Reinforcing Ties to Ethnicity: Second-Generation Entrepreneurs in an Ethnic Community

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14: Migration, Race & Economics

Abstract

The identity of the urban environment can be determined by both its residential composition and business sector. In ethnic communities that are defined by the residential concentration of co-ethnics this is straightforward as these spatially bounded areas create tight networks of associations. As a result, the options individuals have to assert their ethnicity become largely influenced by co-ethnics in these communities. Subsequently these communities rely on expressions of ethnic culture through art, music, food, language, style of dress, and celebration of holidays. Groups who then have a greater supply of cultural resources, such as those in these areas provide their members with more materials to stimulate this sense of identity. This paper will focus on how businesses in a southern California Mexican-American ethnic community become access points for ethnic resources. In-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and fieldwork highlights how business owners are heterogeneous purveyors of resources for co-ethnics to form and maintain a salient identity in the urban environment. In this article, I show how business owners maintain connections and shape ties to ethnicity in three ways. First, in their performative presentations of self while running their business. Second, in their business practices through the products and services they offer. Third, through their civic engagement in both the business sector and local community. I show there is internal variation among entrepreneurs within this ethnic community by highlighting entrepreneurs of the second generation, native born individuals with at least one foreign born parent.

Author

• Janet Muñiz, University of California, Irvine