The Entrepreneurial Path

Theories of the uses of migrant labor have covered in detail different aspects of the historical experience of migrant workers. These theo- ries have neglected, however, an important alternative to wage work, namely, self-employment. Since the late nineteenth century, students of immigration have noted the high propensity of migrants to go into small business.We saw that entrepreneurs represent one of the main types of contemporary immigrants to the United States, and we explored some of the consequences of this alternative path.

Several theories have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship. The best known is probably Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich’s theory of minority disadvantage. As immigrants find themselves handicapped by generalized discrimination and lack of knowledge of the host language and culture, they turn to small busi- ness as an alternative means of economic survival. The early experience of Chinatowns in California and Japanese small businesses throughout the West Coast, related in chapter 1, provide evidence in support of this theory.48 But important anomalies do exist. Other equally discriminated foreign groups have been unable to reproduce the dense entrepreneur- ial networks created by Jewish and Japanese immigrants at the begin- ning of the twentieth century or by Koreans, Cubans, and Chinese in its last decades.