Married Chinese Women's Labor Force and Self-Employment Participation in the United States in 1990: A New Look from Ethnic Subgroup Perspectives

Abstract

This article examines variations in the labor force and self-employment participation of married Chinese women in the United States in 1990. Using three measures of ethnicity from the 1990 census – race, place of birth and ancestral identification – the study found that each of the objective and subjective measures of ethnicity do no coincide perfectly, suggesting that Chinese immigrants in the United States rely on different ethnic dimensions to determine how they interpret their Chineseness. The findings of the study lean more towards the Emergent Ethnicity School given subgroup variations in women's paid labor force and self-employment participation on at least two ethnic dimensions — place of birth and ancestry. Married women born in Taiwan or claiming a Taiwanese origin differ in their economic participation in the United States compared to their counterparts from Mainland China. Future research needs to look into why behaviors of subgroups of Chinese vary.