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This chapter, in conjunction with Chapter 2, provides the overall context for the book. First, this chapter locates undocumented migration within the broader theoretical paradigms that consider economic, structural and migration systems as drivers for international migration as well as the structural and state based factors that result in irregular migration. Secondly, we explore the literature on social capital in the form of networks. These networks can, on the one hand act as a trap while on the other hand as a mechanism for securing some, even if extremely minimal, resources for undocumented migrants and is central to our analysis. Thirdly the literature on the labour market experiences and strategies among undocumented migrants will be examined, alongside that of ethnic enclave employers, including their preferences for certain types of workers who are often from the same ethnic group and perceived to be hard working and compliant. Throughout we will address the main cleavages of gender, class, power and status that frame the analysis in the empirical chapters.

This chapter examines the field of ethnic geography and the geography of race and racism. It begins with a discussion of two schools that explain the relationships between ethnic minority groups and the dominant group in mainstream American society: acculturation-assimilation and ethnicity-pluralism. It then considers the spatial forms of ethnicity and race, with particular emphasis on two major forms of ethnic concentrations: ghettos and ethnic enclaves. It also describes an influential theory that accounts for the replacement of one neighborhood population by another, namely, the invasion-succession model, and compares it with the downtown versus uptown model. Furthermore, it explores the economic structure of racial/ethnic groups, focusing on three types of ethnic economy: ethnic economic niches, ethnic enclave economies, and contemporary integrated ethnic economies. The chapter concludes by explaining how transnationalism links international migration, ethnic and racial identity, the changing global economy, and nation-states.

This chapter examines the evolving Chinese ethnic economy and the changing job market in New York City, as well as the strategies employed by Chinese immigrant women to find and keep jobs after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It begins with a discussion of New York's Chinatown community to illustrate how ethnic enclaves and ethnic labor markets become mobility traps, where workers are exploited on a daily basis. It then presents data from two sets of interviews with thirty women and ten men residing in Chinatown during periods of economic downturn. The first phase of interviewing was conducted during the summer of 2002, while the second phase took place during the winter of 2008–2009. All of the women and three of the men had previously worked in the garment industry. The findings show that, unlike many New York City neighborhoods and economic sectors, the Chinatown enclave never recovered from the post–9/11 economic recession. The chapter also considers the ongoing role of community-based organizations in providing programs that support new workers.

This chapter describes the ethnoburb, a new type of suburb that expresses a set of contemporary ethnic relations involving interethnic group and intraethnic class tension or cooperation in a unique spatial form and internal socioeconomic structure. After providing an overview of the conceptual model of the ethnoburb and linking it to the framework of ethnicity and space, the chapter explains how the ethnoburb is formed as an alternative ethnic settlement. It then discusses a framework of connections between global and national economic restructuring trends as well as possible sites of ethnoburbs, along with other factors that contribute to the formation of ethnoburbs, including geopolitics, U.S. immigration policy, and locality conditions. It also examines the ethnoburb's position in the contemporary socioeconomic and political fabric, as well as how it engages with different kinds of social and economic relationships. Finally, it explores how the ethnoburb differs from ghettos and ethnic enclaves and outlines some theoretical considerations regarding ethnoburbs.

This chapter explores the perception that the ‘home’ extends beyond a house or apartment to include schools, shops, and places of worship. It focuses on ethnic enclaves in New York and Chicago and uses the broad concept of ‘home’ to examine how ethnic and religious enclaves have been subject to increased police enforcement of social distancing violations within these spaces. It also argues that the extent of the ‘home’ has been aided by smartphone apps and social media, which have allowed users to report violations within spaces that were once deemed private. The chapter examines why social distancing mandates are enforced disproportionately on racial minorities. It talks about the idea of the ‘private’ that structures the urban design of New York City and Chicago into discrete neighborhoods.

This chapter features the Chung family, who, like the Koh family, were keenly aware of racism. Both parents prided themselves on working outside of the ethnic sector—the mother as a highly skilled surgical nurse and the father as an owner of a video rental store. The family’s higher income compelled the parents to move their family from an affluent suburb populated by many other Korean American families to another affluent suburb that was overwhelmingly White—a strategy to exit the ethnic enclave in order to assimilate themselves and their children into multicultural (but mostly White) America to ensure successful transitions to professional occupations populated by successful (White) others. The chapter follows the family through the eyes of the younger son, who realized the illusive nature of the parents’ assimilation strategy and eventually pursued graduate study in a humanities discipline.

