant cultures in an urban setting. Boston’s Immigrants, a community study that broke down the disciplinary boundaries between history and the social sciences, became a model for many social historians. Several decades later, our book takes a new look at Boston’s immigrants—this time the focus is on the economic culture and small business activity of several recently arrived populations, including Jews from the former Soviet Union, British West Indians (from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Montserrat), Greeks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Khmer (Cambodians), and Haitians. Tables 1 and 2 list total official numbers of migrants from these groups to both Massachusetts and the Boston Metropolitan Area since 1965. In some cases, however, these tabulations represent severe undercounts because of the large undocumented population as well as high rates of internal geographic mobility. Furthermore, the figures are based on foreign place of birth and, therefore, do not include American-bom children of recent immigrants, who, in some cases, constitute a considerable proportion of the ethnic community. In the case of the Haitians, it is estimated that illegal residents actually outnumber those of legal standing. Wherever possible, we have also relied on figures quoted by local community leaders and consulate officials who often provide a more accurate picture.5

Boston is particularly well suited to a comparadve study of this kind because of the diversity of its immigrant populations. Unlike most cities with large concentrations of immigrants, no one ethnic group predominates. Boston’s newcomers also come from more widely varied educational and cultural backgrounds. Yet the total immigrant population is still relatively small, at least when compared to concentrations in the major cities of New York, California, or Florida. Thus, there is an opportunity for researchers to examine and compare the adaptation of different ethnic groups within an environment that is not overwhelmed by recent arrivals. Moreover, Massachusetts is little studied in the literature on recent immigration and in the scholarship on ethnic enterprise, providing a potentially valuable laboratory for future comparative studies in this field.

In the 1980s, the state of Massachusetts and the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area experienced huge economic growth that drew many newcomers, transforming the demographic makeup of the region. According to 1990 census figures, the commonwealth ranked fifth in the United States in refugee arrivals and seventh in immigrant arrivals, meaning that the population was diversifying faster than most other states in the last ten years. An estimated 245,000 immigrants and refugees made Massachusetts, whose total population is about 6 million, their home in the 1980s. The city of Boston mirrored this pattern of prosperity and diversity, with its foreign-born population increasing to 20 percent of the total while the economy held strong and unemployment fell. For the first time in forty years, Boston had a net growth in population, up by 11,000 from 1980, at a time when many other older I cities like it, including Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago, lost population. In the community of Chelsea, adjacent to Boston proper, 70 percent of public schoolchildren live in families where English is not the first language.

The sustained expansion of the 1980s drew people from botli the high and low ends of the economic scale. The region’s banking, financial, and real estate sectors flourished, requiring a well-educated labor force. Because growth was experienced throughout the economy, unskilled workers could also find employment in low-paying jobs shunned by others. In addition to purely economic incentives, Massachusetts has been the first choice for significant numbers of political refugees. In addition to its purely economic incentives, Massachusetts has been the first choice for significant numbers of political refugees. It also has seen a net gain in secondary refugee settlement every year since the Refugee Act became law in 1980. The commonwelath has a long history of providing refuge to individuals seeking freedom from religious and political persecution and continues to represent that tradition well.

The recent influx has not only changed the face of older ethnic neighborhoods but also reshaped the composition of the Hispanic and Asian communities of Greater Boston. In 1980, Puerto Ricans represented the majority of the city’s Hispanic population at 54 percent; by 1990 that number had decreased to 42 percent. The balance is made up of Mexicans and Cubans (7 percent) and what the U.S. Census Bureau designates “other Hispanics,” a catchall term that is largely made up of Dominican arrivals. Similarly, the commonwealth’s Asian population has diversified in the last decade. Chinese are no longer the majority statewide. In Boston, three of every four Asians were Chinese in 1980, whereas by 1990 the ratio was down to three in five. An increase in the proportion of Vietnamese newcomers, a population that almost quadrupled in size, has much to do with this shift.6

Although the flow of new immigrants to the region continues strong into the 1990s, the boom in the economy has not been similarly sustained. Since about 1988, Massachusetts has experienced a recession, the worst slump since the Second World War. The defense and computer industries were hard hit, and the banks became overextended. A 1993 study listed the state, once a mecca for entrepreneurs, as thirty-third in the nation for business start-ups (Birch et al. 1993). More long-standing residents and enterprises have moved away from the commonwealth, seeking greater opportunity in the southern and western states. Some people and jobs are relocating to areas with milder weather, but the new immigrants streaming into the state have the potential to take their places and to warm the entrepreneurial climate in the region.

