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The literature of ethnic ownership economies descends from middleman minority theory, a subject it continues to include. However, ethnic economy literature now more broadly addresses the economic independence of immigrants and ethnic minorities in general, not just of middleman minorities (Light & Bonacich, 1991, pp. xii–xiii).¹ This expansion releases the subject from narrow concentration upon historical trading minorities, and opens discussion of the entire range of immigrant and ethnic minority strategies for economic self-help and self-defense. Partial or full economic independence represents a ubiquitous self-defense of immigrants and ethnic minorities who confront exclusion or disadvantage in labor markets. Ethnic economies permit immigrants and ethnic minorities to reduce disadvantage and exclusion, negotiating the terms of their participation in the general labor market from a position of greater strength. Unable to find work in the general labor market, or unwilling to accept the work that the general labor market offers, or just reluctant to mix with foreigners, immigrants and ethnic minorities have the option of employment or self-employment in the ethnic economy of their group. Although ethnic and immigrant groups differ in how well and how much they avail themselves of this defense (Collins, 2003; Light & Gold, 2000, p. 34; Logan & Alba, 1999, p. 179), none lacks an ethnic economy.²

This paper aims to explore how immigrant small business owners construct entrepreneurial identities by deploying strategies of boundary making in Hong Kong.

Conceptually, it departs from the theoretical discussions of immigrant economy and ethnic boundary making. The analyzes are based on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews and participant observation primarily in the South Asian immigrant economies in Hong Kong in the period 2014-2017.

Four strategies of boundary work including blurring boundaries, inversion of boundaries, personal repositioning and reconfirming of boundaries are identified. They bring to light that small immigrant entrepreneurs in Hong Kong still encounter considerable obstacles in the process of social integration. Boundary work serves as strategies to release sentiments that would symbolically bring them closer to the mainstream society. Following the “city as context” framework (Brettell, 1999; Foner, 2007), this paper argues that the various boundary making strategies have been shaped by the legacies of racism, neoliberal governance of integration and urban work ethos highlighting problems and individual responsibilities in Hong Kong.

This paper contributes to the literature of the immigrant economy and social integration. First, it sheds light on the role of symbolic meanings and non-economic gains of immigrant entrepreneurship in social integration. Second, it illuminates our understanding that immigrant economy can provide a channel for advancing and weakening social status, thus reminding us not to assume the path of social integration as a straightforward and positive one.

New York City’s status as a majority “minority” city is reflected in many local neighborhoods that exemplify the racial and ethnic diversity of the urban landscape in the 21st century. In this quintessential immigrant city, the relative share of foreign-born has reached levels not seen since the historic immigrant wave at the turn of the last century (Foner, 2000; Scott, 2002). While “all the nations under heaven” are represented among old and new New Yorkers, researchers find that patterns of residential segregation persist and in fact, have worsened especially for African Americans (Beveridge, 2001; Logan, 2001). The racial balkanization of New York City, however, is tempered by the expansion of “polyethnic” or “global” neighborhoods. These racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods are found throughout New York City but their concentration in the borough of Queens is notable. Moreover, the magnitude of ethnic diversity in these neighborhoods has “no parallel in previous waves of immigration” (Foner, 2000, p. 58).

The aim of this study is to explore the status of contemporary ethnic entrepreneurship studies in 1999‐2008 in order to map the intellectual structure of ethnic entrepreneurship research and to provide insights for future research in this field.

This study collected citation data from SSCI, resulting in a data set of 403 journal articles and 18,656 cited references. Then using co‐citation analysis, this study identified the core research themes in the ethnic entrepreneurship literature in 1999‐2008.

The results showed that contemporary ethnic entrepreneurship studies clustered around a few key research themes and their research foci have shifted from research on enclave economies, ethnic enterprises, and social embeddedness to research on immigrant entrepreneurs, immigrant networks, and transnational entrepreneurs.

With the qualification of citation and co‐citation analysis, this study profiles the changing paradigms of contemporary ethnic entrepreneurship studies and traces the development of ethnic entrepreneurship research, and thus provides important insights on future ethnic entrepreneurship research, including transnational entrepreneurs, theory refinement and theory development on ethnic entrepreneurship, as well as ethnic culture and entrepreneurship. Limitations of using SSCI data are also discussed.

The intellectual structure of ethnic entrepreneurship literature has received relatively little attention in spite that a large number of studies have been done in this field. This study provides researchers with a new way of profiling key themes and their relationships in ethnic entrepreneurship, which will help the academia and practitioners better understand contemporary ethnic entrepreneurship studies.

We review the empirical literature on ethnic economic enclaves after the concept was formulated 25 years ago. The balance of this literature is mixed, but many studies reporting negative conclusions were marred by faulty measurement of the concept. We discuss the original theoretical definition of enclaves, the hypotheses derived from it, and the difficulties in operationalizing them. For evidence, we turn to census data on the location and the immigrant group that gave rise to the concept in the first place – Cubans in Miami. We examine the economic performance of this group, relative to others in this metropolitan area, and in the context of historical changes in its own mode of incorporation. Taking these changes into account, we find that the ethnic enclave had a significant economic payoff for its founders – the earlier waves of Cuban exiles – and for their children, but not for refugees who arrived in the 1980 Mariel exodus and after. Reasons for this disjuncture are examined. Implications of these results for enclave theory and for immigrant entrepreneurship in general are discussed.