The chapter compares two New York’s Little Italies—the “Little Italy” on Lower Manhattan’s Mulberry Street, and the “Real Little Italy” of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The historical trajectories of the neighborhoods—from immigrant enclaves to popular ethnic theme parks for international tourists—is framed within postindustrial urban change and the turn of cultural production into most profitable investment for financial capital. Confronted with the loss of their residents of Italian origin, both neighborhoods owe their continued significance as “Italian” spaces to the construction of commodified versions of their ethnic pasts for consumption by a variegated clientele. However, their commercial ethnicities have emerged in particular ways that reflect the geographic, economic, demographic, and ethnic and racial conditions of their local histories.

This chapter focuses on the working lives of undocumented migrants. In particular it explores the constant juxtaposition of working lives with irregularity in five main areas: job search and routes into employment; jobs and sectors of employment; terms and conditions of work and the precarious nature of employment; experiences of work within and outside of the ethnic enclave; and workplace relations. For the most part work is insecure, with poor terms and conditions, including long and unsocial hours without overtime payments. Work was mostly for employers or managers from the same ethnic and/or linguistic group in some of the most informal parts of the economy. However, being undocumented does not mean a total absence of agency and the chapter shows how undocumented migrants are able to make incremental improvements to their working lives by adopting particular tactics in terms of skills acquisition, job mobility and even geographical mobility.

This chapter is concerned with the determinants and consequences of immigrant/linguistic concentrations (enclaves). The reasons for the formation of these concentrations are discussed. Hypotheses are developed regarding “ethnic goods” and the effect of concentrations on the immigrant's language skills, as well as the effects on immigrant earnings of destination language skills and the linguistic concentration. These hypotheses are tested using PUMS data from the 1990 U.S. Census on adult male immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. Linguistic concentrations reduce the immigrant’s own English language skills. Moreover, immigrants’ earnings are lower the lower their English language proficiency and the greater the linguistic/ethnic concentration in their origin language of the area in which they live. The adverse effects on earnings of poor destination language skills and of immigrant concentrations exist independently of each other. The hypotheses regarding ethnic goods are supported by the data.

This chapter examines the paradoxes of patriarchy by drawing on the experiences of South Asian immigrant women in ethnic labor markets. Most South Asian women who work in the South Asian labor market in the United States are engaged in low-wage work within the ethnic labor market, employed by male-owned businesses and with little separation between the private and public spheres. The women and their families often live in same ethnic enclaves where they work. This chapter considers whether South Asian immigrant women's entry into a structurally stratified ethnic labor market creates a paradox in their lives. More specifically, it explores whether employment increases the women's bargaining power within the household and whether the close proximity between work and home facilitates working longer hours for little pay. The chapter reveals the paradoxes of immigration and gendered labor in ethnic enclaves. While the ethnic markets' familial/patrilineal structure creates social capital and a safe space for the South Asian women, it also makes them vulnerable to exploitation in terms of reduced wages and increased work hours.

This book has explored how Los Angeles's Chinese community has evolved into an ethnoburb, comparing it with downtown Chinatown to highlight its differences from the traditional ethnic enclave. It has shown how ethnoburbs were created by ethnic minority groups and emerged as a new and important form of suburban ethnic settlement due to a combination of factors including global geopolitics and economic forces, U.S. national policies and local demographics, and socioeconomic and political shifts. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main findings and their implications for the Chinese ethnoburb in San Gabriel Valley. It also describes ethnoburbs in other North American cities and ends by discussing the opportunities and challenges presented by ethnoburbs with regard to immigration, race, and ethnicity.

This book explores the labor experiences of immigrant women, primarily Asians and Latinas, engaged in low-wage work in the era of neoliberal globalization. It assesses the impact of neoliberal globalization on the economic, political, and social lives of immigrant women both at home and abroad, as well as the strategies used by these women to deal with labor disruptions—interruptions in immigrant women's labor patterns due to the social and political processes resulting from neoliberal globalization. Labor disruptions encompass both “for-pay” labor and gendered labor within the family and occur in ethnic enclaves and within the informal economy. The book seeks to elucidate how Asian and Latina immigrant women, with the assistance of community-based organizations, organize and mobilize against disruptions caused by neoliberal globalization and the neoliberal state. This introduction reflects on the challenges facing future scholars of labor and migration processes.