This comparative research into Boston’s ethnic entrepreneurs addresses me question of what accounts for variations in self-employment patterns among national-origin groups. The populations in this study show widely differing rates of self-employment and levels of poverty (see tables 3 and 4). Related objectives are to determine what is distinctively ethnic about the immigrant business and whether these distinctive cultural features contribute to the success of the enterprise. Ethnicity as a factor of economic life can be expressed in many different forms, such as the marketing of ethnic products, employment of coethnics, relationship to coethnic customers, cultural capital generated through ethnic-based resources, and strategies of capitalization. In general, ethnic enterprise studies have found ethnicity to be a highly viable and enduring element of modern societies. They emphasize immigrant cooperation to show that traditional and modern forms of behavior can be mixed to produce a potent economic brew for ethnic entrepreneurs.

In his final chapter in a collection of essays on immigrant entrepreneurs in Britain, Richard Jenkins presents an overview with suggestions for further research. Paramount on his agenda is the need for more qualitative studies. According to Jenkins the possibilities for enhancing this field of scholarship, as well as the ability to more sharply analyze the distinctions between structural and cultural elements, rest with a greater emphasis on comparative research that is firmly rooted in localized in-depth case studies. Such an approach, he argues, is the optimal vehicle for determining how decisions are made and actions taken. Although not claiming outright that ethnography is the only or best way to accomplish these objectives, he strongly hints at the significance of anthropological perspectives for garnering the detailed empirical data required to develop convincing cultural models of interpretation. Jenkins also advises that these microlevel studies be situated in the inner cities as the most desirable venue for broadening the scope of research related to ethnic business development (Ward and Jenkins 1984,231-38).

The design of the Boston immigrant entrepreneurs project contains all the research dimensions that Jenkins prescribed as crucial to bettering our understanding of the phenomenon of ethnic enterprise. Using an ethnographic approach, the study is comparative, urban, and oriented toward an exploration of cultural variables. Moreover, this inquiry adds another ingredient to the recipe for sound qualitative research: a historical perspective on the contemporary problem under consideration. Wherever possible, we have attempted to reconstruct the entrepreneurial milieu of the premigration culture and to trace the development of small businesses among earlier generations of coethnics, when such economies existed in Boston. The Greeks and Russian Jews, for example, have had a significant presence in the Boston metropolis since the late nineteenth century; the British West Indian and Puerto Rican communities date back to the period between the two World Wars. The Dominican, Khmer, and Haitian populations, however, are arriving in large numbers for the first time with this most recent migration. Particularly in the case of the Greeks, the existence of an already well-established coethnic economy serves to enhance the possibilities of success for the newest wave of immigrants interested in going into business for themselves.

The bulk of this volume consists of essays based on the empirical research conducted in Boston and devoted to each immigrant population under study. However, Ivan Light, one of me leading scholars in the field of ethnic enterprise studies, adds a most welcome theoretical contribution to the book that serves to refine and more sharply define critical concepts and terminology, at the same time stretching the horizon of inquiry related to tthis timely topic. Light is concerned about the lack of clarity, or as he has termed it the “conceptual anarchy,” of this subject and seeks especially to reframe the parameters of the two most fre-quently employed concepts in the literature—the ethnic economy and the ethnic enclave economy. These two ideas are typically used as if they were synonymous, but light presents a convincing challenge to this approach, arguing mat the two notions are clearly not the same and demonstrating, furthermore, that they derive from differing research traditions. He proposes a new theoretical perspective that replaces the centrality of the ethnic enclave economy with the broader umbrella concept of the ethnic economy.

