Ethnic Niche Research Articles

Asian Retailers in Glasgow: A Glimpse of Commercial and Property Relations in the Early Eighties

As noted in the paper published in the last issue of this journal, shopkeeping and retail have been one of the important ways of entry into the host economy in the case of some prewar migrating communities such as the Jews and the Italians and the post-war migrants such as the Asians (mostly Panjabis from India and Pakistan) to Glasgow in Scotland. We explore how the two major sets of theories the ethnic customer niche and middlemen minority theory apply to this group and explore the unchartered area of the nature of ‘property relations’ of retailers, i.e.in terms of the acquired commercial and housing property. Specifically, we explore the similarities and differences between the commercial and residential markets and their relationship and possible interdependence for entrepreneurial and asset building and the phenomenon of segregated property markets. We begin by exploring the background of retailers and their possible influence on entry into the business. We also compare some key aspects of Glasgow’s retail economy with other Asian retail localized economies using the studies of the period for comparative perspective purposes. The paper adds to the very sparse literature on asset ownership or on ethnic commercial property markets and explores if the high ownership of housing and the presence of ethnic origin national banks helped with both ethnic enterprise and asset creation. It also explores the extent to which the ‘ethnic niche’ model and the ‘middle minorities’ model applies to the Asians in Glasgow in addition to the hypothesis if the agricultural background which requires some sense of business and related skills, and the notion of success and the status of property may be the crucial cultural and experiential drivers of asset acquisition and enterprise.

Gendered dispossession and women’s changing poverty by slum/squatter redevelopment projects: A case study from Turkey

Informal settlements have been crucial sites of spatial dispossession and neoliberal urbanization with the displacement of the urban poor from profitable urban areas. This study examines the gendered implications of dispossession and changing dimensions of women’s poverty as a result of slum/squatter redevelopment projects. Based on the research of the Kadifekale Urban Transformation Project in Turkey that resettled residents of a highly concentrated Kurdish migrant squatter settlement into a new mass housing estate, the study highlights the impacts of profit-driven urban development projects on women's access to affordable housing, support networks, care work, and employment opportunities. Kurdish women's experiences of displacement and resettlement illustrate in particular the intersectional aspects of gendered dispossession and asset erosion with their exclusion from affordable housing options, dispersal of their communities, and separation from their ethnic employment niches. Drawing upon dispossession and feminist development literature, the study sheds light upon the gendered experiences of displacement, changing livelihood opportunities, gendered access and control over resources, and strategies of resistance that result from slum redevelopment projects.

ОДНО ЭТНИЧЕСКОЕ ПРОИСХОЖДЕНИЕ – ДВЕ СУДЬБЫ: НОВОПРИБЫВШИЕ VS ПОТОМКИ МИГРАНТОВ

The article sheds light on certain peculiarities of immigration to France, which has become a multicultural country. The authors explain how the destinies of two categories of “immigrant” youth differ. The first are the “beurs”, children and grandchildren of migrants who arrived in France during the 1960s and 1970s, generally from the Maghreb. The second are the “blédards”, who migrated themselves from these countries during adolescence with their parents or in the framework of family reunification. After a short description of the successive waves of migration which have regularly reached France and a terminological clarification on the meaning of the words “foreigner” and “migrant”, the authors show how the trajectories of those who are French citizens, know the language and have attended the school system from the start differ from those of newcomers, although the two groups are often confused. The article presents analysis from the theoretical works devoted to the study of different waves of migration, in the USA and in other countries, then focuses on a presentation of the educational trajectories of the new arrivals and those of the descendants of migrants. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ adaptation to the labor market. Newcomers have less difficulty finding an internship than their classmates born in France. They are also more easily exploited, because they compensate their poor French language adopting a deferential attitude towards employers. When unemployed, they often find a job more easily than the descendants of migrants by relying on ethnic niches and networks of fellow citizens. The article underlines the role of the social environment in determining adaptation paths which can lead to acculturation and social mobility, to assimilation within a marginalized urban environment, or to economic integration into ethnic niches. The more hostile the environment and the less the migrants are adapted to the country’s economic and cultural codes, the more the ethnic community tends to rely on itself in order to protect its children from a form of assimilation seen as harmful. Finally, the authors present the different attitudes of young people from the two groups towards the host society. For the descendants of migrants, it is common to assimilate to groups of young people in low-income neighborhoods and to copy the behavioral pattern characteristic of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrant and minority populations. When they are victims of stigmatization because of their ethnic origin or their neighborhood of residence, these young people become very critical, sometimes adopting oppositional attitudes to the French society to which they belong. On the other hand, newcomers struggle to find their place, as they still feel in transit, are not necessarily sure to stay in the country which they see as a haven comparing to the difficult living conditions of their native country.