This book focuses on the emergence of a new model of contemporary urban ethnic community: the ethnoburb. Drawing on the experience of the Chinese community in Greater Los Angeles, from downtown Chinatown to the San Gabriel Valley ethnoburb, it examines the process and forces that gave rise to multiethnic ethnoburbs in the latter half of the twentieth century. It considers how the ethnoburb, as a form of urban ethnic settlement, has been formed by the interplay among economic globalization, political struggles between and within nation-states, immigration policy shifts in the United States, and a host of local conditions. The book consists of three parts. Part 1 introduces the ethnoburb model and compares the ethnoburb with traditional ghettos and ethnic enclaves. Part 2 looks at the Chinese ethnoburb in Los Angeles and Part 3 assesses the future of the Los Angeles ethnoburb, similar ethnoburbs in other major North American metropolitan areas, and the opportunities and challenges posed by ethnoburbs.

This chapter explores how Williamsburg, Brooklyn, captures, in miniature, broader twentieth- and twenty-first-century trends of deindustrialization, urban renewal and the decline of the white ethnic enclave, gentrification and the revitalization of cities, and neoliberal politics. It places architecture, development, and gentrification at the center of threats to the longevity of religious communities like the Catholic parish. It argues for the importance of religion and religious institutions in understanding how communities resist and adapt to gentrification. It theorizes “lifeblood of the parish” and explores the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s ethic of survival amid decades of neighborhood change, under Robert Moses and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The feast and giglio are an assertion of a particular masculine history of Williamsburg, and this chapter examines the gendered logics by which communities work to secure and narrate their survival in a city increasingly built for leisure, tourism, and the creative class.

The location of skyscrapers was not independent or separate from the location of the tenement districts. The “battle for place” meant that dense ethnic enclaves would emerge in some places but not others. Skyscrapers would rise in the “pockets” between the enclaves. This chapter discusses the economic theory of population density and how it can explain the location choices of immigrants and the working classes. It discusses the results of a statistical analysis which can help shed light on where the enclaves emerged and how crowded they were. Next, the chapter discusses the economics of the tenement real estate market including construction, rent prices, and housing reform. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how Manhattan’s long and narrow shaped influenced its land values at the dawn of the Skyscraper Revolution.

This chapter examines the characteristics of an ethnoburb in order to provide a theoretical explanation of the process of ethnoburb formation as well as a general portrait of the ethnoburb population. Focusing on the Chinese ethnoburb in Los Angeles, it considers where the area's Chinese immigrants originated and whether their arrivals were connected to major geopolitical developments in their countries of origin or to important immigration policy shifts in the United States. It also discusses the differences between an ethnoburb and a traditional ethnic enclave by comparing the San Gabrial Valley ethnoburb with Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles. Finally, it explores the socioeconomic status of Chinese immigrants in the San Gabrial Valley ethnoburb within the context of globalization, along with the internal stratification in the ethnoburb.

This chapter examines how Catholic and evangelical affiliations influence diverging understandings of coethnic barrios. Relationships to ethnic enclaves matter, the author argues, because ethnic enclaves host a concentration of ethnic resources that distinctly shape ethnic identities. Catholics understand the barrio as a “community,” denoting both physical neighborhood and tight-knit support networks. The barrio functions as a space for communally performed rituals of collective memory for Catholics. On the other hand, evangelicals tend to view the barrio as a place that is in need of redemption. For evangelicals, the barrio is a target of evangelistic efforts and they conceive of their place in the barrio as a catalytic role, centered on bringing about transformation therein. Both Catholics and evangelicals are highly invested in the ethnic enclave, but their differing views provide them with different channels of access to localized ethnic resources.

This afterword summarizes the issues addressed by the book regarding the current condition and position of immigrant women in the U.S. economy. It highlights several of the book's significant contributions that set it apart from other works in the fields of gender, migration, and low-wage work. Drawing on a number of case studies, the book has explored the lived experiences of low-wage immigrant women and the ways in which they have been impacted by neoliberal globalization, flexibilization, and informality. It has investigated the emerging sectors of the informal economy and their increasingly intricate connection to the formal economy and the personal services sector, as well as the changing nature, character, and role of evolving ethnic enclaves in both providing opportunities for low-wage women and allowing exploitation, marginalization, and abuse to become rampant and intolerable for the workers. This afterword discusses some concrete implications of the book's findings for research on and policies regarding low-wage women and work.