This collection is organized to give the reader both overview and particulars, with Light’s theoretical and historiographical essay framing the local, empirically based chapters and suggesting the broader implications of the Boston research. For example, in arguing for the use of other criteria in addition to the standard measure of relative wage differentials as indicators of me success of an ethnic economy, Light points out that such economies have served as training grounds for entrepreneurship, and, therefore, gains may not necessarily be realized solely in monetary terms. Studies have demonstrated that those who are employed in the ethnic economy are more likely than others to become self-employed themselves.7 In this sense Light refers to the ethnic economy as a “school for entrepreneurs.”

The results of several of the Boston case studies included in this volume strongly reinforce his argument mat the value of ethnic entrepreneurship can be assessed in broader terms man comparative short-term earnings. Instead, these kinds of formations can have a multiplier effect. Indications of the significance of the role of an ethnic enterprise as a school for future entrepreneurs were consistently noted in the research. This does not necessarily translate into a simple one-to-one correspondence where all employees in an ethnic business later become owners themselves or where every child of an entrepreneur grows up to take over the family business, although certainly mere were numerous examples of both such correlations.

The point to be made is that, overall, the ethnic economy provides a platform both for its coethnic employees and for the second generation to enter the mainstream in positions of advantage, whether they actually go into business or not. For instance, among the Greeks, the pattern of newly arrived immigrants seeking employment in a coethnic establishment, learning the workings of the enterprise, and then going into business for themselves is quite characteristic of the Boston population. A concurrent tendency among the children of Greek entrepreneurs as well as of Soviet Jews, Khmer, Haitians, and British West Indians is for them to seek professional occupations rather than to follow in their parents’ footsteps and maintain the family business. But the economic and social resources resulting from the successful family business are what enables the immigrant children to attain higher levels of education and go on to obtain professional jobs. Moreover, patterns of entrepreneurship may vary with succeeding generations. For example, the Jews of today are no longer enterprising in the same way that they were at the turn of the century when they were starting small businesses in such large numbers, but a high rate of self- employment still exists. Today, proportionately larger numbers are employed for themselves as independent professionals, particularly as doctors and lawyers. When the child of the owner of a Russian Jewish deli grows up to become a physician, a certain vitality has survived that transition, and that force is not simply a cultural survival but also an economic advantage. Such efforts still lead to an economic basis of ethnic solidarity, but the definition of self-employment has shifted over time.

Each course outlined above represents a different avenue of upward mobility. But all stem from the initial exposure to the ethnic economy, and all bring returns both to the individuals themselves and to the general wealth of the ethnic community. This multiplier effect has historical precedents, as has been demonstrated for the Jewish and Japanese paths of mobility, two minority groups that are among the most successful in America. The historical and contemporary examples testify to the efficacy of Light’s assertion that the ethnic economy be viewed as a springboard to future rewards, both economic and social, and not just in terms of immediate relative earnings in comparison with the general labor market.

It is the interactive nature of culture and the structure of social relations that forms the theoretical foundation for this project. Scholarship in the field of ethnic enterprise studies has been split into two broad categories—the structuralist approach, emphasizing context of opportunity and situational factors, and the cultural perspective, with its focus on varying ethnic resources and propensities. A review of the historiography would reveal how each of these approaches has been useful in advancing our understanding of the phenomenon of ethnic enterprise in the past. The best work on the subject, however, evidences considerable overlap between the two perspectives. Furthermore, theoretically, the notion of social structure as existing apart from human interpretive processes is simply less sound than formulations that posit a dynamic interaction between contextual and cultural dimensions.

The concern has been raised that, in taking this cultural turn, stereotyping as well as an ethnic or racially prejudiced analysis will result. The incorporation of immigrant value systems within the American context as formulated here is not meant as a throwback to earlier social theory of a culturally deterministic nature nor to historical contributions with a filiopietistic bent. To recognize the influence of differing cultural constructions and ethnic values in the adaptation process is to restore a measure of empowerment to the immigrant as historical actor. Such an approach allows room for researchers to take into account how the immigrant entrepreneurs see themselves, to assess the way in which individuals operate from the actor’s viewpoint Differences in behavior between ethnic groups can be understood in terms of culturally derived choices within these situational limitations.

