Class, Ethnicity, Gender and Latino Entrepreneurship

María Eugenia Verdaguer

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135844639
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Entrepreneurship

Drawing on surveys and in-depth interviews, this book examines the social and economic relations of first-generation Latino entrepreneurs. Verdaguer explores social patterns between and within groups, situating immigrant entrepreneurship within concrete geographical, demographic and historical spaces. Her study not only reveals that Latinos' strategies for access to business ownership and for business development are cut across class, ethnic and gender lines, but also that immigrants' options, practices, and social spaces remain largely shaped by patriarchal gender relations within the immigrant family, community and economy. This book is a necessary addition to the literature on immigration, class, gender relations, and the intersectionality of these issues.

1 Latino Entrepreneurship Reconsidered

An Overview of the Study

Ever since classical economic sociologists embarked on an intellectual journey to elucidate the relationship between social structure and the economy, scholars have attempted to unveil the complex mechanisms through which cultural elements of a social system influence economic behavior. Thus, from Max Weber’s classical study on Protestant religious values as the driving force behind the emergence of capitalism, to Mark Granovetter’s theory on embeddedness, sociologists have attempted to understand the way in which social relations and institutions pattern economic action. Immigrant entrepreneurship is just one empirical manifestation of socially oriented economic behavior, but one of particular relevance given its far reaching implications for immigrant integration, social welfare, technological innovation, and economic development in 21^st century America.

Thus, the immigrant entrepreneurship literature finds its intellectual roots in a tradition of scholarship that began over a century ago. Yet, it has retained, by and large, an elitist and culturalist flavor. In all, scholars have continued to glamorize the cultural traits that distinctively endow “successful” immigrant groups for entrepreneurship, enhancing their business practices and performance. In the process, they have primarily focused on entrepreneurial groups exhibiting high levels of commercial performance, thereby neglecting to examine those entrepreneurs less successful from an economic standpoint. As a result, in painting a celebratory portrait of immigrant entrepreneurial success, the literature has left behind the stories of those less visible, of whom little is known. In other words, beyond Cubans in Miami and/or Dominicans in New York, there is a dearth of knowledge on the entrepreneurial experiences of “Other” Latino newcomers, whose growth rate is faster than that of any other immigrant group in America.

Not only has the scholarship retained a culturalist lens, but, for the most part, it has also suffered from a myopic tendency to treat ethnicity as a monolithic construct, overlooking within group variation. In fact, members of a same ethnic group often harbor dissimilar values and face distinct opportunities due to class, gender, religious, racial, and/or other stratifying cleavages. This attempt at ethnic homogenization is perhaps nowhere as ubiquitous as in the use of panethnic labels. Often, panethnicity subsumes, under broad categories, divergent national experiences with little more in common than colonial legacies and/or close geographic proximity. This is certainly the case for recent Latino newcomers, who arrive to America from all walks of life, peasants and professionals, political refugees and economic migrants, women and men, young and old, documented and undocumented.

Likewise, and to the same extent that the ethnic entrepreneurship literature has tended to homogenize Latinos’ entrepreneurial experiences, it has also remained androcentric, largely treating entrepreneurs as genderless actors. Nevertheless, the evidence gathered from the gender and migration scholarship invariably shows that gender, as main organizer of social life, profoundly shapes the immigrant experience. Therefore, neglecting to explore the gendered components of immigrant entrepreneurial behavior blinds us to important insights about the dynamics of Latino small businesses in particular, and of immigrant integration processes in general.

