Geography and the Immigrant Division of Labor

Abstract

Immigrants concentrate in particular lines of work. Most investigations of such employment niching have accented either the demand for labor in a limited set of mostly low-wage industries or the efficiency of immigrant networks in supplying that labor; space has taken a backseat or has been ignored. In contrast, this article’s account of immigrant employment niching modulates insights built on social network theories with understandings derived from relative location. We do so by altering the thinking about employment niches as being metropolitan wide to considering them as local phenomena. Specifically, the analysis examines the intraurban variation in niching by Mexican, Salvadoran, Chinese, and Vietnamese men and women in four industries in Los Angeles. Niching is uneven; in some parts of the metropolitan area, these groups niche at high rates in these industries, whereas in others, there is no unusual concentration. We show how a group’s propensity to niche in an industry is generally higher when the industry is located close to the group’s residential neighborhoods and demonstrate the ways in which the proximity of competing groups dampens this geographic advantage. The study speaks to debates on immigrant niching and connects with research on minority access to employment and accounts of the agglomeration of firms. More generally, it links the geographies of home and work in a new way, relating patterns of immigrant residential segregation to those of immigrant employment niches.