Are there particular ethnic populations, then, that hold what Peter Berger has called “a comparative cultural advantage” when it comes to entrepreneurial activity? Caesar Mavratsas argues strongly in this volume that in the case of the Greek-Americans, there most definitely does exist an economic ethos promoting values highly compatible with entrepreneurship and that it is precisely this value system—individual autonomy exercised within dose family ties, practicality, and a strong work ethic—that explains the disproportionate entrepreneurship of Greek immigrants in this country. The preponderance of Greeks in business locally, as indicated by the high rates of self-employment in the tabulations of selected immigrant groups for this study, supports his claim (see table 3). He describes an emergent hybrid Greek-American culture, estranged from both Greece and America but drawing on elements from both to create a unique form in the United States.

The centrality of the family economy to small business endeavors is borne out by the Greek example, with the traditional gender roles of male ownership and female support services characterizing most of the establishments. With one exception, Soviet Jews, all the populations in Boston study follow a similar pattern. Typically, the husband is the sole proprietor and the wife works for the business, anywhere from a few hours to full time, performing such tasks as cashier, salesclerk, bookkeeper, cook, or waitress. In some instances of immigrant entrepreneurship, managing the books has become the specific domain of the woman, as preliminary research into gender divisions among Koreans indicates.8 Women also predominate in the networks of West Indian rotating credit associations in Boston. Men may contribute to the pool, but the bankers are almost always women. Women handling and managing the money in such business-related efforts is clearly acceptable to most, but independent female ownership is still minimal.

Apart from the Soviet Jewish case, women owned only 10 to 15 percent of the businesses in each of the populations studied, and these were characteristically female enterprises, such as beauty shops and child care centers. Most often, these were single women, who were either divorced or widowed. The exception, though limited in scope, is a tendency among non-Chinese Khmer married women to hold primary ownership of traditional female ventures. By contrast, almost half the proprietors of Soviet Jewish businesses, married or not, were female, and the types of goods and services they offered ranged from the usual female establishments such as skin care and nail salons to furniture sales, restaurants, and grocery stores. Like their male counterparts, Russian Jewish women did not have experience with self-employment in the Soviet Union, but they did come from a society where full and equal participation in the work force was expected for both husband and wife, a situation that clearly has been transplanted to their new circumstances in this country.

An interactive model was also the basis for Peggy Levitt’s work on the Puerto Rican and Dominican populations in Boston, this time providing the basis to explain their disproportionately low rate of self-employment and to conclude that sociocultural resources engender and constrain business development, often simultaneously. Taking her cues from the sentiments and definitions expressed by the owners themselves, she offers a broader interpretation of the meaning of success to Boston’s Latino community, highlighting the significant social role played by these ethnic enterprises within it

Similarly, Haitian entrepreneurship in Boston has, thus far, realized minimal economic success. But the business sector has played a vital social role in the community. Catering to a primarily coethnic clientele, these small, often marginal enterprises are an essential gathering place for sociocultural and political interaction among compatriots, serving as a support network to ease the adaptation process and as a vehicle to sustain Haitian-American cultural identity. A defining element of this social network is the intricate link between the businesses, the nonprofit community service sector, and the extensive Haitian media presence in the Greater Boston area.