Beyond androcentric biases, the ethnic entrepreneurship literature has evolved, over the past couple of decades, from a dichotomous “class and ethnic resources” focus to an interactionist approach, where immigrant group traits interact with demand side factors in receiving communities to determine entrepreneurial outcomes. As a result, scholars now concede that the local business regulatory environment, immigration policy, and localized institutional factors in host communities also shape newcomers’ economic experiences. Equally important—although far less explored—racial and ethnic relations, including the social structure of Latino immigrant communities in places of reception, remain paramount to the development of thriving entrepreneurial environments. Scholars agree that, underlining these contextual forces, social networks mediate the degree of agency individuals’ exert, galvanizing or hampering their resource mobilization strategies. Ultimately, it is the social embeddedness of newcomers’ networks that seems to play a critical role in conditioning immigrant mobility and integration into American society.

Although such a rich intellectual tradition has fundamentally advanced our understanding of contextual and group determinants of immigrant entrepreneurship, prevailing theories provide only a partial explanation of the Latino entrepreneurship phenomenon. Because Latinos are differentiated social and economic actors, unevenly positioned in a stratified hierarchy along interwoven structures of class, ethnic, and gender difference, their access to resources, including entrepreneurial opportunities, is uneven. Yet, immigrants exert various degrees of agency contingent on collective resources and an intrinsic sense of empowerment. Therefore, a nuanced understanding of Latino business experiences necessitates a theoretical framework that accounts for the intersectionality of structures of difference in entrepreneurs’ lives as well as for their degree of resilience and agency at recasting the terms of their opportunity structure.

Responding to this void, this book examines the ways in which gender, class, nationality, and the local environment shape entrepreneurial experiences among dissimilar Latino immigrant groups. To this end, it focuses on Salvadoran and Peruvian immigrant entrepreneurs in the Greater Washington metropolitan area. The questions that drive this research are straightforward: Is there variation in Latino resource mobilization strategies within panethnic, national origin, and gender boundaries? Or what are the ways in which the intersectionality of structures of difference—class, ethnicity, and gender—shape mobilization and opportunity structures for distinct Latino newcomers? How does gender mediate access to business ownership and business development? Is the social embeddedness of Salvadoran and Peruvian men’s and women’s networks equally effective in facilitating entrepreneurial ventures? And how do informants and institutional gatekeepers perceive the policy environment for Latino immigrant business development across the Greater Washington metropolitan area?

To look at intra-ethnic variation within panethnic categories, this book compares the experiences of Salvadoran and Peruvian first generation immigrants. The reasons behind this choice, as chapter three will address, is that the Central and South American share of Latino immigrants—of which Salvadorans and Peruvians are a part—are the fastest growing segment of the US Latino population; they are also the majority of Latinos in the Washington region (US Census Bureau 2006; Singer 2007). Most important, Salvadoran and Peruvian socio-demographics differ significantly upon arrival. Thus, a comparison of Salvadorans and Peruvians provides an empirical illustration of the ways in which dissimilar pre-migration circumstances and levels of reception condition opportunity structures for different groups of Latino/a entrepreneurs. In the process, this study also contributes to a more nuanced understanding on the lesser known experiences of “Other” Latinos, that is Latinos other than Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or Cubans (Rodriguez, Saenz, and Menjivar 2008).

The Greater Washington area provides the backdrop to this study because of its unique demographic characteristics. Having rapidly evolved from historically defined black and white dichotomies, the region has recently become an emerging immigrant gateway to countless Asian, African, and Latin American newcomers.¹ With counties where either non-Hispanic US whites or African-Americans predominate, the region allows for a rich examination of Latino entrepreneurial dynamics within multicultural contexts. Most recently, virulent anti-immigrant tensions have erupted across Washington suburban localities, bringing communities such as Manassas, Herndon, and Prince William County into the national lime-light. Adding complexity to the picture, Washington Latinos draw from a more diverse group of nationalities than counterpart populations across the country. Notably, no Latino immigrant group dominates the Washington demographic landscape in the same way that Mexicans do in California or Cubans do in Miami. While Salvadorans constitute the largest Latino national origin group, followed by Mexicans and Peruvians, Washington Latinos remain fragmented precisely because of the lack of a massive numerical dominance from any one group.