Transformation of indigenous peoples’ Ecological conciousness

The world of Indigenous ecological reality has a spatial and temporal structure. The need for a favorable natural environment, sufficient natural resources’ quantity and quality, as well as env ironmental security has been permanently present in autochtonous existence. Researchers of North American and Siberian indigenous peoples’ ecological identity agree that of the two criteria, spatial structure plays more important role than temporal. The indigenous peoples’ spatial identity is linked to their deep conviction that everything in the world “stops” periodically, so if you pray in the right locality, where higher powers are most likely to stop at that very moment, prayer would be heard. Thus the feeling of attachment to ethnic homeland is crucial in the process of creating an ethnic niche. Most of the Indigenous people believe that their nations were created at the territory they live now, so this locus is the center of the universe for them. The past and the future are understood by the natives at the level of physical perceptible sound, visual, tactile and sensory sensations, thus the concept of the sacred landscape is formed, and each nation has its own notion of it. Indigenous writers sometimes shift temporal-spatial layers, superimposing chronotopic planes, suspending astronomical time, thus destroying the boundaries of the real world and at the same time creating fascinating spaces that are an important part of the indigenous spatial identity. Thus, spatiality functions in fictional texts as a stylistic device designed to express the opposition of different worlds.

Entrance into and negotiation of the US labor force by immigrant women workers: a case study of samba in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT Due to the heterogeneity of immigrant women's experiences, we recognize the need to provide a more comprehensive portrayal of how gender shapes their labor force participation and work experiences. To study immigrant women employed in feminized work, this article uses the concept of gender as a social construction that informs, conveys, and adjusts power relations to explain how and why immigrant women occupy gendered jobs and to assess persisting inequalities and the unexpected benefits of gendered work. To illustrate this, we examine immigrant women in Los Angeles working in an ethnic niche: Brazilian samba dance. Our qualitative research on this case offers the opportunity to analyze the complexity of labor force dynamics. We discuss how the interaction of gender, nationality, race, and body aesthetic shapes our understanding of how immigrant women carve out economic niches, negotiate stigmas, and resignify gender relations through work. We conclude that work grants immigrant women power over (re)productive choices and the resistance needed to (re)define practices by challenging and conforming to social gender and work norms.

Mexican Niches in the US Construction Industry: 2009–2015

Mexican immigrants are the largest immigrant group in the USA and are highly concentrated in the US construction industry. As a result, they are particularly affected by fluctuations in the economy and were disproportionately affected by the Great Recession. As this population continues to grow, a growing body of empirical studies are quantifying the impacts of ethnic niches in relation to earnings. However, there is still an ongoing debate regarding the economic benefits of ethnic niches and whether self-employment helps or hurts earnings. This study contributes to the discussion on these issues by using micro-data from the 2009 and 2015 Five-Year American Community Surveys to examine changes in the earnings of Mexican immigrants in the US construction industry in twenty US metropolitan regions. The study examines how earnings changed during and shortly after the Great Recession to gain a better understanding of how ethnic niches differed from non-ethnic niches. The findings provide evidence that ethnic niches and being self-employed had detrimental effects on earnings. Working in post-recession years were associated with increases in earnings, regardless of niche status.

Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era by Michael R. Cohen

Reviewed by: Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era by Michael R. Cohen David S. Koffman Michael R. Cohen. Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era. New York: New York University Press, 2017. Pp. 288, 29 b&w illus. Hardcover $40. ISBN 9781479879700. Cotton Capitalists is a significant contribution to the growing scholarship on the relationship between economy and ethnicity, in the context of the American South, in American Jewish history, and certainly more broadly. It contributes to literatures that explore Jewish economic behavior, ethnic niche economy networks, the intersections of global finance, investment giants and small businesses, and social history's much deserved a ention to money and business. The work is finely nuanced, clearly articulated, and brings a wealth of new detail and data to the dramatically changing realities of the co on industry during Reconstruction, and the American Jews who shaped and were shaped by it. It argues that Jewish entrepreneurs' ability to thrive in the co on south was owed to the credit relations they forged among one another as Jews, all the while as structural forces—economic, climactic, and geographic—shaped the realities of the co on industry for all who found a place within it. Cohen offers a detailed rendering of the fates and fortunes, rises and falls, of Jewish co on businesses from roughly 1850 to 1890, and simultaneously, a broad analysis of the industry as a whole in its local, southern context, connected as it was to a broader national and global market. The book is an ethnic niche market case study of the ways that smaller and larger Jewish co on outfits managed the changing dynamics and circumstances of the industry—from the ecological and technological, to the geopolitical and corporate/finance—forces that were largely determinative of these firms' abilities to succeed or fail. While the book is not wholly convincing that this case study, in and of itself, can shed light on any other ethnic niche economy—Korean grocers, Greek restauranteurs, Filipino health care workers, or for that ma er Jews in any number of other economic niches in the United States—there is li le doubt that a similar bundle of elements mixed to shape the possibilities for individuals, families, and firms to enter a given market, succeed in it, or fail, and that there would be much to gain if and when these histories of niche economies began comparing their findings. Cohen's oft-repeated phrase "right place, right time" (and its inverse) is convenient shorthand for his broad observation that a swirl of competing forces bear down upon all parties in this and any industry. The book consists of an introductory chapter, six substantive chapters, and a conclusion, and draws from an impressively wide range of sources, including R.G. Dun credit reports, private corporate records, newspapers, family and private papers, and government and private sector analyses of the co on industry. Cohen uses these different sorts of traces scrupulously, and carefully considers the sorts of conclusions that can be drawn from credit reporters who held Jewish merchants in low regard and with distrust. The first chapter deals with the late 1850s and early 1860s, when Jewish peddler-cum-shopkeepers entered the co on market and challenged the [End Page 255] factorage system upon which the industry rested. Ethnic ties, and the credit and trust relationships they facilitated, helped Jewish success in the decade before the Civil War. Chapter 2 focuses on Jewish co on merchants during the war years. It shows how Jews navigated northern trade blockades by smuggling co on to markets, avoided Confederate currency, stockpiled the commodity to survive tenuous years, and began building the new business networks that would prove essential after the war. Chapter 3 studies the immediate postwar business ecology when local credit networks gave way to larger financial structures centered in places like New York and Liverpool. Chapters 4 and 5 use a telephoto lens to show how credit flowed between Jewish and non-Jewish firms of varying sizes to finance the co on industry on two "tiers" of the ethnic network—the larger credit-supplying filial network of Jewish financiers in New York, New...

Market orientation and strategic decisions on immigrant and ethnic small firms

Entrepreneurial orientation in small ethnic firms is embedded in a strong sociocultural environment, which influences their market orientation. For this reason, entrepreneurs choose between either focusing their businesses on their ethnic communities or attracting mainstream customers from outside their ethnic enclave. The article aims to contribute to the knowledge of ethnic and immigrant firms by taking a detailed look at their marketing orientation and strategic decisions. To perform this study, the researchers used a multi-method qualitative data collection, including the analysis of different entrepreneur cases, within several Brazilian communities overseas, which illustrate four different marketing orientations of ethnic entrepreneurs: (i) “focus on the ethnic niche market,” (ii) “focus on specific interests,” (iii) “focus on exotic products for the mainstream customer,” and (iv) “focus on highly competitive markets.” Authors draw a 2x2 matrix as an output of the research.

An analysis of employment patterns of domestic migrants and immigrants in a Rustbelt city: A study of Buffalo‐Niagara Falls

AbstractThis study evaluates employment patterns of domestic migrants and immigrants and also explores the role of ethnic niching for Asian and African American recent arrivals in the context of local structural transformation (e.g., the shift from manufacturing to services). Employment patterns are examined for industry‐occupation groups using the 5% Public Use Micro Sample of the 2000 U.S. Decennial Census and the 2006–2010 of the American Community Survey. The study area is a Rustbelt city that has suffered from population loss: the Buffalo‐Niagara Falls MSA. Location quotients and shift‐share analysis are used to classify employment shifts into four industry‐occupation groups: growing, transforming, declining, and emerging. Logistic regressions are estimated to identify the role of various demographic factors and ethnic niches on the employment of recent arrivals in the above four industry‐occupation groups. The results show that the employment of recent arrivals vary by migration status and ethnicity. The role of ethnic niches is especially important in declining industry‐occupation groups. The analytical framework can be used to understand where and how migrants, both domestic and immigrants, find work. Future studies can focus on the pros and cons of ethnic niching (e.g., barriers to suitable jobs, ethnic entrepreneurship through niche experience) as structural transformation continues across U.S. regions, especially with new technologies.