Employing an economic culture framework makes possible the identification of various interethnic differences in response to available opportunity structures. Our study is especially interested in the range of ethnic strategies used to deal with the particular external constraints resulting from racial discrimination and consciously examines the factor of race as it interacts with culture in determining entrepreneurial success. Although several historical and sociological schools of thought have had as their central organizing theme a contrast between immigrant adaptation and native black incorporation in many arenas, including rates and success of self-employment, the Boston project explores racial-ethnic differences among immigrant groups. Typically, in theories of racial and ethnic formation, the categories of race and ethnicity are conflated. However, we are primarily concerned with comparing non-white to white immigrants, rather than white immigrants to black natives. The analysis of race becomes even more complex when European, Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian peoples are involved. The range of populations in our study includes five groups that define themselves or are defined by the wider society as either black or non-white—the British West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Haitians, and Khmer. Though all but the Khmer originate from the Caribbean region, they come with strikingly diverse cultural backgrounds, speaking French, English, and Spanish Creoles, practicing various religions, and. drawing on different cultural traditions. The ways that racial differences affect their experiences with self-employment in the host society has been a significant issue in this research project

Recent compilations of the relationship between ethnicity, entrepreneurial status, and personal income reinforce the importance of taking race seriously. The results show wide differences in the average personal earnings of ethnic entrepreneurs, with annual incomes in excess of $40,000 for those of Jewish ancestry to less than $13,000 among Hispanics. What was most significant about these figures was that the average personal earnings of the self-employed from racial-ethnic minority groups never reached as high as $20,000, whereas all the white ethnic groups made at least $21,000 or more (Butler and Herring 1991,89-90).

These findings are a stark indication of the relationship between race and the realization of economic gains through business participation. Indeed, comparative data based on the Boston sample reinforce these findings, with the two white populations, Greeks and Soviet Jews, showing the highest rates of self-employment. Levels of poverty among these groups, however, do not necessarily correlate with self-employment rankings nor with racial composition (see tables 3 and 4).

To illustrate. Violet Johnson’s study of British West Indians begins to debunk a commonly held belief concerning West Indian superiority in the business arena as compared to native-born black Americans. Her findings show that the cultural features of hard work, revolving credit associations, and family economy associated with the West Indian immigrant population have been rechanneled into occupational categories within the service sector and to maintenance of economic stability rather than toward entrepreneurial activity and upward mobility. She argues here that the inability to achieve entrepreneurial success is due to situational factors that have undermined the development of a viable business community among West Indians in Boston.

The portrait she presents exemplifies what John Butler in his recent book, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help among Black Americans, has called economic detour, a theory he revives from M. S. Stuart’s work on entrepreneurship developed in the 1930s. This concept refers to the ways that enterprising African Americans have been historically stunted in their entrepreneurial growth by being forced to sell in a restricted market. Other middleman minority enterprises, for example Chinese laundries and Japanese restaurants, also faced hostility from the wider society but, nonetheless, were able to take advantage of a broader market. African American business people were not allowed to participate in the larger economy, first because of limitations imposed by legalized segregation policies and later because of similar patterns of de facto segregation that still persist in contemporary urban enclaves (Butler 1991,71-76).

Contrary to popular belief. Violet Johnson’s assessment finds little difference in levels of West Indian and African American business success in Boston. However, she demonstrates that the West Indian values and resources that might have energized the business sector had economic segregation not been a factor are being reoriented toward family maintenance and intensive labor force participation, particularly within the service sector. When compared to white ethnic groups in this study, rather than the traditional comparison with native-born blacks, British West Indians fall far behind in levels of small business activity.. The position of British West Indians is indicative of the complexities involved in any evaluation of the overall success of immigrant incorporation into the economy. Although Light’s essay brings clarity to the larger concept of the ethnic economy, some conceptual confusion still exists concerning the specific strategies that ethnic entrepreneurs emit ploy. Differing ethnic populations use a variety of approaches that all function in one way or another through social networks, but as Light has pointed out, not all these strategies make up an ethnic enclave.

The necessary conditions for the development of an enclave require sizable amounts of people, capital, and entrepreneurial expertise. This means that some middleman minority groups simply do not constitute an ethnic enclave. In the case of the British West Indians, a mix of ethnic strategies appears to be at work. Suzanne Model (1993) has coined the term “ethnic niche” to describe places in the actual mainstream economy where for one reason or another a particular ethnic group happens to gain an advantage, such as the historical concentration of Bohemians in cigar making or Jews in the garment industry. West Indians have carved out an ethnic niche for themselves, while simultaneously playing a middleman role vis-a-vis the rest of the black population.