Purpose – This study examines Hispanic entrepreneurship in the context of global city formation by focusing on metropolitan Washington and the entrepreneurial activities of Bolivian immigrants, a small but significant Latino immigrant population.

Methodology – Employing a mixed methodology of analysis of census data, mapping, and conducting surveys and focus groups, this research highlights the socio-economic characteristics of Bolivians, the spatial patterning of residential settlement and business locations, as well as the network strategies the group employs.

Findings – Metropolitan Washington is the hub for the Bolivian diaspora in the United States. This group distinguishes itself with higher levels of education, income, and self-employment among Hispanics as a whole. Yet despite their economic and educational attainment, they are overly concentrated in certain sectors and experience blocked mobility that manifests itself through greater interest in self-employment and entrepreneurship. The study concludes that by developing businesses that serve both the ethnic community and the larger non-Hispanic population, Bolivians have had certain economic success.

Social implications – Strategies of residential concentration along with well-developed social networks maintain the ethnic community as well as support transnational linkages to towns and villages back in Bolivia.

Dominant in the urban sociology literature on immigrant incorporation is the role of ethnic enclaves – ethnic neighborhoods that provide a “port of entry” or “context of reception” and help facilitate incorporation in the host society by generating informal resources, networks, and institutions that provide linguistic and cultural services and products (Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). While New York City's stature as a global city is replete with nostalgia about historic ethnic immigrant neighborhoods, contemporary immigrant settlement is once again transforming urban landscapes not only by renewing enclave formations but by creating numerous multiethnic, multiracial neighborhoods (Hum, 2004). As often cited, in no other historic period has New York City received as diverse a range of people from all over the world – certainly, this diversity is reshaping local neighborhood landscapes.

This study aims to identify the intentions of immigrant entrepreneurs to start new projects by investigating the role of influence of institutional support, social context, cultural intelligence, self-efficacy, optimizing personality traits and hierarchy legitimacy on intentions to start new ventures. In addition, the strength of the relationship for such factors and intentions to start new ventures was determined through the moderator role of easy access to venture capital.

To this end, this study complements the academic literature by integrating the structural equation modeling (SEM) and multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. Thus, the MCDM (i.e. analytic hierarchy process and vlsekriterijumska optimizcija i kaompromisno resenje [VIKOR]) is an effective approach to solving the problem of complexity and evaluation (i.e. multiple evaluation criteria, important criteria and data variation). Hence, to complete the strategic guideline solution, this study uses a survey for collecting data from 202 immigrants in Malaysia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Singapore.

The results from SEM prove several critical factors of immigrants’ entrepreneurs. These factors of immigrants’ entrepreneurs can be vital for academics and host countries. By focusing on these aspects and by developing some personality traits (such as self-efficacy and optimal personality traits), these factors can contribute a good deal to increasing the capabilities of immigrant’s entrepreneurs toward entrepreneurial intentions. In the validation, the statistical objective method indicates that the immigrants' prioritizations in all countries are supported by the systematic ranking. Thus, entrepreneurial intentions for immigrants can pursue the order proven by the VIKOR results.

This study has some significant practical and theoretical implications. Practically, the study findings will enable managers to develop strategies to support immigrants for entrepreneurial intentions to start new ventures.

The novelty of the context under given circumstances of global environment adds to the originality of this study. Several previous studies have also emphasized the need for this type of study in other contexts. The findings can call managers’ attention toward a critical issue of immigrants’ entrepreneurial intentions to start new ventures.

Numerous studies have concluded that immigration has very small effects on wages or unemployment, even when the immigration flow is very large. Three reasons suggested for this are that immigration: (1) is not supply-push, but may instead be driven by demand-pull factors; (2) is likely to cause some out-migration; and (3) may induce flows of other factors across the economy. Surprisingly, few studies consider another obvious explanation: immigrant workers also consume locally, which means immigration stimulates the local demand for labor. Previous researchers have generally ignored the measurement of immigration's effects on labor demand, perhaps because when immigration, out-migration, and immigrant consumption occur simultaneously in the same labor market, it is very difficult to isolate immigration's effect on labor demand. This paper measures the labor demand-augmenting effects of immigration using a two-sector model of a very special case in which the receiving economy consists of: (a) an export industry employing both immigrants and natives; and (b) a retail industry employing native labor that is driven by local demand. The model can incorporate both supply-push and demand-pull immigration as well as out-migration. The model's important implication is that since immigration is exogenous to the retail sector, an unbiased estimate of the demand effect of immigration can be obtained without having to use instrumental variables estimation or other statistical procedures that may introduce new sources of bias. Fortunately, the economy in our model matches a very convenient test case: Dawson County, Nebraska. Dawson County recently experienced a surge in demand-pull immigration due to the location of a large export-driven meatpacking plant. This exogenous capital shock pulled in many Hispanic immigrant workers, who did not immediately seek work in the retail sector because of social and language barriers. This immigration led to higher retail wages and housing prices, confirming that immigration is capable of exerting significant effects on local labor demand.