Ethnic niche formation at the top? Second-generation immigrants in Norwegian high-status occupations

ABSTRACTAs an increasing number of highly educated second-generation immigrants are entering the labour market, their occupational trajectories are of growing interest. This article examines processes of mainstream inclusion and ethnic niche formation among second-generation individuals in three high-status professions in Norway: medicine, law and business and finance. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 62 descendants of labour migrants from Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and India, the article identifies processes of ethnic niche formation both within mainstream firms and in the form of ethnic entrepreneurship. These processes do not simply reflect blocked opportunities to access the mainstream or strategic capitalization on ethnic resources but appear largely as unintended consequences of the ethnic competence of the second generation. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature by offering a framework for studying the prevalence and mechanisms of ethnic niche formation at the top of the labour market hierarchy.

Jewish Girls' Street Peddling in Gilded Age Philadelphia: Ethnic Niche, Family Strategy, and Sexual Danger

Jewish Girls' Street Peddling in Gilded Age Philadelphia: Ethnic Niche, Family Strategy, and Sexual Danger

A window of opportunity? Refugee staff’s employment in migrant support and advocacy organizations

ABSTRACT This article presents an analysis of employment trajectories of refugee staff in migrant support and advocacy organisations in the UK, Austria and the Netherlands. In contrast to existing scholarship, it takes refugees’ success in finding employment as a starting point. Moreover, it makes an important contribution to extant literature by identifying the unique features of a niche employment sector for refugees: migrant support organisations. I demonstrate that the mainstream explanatory concepts of ‘labour market segmentation’ and ‘ethnic niche’ fail to capture refugees’ pathway from client to service provider and neglect the sector’s status as a mid- to high-skilled but feminised employment sector. I propose instead to understand ‘refugeeness’ as a form of capital and argue that this capital provides access to employment in migrant support and advocacy organisations, while simultaneously trapping refugees in front-line work with high degrees of hidden, devalued labour and inadequate career mobility.

Ethnic and migrant penalties in job quality in the UK: the role of residential concentration and occupational clustering

ABSTRACT Migrants and ethnic minorities in the UK are found to be disadvantaged in their access to work and earnings, but little is known about the characteristics of the jobs they occupy. This paper studies whether migrants and UK-born ethnic minorities attain similar jobs compared to their white British peers by clustering 17 indicators of job quality – covering intrinsic quality, work-life balance, monetary rewards, and employment conditions – into 5 latent classes. We find that non-white migrants are clustered in the worst jobs, while white migrants do relatively well. UK-born ethnic minorities are indeed less likely to work on the best jobs, but the type of disadvantage differs strongly between ethnic groups. Local deprivation drives some of the worse job quality of UK-born minorities while selection into lower-quality occupations and sectors drives much of the disadvantage of migrants. Co-ethnic support and particularly an economically stronger co-ethnic community in the locality can help shield ethnic minorities from the worst jobs, while ethnic niches in the occupation are associated with low-quality work. Finally, working in migrant-heavy occupations is associated with somewhat lower job quality; primarily affecting other migrants in a possible race to the bottom.

Breaking-out? A reconceptualisation of the business development process through diversification: the case of Polish new migrant entrepreneurs in Glasgow

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the business development process of 20 Polish new migrant entrepreneurs in Glasgow, Scotland. Based on a qualitative analysis of their business development activities – including how they broadened their market and product or services offerings – it unveils the incremental nature of this process as a route to break out from the saturated, hypercompetitive ethnic niche market. We, therefore, contribute to debates on breakout strategies to new markets and networks, and on barriers to new migrant entrepreneurs’ growth by reconceptualising new migrant entrepreneurs’ business development process. To achieve this aim, we propose a novel diversification process theoretical framework to analyse their business development process and specific activities.

Revisiting Ethnic Niches: A Comparative Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Asian and Latino Undocumented Young Adults

Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with Korean- and Mexican-origin undocumented young adults in California, this comparative analysis explores how the intersection of immigration status and ethnoracial background affects social and economic incorporation. Respective locations of principal ethnic niches, and access to these labor market structures, lead to divergent pathways of employment when no legal recourse exists. Despite similar levels of academic achievement, Korean respondents were more likely to enter into a greater diversity of occupations relative to Mexican respondents. However, the experiences of Mexican respondents varied depending on their connection to pan-ethnic Latino nonprofit organizations. Illegality, therefore, is conditioned by opportunity structures that vary strongly by membership in different ethnoracial communities, leading to structured heterogeneity in experiences with undocumented status.