Proportionate to white ethnic groups, British West Indians have not been as successful in business; nonetheless, in their middleman minority position they rank comparatively higher in per capita participation when measured against other Caribbean and Latino populations. At the same time, the niche strategy is evidenced by their having captured a place for themselves in the health care sector, as nurses, nurses’ aides, and hospital workers, establishing networks to maintain and expand that entry into the economy. For British West Indians, this combination has worked quite well. Among the groups in the Boston study, they are second only to the Greeks in having the smallest percentage living below the poverty level, well ahead of their Latino counterparts (see table 4). According to the 1990 census report, Jamaicans were ranked highest in median income of any black immigrant group. When evaluating the success, or lack of it, of West Indian entrepreneurship in relation to other groups, one must take into account the larger picture of ethnic insertion into the economy.

Similarly, the Greek immigrants in Massachusetts have found an ethnic niche that is, at the same time, an entrepreneurial niche. Greeks have developed a locus in the economy by the successful operation of restaurants, especially pizza parlors, throughout the Greater Boston area. Yet, spatially, the Greeks do not constitute an ethnic neighborhood as do Boston’s Khmer and Latino populations, groups whose businesses are geographically concentrated in coethnic residential areas serving co-ethnic clientele. Neither do the former Soviet Jewish emigres exhibit locational aggregation, especially when compared to the earlier settlement of Jewish immigrant businesses in the Boston area where clear-cut ethnic neighborhoods existed.

The recent Jewish arrivals are much more spatially dispersed. Certainly there are greater numbers in the Brookline, Brighton, and North Shore sectors of the metropolis, but these are not cohesive enclaves with businesses serving immediate coethnic neighborhoods. The population is more diffused; the enterprises are more widely scattered. Yet these establishments cannot be said to be completely isolated operations, neither from each other nor from the Soviet Jewish community at large. Russian and Ukrainian Jewish entrepreneurs rely heavily on coethnics for capitalizing their businesses. They employ compatriots, and they maintain a fairly intensive social network. Like the Greeks, they cater, however, to both coethnic and non-coethnic customers.

In terms of economic strategies, this is not the pattern of an ethnic enclave, niche, or neighborhood. In thinking about the Greek and the Soviet Jewish economies, another term may be useful: an ethnic web economy. In such a configuration, a dear pattern of interconnectedness is evidenced, but spatially the clustering is more dispersed and the population more spread out than in an ethnic neighborhood or enclave. Ethnic interdependence is still very much at play, but it functions through a complex web of integral but separated parts, a networking of social and cultural resources, that, when functioning well, constitutes an intricate whole.9

The former Soviet Jews are one of two populations in the Boston study that have refugee status. The others are the Khmer settlers. The popular media have speculated that governmental assistance provided for refugees gives them an economic advantage. Our research does not support such a claim. The aid offered is minimal and of short duration. For most, assistance in finding housing and learning the language has not necessarily translated into help with job procurement.10 However, these two refugee populations do share a common experience in being what can be termed “twice minorities”: people who have had previous experience as minorities in another locale before arriving at their current destination.11

In the case of the Khmer refugees, Nancy Smith-Hemer demonstrates that the Sino-Khmer population is the most entrepreneurial of the Cambodians in the Greater Boston area. The Chinese were minorities in Cambodia and are still a minority in this country, whereas the “pure Khmer” are having to adjust to their role as a minority group in the United States and, hence, are having more difficulty adapting. Smith-Hefner discusses the overall obstacles to successful business participation among the Khmer as a whole, but she points out that because the Sino-Khmer come to the United States accustomed to operating as a minority group, bringing the flexibility and risk-taking characteristics of disadvantaged populations to their new situation, they hold a slight advanatage over the general Khmer population.

