Les entrepreneurs immigrés et l'implantation des industries étrangères aux États-Unis : éléments d'une économie transnationale

Abstract

Immigrant entrepreneurs and foreign ownership in the US : elements in a transnational economy Saskia SASSEN Its is paradoxical that the town economy of such a developped nation as America encourages the proliferation of small ventures as in the past. The collapse of big industries carried the growth of flexible, efficient and very differenciated types of production (clandestine workshops, work at home, sub-contractorship in general). In the same time, the consumers' demand became more diversified, it calls more for retail trade at all income levels. Settlers are peculiarly well situated as producers and consumers to supply this type of economy. In the USA, the growth of foreign investments is notable and includes that of ventures little creators in high specialization services (finance, real estate for instance), peculiarly in New York and California, preeminently transnational space. The ventures send out their production and their services localized in big American cities, reimport manufactured articles. The intersection of these transnational spaces, creating small ventures, gives a renewed image of centralization that operates as nettings territorially scattered through multiple networks. The metropolis (« globalizing cities ») remain at the center of control and coordination of these complex administrative and financial networks but the non-banking forms of financing constitute the main innovation of them. It is this in transnational context that small foreign ventures play a decisive part.