Thus, focusing on a new immigrant receiving area and on Latino immigrant entrepreneurs we know little about, this book broadens the ethnic entrepreneurship debate from an empirical and theoretical standpoint. Empirically, it begins to disclose the untold story of less “successful” immigrant entrepreneurial groups in America. Not only those less visible and deemed less fit for such an undertaking, but those of more modest means, with businesses that have few or no employees. Such focus is strategic given that Latino immigrant entrepreneurship is primarily a non-employer phenomenon (Robles and Guzman 2007; Valdez 2008). Further, because of the breadth and wealth of Latinos’ experiences, a greater understanding of their bifurcated trajectories, either as survivalist or upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, is paramount to better inform policies geared to develop their potential.

Theoretically, this book deglamorizes the ethnic solidarity thesis, largely premised upon the notion of harmonious and cohesive social relations among co-ethnics and co-nationals. In fact, the most recent scholarship argues that the solidarity of immigrant networks is not only a function of structural factors in places of reception (Menjivar 2000), but of specific pre-migration and demographic characteristics of immigrant communities. Thus, while some immigrant groups might show a higher degree of social solidarity with co-ethnics, others will have fragmented co-national networks stratified along class and racial lines. In sum, stories in this study highlight the limits of reactive ethnicity and social solidarity when class, racial, territorial, and gender hierarchies brought from the homeland shape immigrant identity formation (Paerregaard 2005).

Furthermore, in the process of unveiling within group variation, this book engenders the immigrant entrepreneurial experience. Because Salvadoran and Peruvian entrepreneurial options, practices, and decisions are largely shaped by patriarchal gender relations within the family and immigrant community, entrepreneurial strategies are inherently gendered. Chapter seven examines the ways in which men’s and women’s access to capital, labor, and information, as well as their marketing and business styles, are regulated by varying degrees of patriarchal gender ideology. Social stigmatization, sexual predation, sexual harassment, and other forms of social control differentially affect men’s and women’s mobility, options, and aspirations as they engage in economic life. Paradoxically, for men, patriarchal gender ideology not only carries privileges, but also significant burdens as many struggle with the need to reconcile rigid masculine roles as breadwinners with status incongruence and downward mobility in their new homelands. As stories will eloquently illustrate, gender, interwoven with structures of class and ethnic difference, conditions men’s and women’s entrepreneurial options in distinct and significant ways.

And yet, defying structural barriers, participants’ narratives invariably suggest that their collective mobilization through ethnic, gender, and class-based networks often aid them in recasting the terms of their opportunity structure. For most study participants, entrepreneurship provided a strong source of personal empowerment that went beyond economic prosperity. Entrepreneurship allowed men and women study participants to develop a deeper sense of belonging to American society, nurturing hope, self-confidence, and motivation. Ultimately, in fostering their self-sufficiency and integration to America, entrepreneurship often unleashed a virtuous cycle of prosperity, well-being, social engagement, and productivity.

From a policy perspective, this book should be of relevance to policymakers interested in fostering the development of ethnic small businesses. Small businesses are of considerable importance since many sources estimate they generate more job growth in contemporary America than big corporations. Given that immigrant (and ethnic) entrepreneurs occupy a strategic portion of the small business sector, a better understanding of their experiences is pivotal. As important, findings from this study will be relevant for immigrant integration, social welfare, and economic development discussions. With the current disturbing wave of anti-immigrant sentiments in America, it becomes more necessary than ever to realize that these sentiments constitute not only a political, but also an economic liability. Today’s newcomers, following on their predecessors’ footsteps, bring vitality to American society and economy; they engage in productive activities that generate jobs, offer services, produce tax revenue for federal and state governments and, ultimately, enable America to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

COLLECTING THE STORIES: RESEARCH DESIGN

To examine the research questions driving this study, I applied a multistaged field research design, which allows for the collection and presentation of information in a way that provides rich context. Further, given the exploratory nature of the study, field research enabled me to capture nuances on the experiences of populations for which there is virtually little, if any, empirical information. In the process, qualitative research allowed me to incorporate both study participants’ and other relevant actors’ voices. Although the key units of analysis were men and women business owners, I also looked at their social networks, hence shifting the research focus from the micro to the meso-levels of analysis.