Similarly, the recent Russian Jewish refugees have left a situation where they were a disadvantaged group, having experienced generations of European and Soviet anti-Semitism. One of the values learned in this process was that of working for oneself rather than working for others. This strategy, undertaken to circumvent hostile conditions, has been transplanted to their new society. They, also, are twice minorities. Furthermore, like the Khmer, the Russian Jewish population exhibits intragroup differences in relation to entrepreneurial activity. The most business-oriented are those who come from the Ukraine, an area where anti-Semitism was most virulent.

Defying our stereotype of the poor and huddled masses, the most recent influx of newcomers to our shores not only come from widely varying ethnic and racial backgrounds but also are as likely to disembark from a jumbo jet carrying designer luggage as from the steerage of an overcrowded boat with the requisite tattered bundles hoisted over their shoulders. New immigrants are arriving with a range of educational and skill levels unprecedented in the history of migration to this country. Yet even those who enter with extensive professional training face the difficulties of learning the workings of an unfamiliar social environment, especially the challenge of becoming proficient enough in English to successfully communicate their skills. Others find that what they are best trained to do is not needed in their new surroundings. Some come with little or no job skills; others were proprietors of small businesses in the premigration setting and are trying their luck again in the United States. For ethnic minorities in America, whether downwardly mobile upon arrival or starting from the bottom, self-employment is, and has been, one of the more promising routes to upward mobility. Ethnic businesses provide their communities with sources of solidarity and mobility within a hostile environment

The most recent wave of immigrants have demonstrated, as did earlier generations of newcomers, a willingness to work long hours and to take risks, carving out new markets for goods and services. Dominicans are buying bodegas, often purchased from Puerto Ricans; Haitian taxi drivers own cabs previously driven by Eastern Europeans; and recent Soviet Jewish refugees take over shoe repair businesses from Jewish cobblers who had fled czarist Russia earlier in the century. Some of the recent arrivals, such as the Cambodian manicurist, the Jamaican baker, or the Haitian grocer, are generating new start-up businesses, fulfilling fresh consumer demands that have a favorable impact on overall economic growth. As the twentieth century draws to a close, immigrant entrepreneurs are providing a significant boost to the economy and to the future of this country.

Notes

1. On the impact of the Second Great Awakening on the everyday life of the average businessman, Johnson (1978,8) writes, “In 1825 a northern businessman dominated his wife and children, worked irregular hours, consumed enormous amounts of alcohol, and seldom voted or went to church. Ten years later the same man went to church twice a week, treated his family with gentleness and love, drank nothing but water, worked steady hours and forced his employees to do the same, campaigned for the Whig Party and spent his spare time convincing others that if they organized their lives in similar ways, the world would be perfect To put it simply the middle class became resolutely bourgeois between 1825 and 1835. And at every step, that transformation bore the stamp of evangelical Protestantism.”
2. See, for example, Mills 1951; Bottomore 1966.
3. Thanks to Ivan Light for this insight put forth in the discussion of papers presented at Ethnicity and the Entrepreneur: A Conference on New Immigrants in Business, Boston, 30 April-1 May 1992.
4. For an excellent example of how recent immigrants have reinvigorated a decaying neighborhood, see Louis Winnick’s study (1990) of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.
5. The calculations for each of the four tables included in this chapter are based on weighted 5-percent PUMS data. In some instances, the samples are so small that their statistical validity may be questionable. This is particularly true of the poverty-level figure for the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area Cambodian population (table 4). Nonetheless, I have opted to include this number for rough comparative purposes.
6. The area population figures quoted in this discussion are from the 1990 U.S. census totals.
7. See, for example, Portes and Bach 1985, chap. 6; Cobas, Aickin, and lardine 1992.
8. Ivan Light is currently investigating this question in his ongoing research into Korean entrepreneurship.
9. Silvia Pedraza is currently developing and refining a broad-based typology of the differing strategies utilized in an ethnic economy, which synthesizes much of the research in this field. She incorporates some of the types discussed here and is concerned with a wide variety of other ethnic groups as well.
10. For a lengthier discussion of the comparative advantages and disadvantages of refugee versus immigrant status, see Gold 1992,17-22,195-97.
11. See Bhachu 1985; Espiritu 1989.