Who Went South? The German Ethnic Niche in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres

This article examines the demographic and occupational selectivity of German immigration to South America (primarily Argentina and Brazil) and Australia, compared to Germans bound for the United States, and the geographic and occupational niches they occupied at various destinations. It draws upon both individual-level and aggregate data from censuses and migration records on three continents to examine occupational profiles, urbanization rates, sex ratios, age structure, and age heaping as a rough measure of “quality,” among German immigrants to these destinations, concluding that immigration to the United States tended to be the least selective.

Religion and new immigrants' labor market entry in Western Europe

This paper analyzes the effects of religious participation upon a major socio-economic integration outcome, namely employment, among recent Christian and Muslim newcomers in three Western European destination countries: Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. The paper revisits theoretical arguments about religious participation as an ethnic investment strategy or, alternatively, as a bridge to the societal mainstream. Drawing on the longitudinal dataset produced in the international survey project on ‘Socio-cultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europe’ (SCIP), the paper puts these arguments to a rigorous test by analyzing effects of involvement in religious communities on employment and by scrutinizing channeling effects of the ethnic composition of religious congregations for recent migrants’ entry into mainstream versus ethnic niche economies. The paper finds only limited support for either of the two arguments, suggesting that religious participation is structurally decoupled from socio-economic integration. However, persisting net employment gaps between recent Christian and Muslim immigrants might indicate the existence of religiously marked and socio-economically consequential boundaries in Western Europe.

The role of migrant networks in the labour market outcomes of Senegalese men: how destination contexts matter

ABSTRACTResearch on the role of co-ethnic ties in immigrants’ labour market outcomes has reached mixed conclusions. Some argue they are a valuable resource, increasing immigrants’ labour force participation and wages; others find negative effects such as trapping workers in low-quality employment. Thus far very few quantitative studies have investigated systematically the circumstances under which migrant networks work. Taking advantage of unique data on Senegalese men in France, Italy and Spain, this paper shows that the receiving context shapes the role of pre-migration ties. In France, where the Senegalese community is well-established and socio-economically diverse, networks lead to better economic prospects. In contrast, pre-migration ties in Italy and Spain mostly lead to the perpetuation of ethnic niches developed by the Senegalese in small and precarious trade activities. The article emphasizes the benefits of adopting a comparative and diachronic approach and calls for future work on the factors shaping the role of networks.

Ethiopian taxicab drivers: forming an occupational niche in the US Capital

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the relative roles of cultural and structural factors in the emergence and solidification of taxi driving as an ethnic occupational niche among Ethiopian immigrants in the Washington DC metropolitan area within the wider context of globalization and immigrant integration. An ethnic occupational niche is the concentration and specialization of members of an ethnic group in a particular occupational activity. Using data from the US Census Bureau and in-depth interviews with 25 (male) Ethiopian cab drivers and three Ethiopian cab company owners, it examines the factors that affected the entrance of first-generation Ethiopian immigrants in this occupation since the 1980s. This research demonstrates that mixed embeddedness or the interplay of structural factors such as blocked mobility as well as cultural factors such as the strong social networks that exist among Ethiopian immigrants were important in the induction of new immigrants into taxicab driving. The demographic composition of the Washington metropolitan area and policies of the DC Taxicab Commission that allow for fairly easy entry of new drivers in the taxicab business also facilitated the emergence of this occupational niche.

Are U.S.-Chartered Chinese and Korean Banks Resilient in the Face of New Challenges? Evidence from Los Angeles and New York

Abstract This study discusses the empirical evidence regarding the direction of Asian American banks' evolution in light of the recent financial crisis and other challenges associated with the increasing competition from large mainstream financial institutions in ethnic niche markets. Specifically, the study focuses on the evolution of Chinese and Korean banking and its role in Asian neighborhoods during the past decade in Los Angeles and New York, the two U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest concentrations of Asian population and Asian-owned banks. Findings indicate that Asian banks have been able to sustain their presence and activities in coethnic communities in the face of the challenges associated with increasing competitive environments and the volatility of the financial market.