My presence as a “quasi-insider” in the field (Latina immigrant of Argentine origin) often enabled me to gain easier access to and rapport with prospective informants. Because of my Spanish-English bilingual and bicultural abilities, I was able to conduct all in-depth interviews in Spanish, capturing linguistic and cultural subtleties. As the data collection process evolved, I gained the confidence of many study participants, to whom I became a trusted friend. To protect their confidentiality, I have de-identified real names and relevant demographic information, slightly reconfiguring informants’ backgrounds to protect them from social disclosure.

Finally, this study presents some theoretical and methodological limitations. First, I use national origin as an imperfect measure of ethnicity with the caveat that national labels often conceal significant regional, racial, and religious in-group variation. Second, my sample combines dissimilar self-employment categories and business sizes, including formal and informal economic ventures. Yet, approximately 60 per cent of businesses participating in the study are micro-enterprises with no more than five employees. This empirical combination of businesses at various stages of growth is congruent with broad theoretical definitions that aggregate a wide variety of entrepreneurial and self-employment practices. Therefore, I use entrepreneur and self-employment indistinctly throughout the book. Last, because of my non-probability sampling design, I do not intend to make generalizations from my findings to the entire Washington Salvadoran and Peruvian populations. Instead, this exploratory study attempts to throw light onto social phenomena that has traditionally been studied from other perspectives.

Data Collection

Over a three year period, the data collection methodology aimed to build knowledge from the general to the specific level of analysis. Following a “mixed method research” strategy (Creswell 2003), I moved from an initial review of census data to an exploratory qualitative research phase that paved the way for the final intensive interviews.

First Phase—Secondary Analysis of Census Data

The secondary data analysis entailed a cross-sectional demographic study of Latino small businesses, and of the Salvadoran and Peruvian immigrant populations in the United States, especially focusing on Washington Salvadorans and Peruvians. I framed this analysis in reference to broader Latino trends and demographics. I used both 1990 and 2000 US census data (Census of Population and Housing, The Foreign Born, Summary Tape Files 1, 3, and 4B), 2002 Economic Census data, and the 2006 American Community Survey. An important caveat to the usefulness of economic census data is that it does not disaggregate Latino small business owners by nationality, except for Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans.² Furthermore, businesses for Peruvians and Salvadorans are collapsed into one single “South/Central American” category. Because of serious census data limitations to capture informal business practices (and their complex overlap with formal economic activities), this demographic analysis was only aimed at identifying descriptive patterns to be cross-validated through the subsequent qualitative methodology.

Second Phase—Exploratory Field Work

The second research phase was informed by an inductive approach and entailed: (1) twenty-five expert interviews with Latino business leaders and institutional gatekeepers; and (2) 107 initial survey interviews with Salvadoran and Peruvian men and women entrepreneurs. In addition, I conducted participant observation at federally and locally-sponsored business training courses, at Latino chambers of commerce-sponsored events, and at similar social functions bringing together the Latino business community. In addition, I gathered information from secondary sources, such as government reports, non-profit and community organization brochures, and small business assistance programs’ publications.

The purpose of the expert interviews was to obtain information on policies affecting Latino immigrant small businesses, including licensing requirements, labor standard and zoning laws, funding levels for minority small business assistance programs, training opportunities, and outreach programs available for minority and immigrant entrepreneurs. In sum, the purpose of these interviews was to get a sense of the ...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Latino Entrepreneurship Reconsidered: An Overview of the Study
• 2 Theorizing Immigrant Entrepreneurship
• 3 Divergent Latino Immigrant Stories: Salvadorans and Peruvians in America
• 4 The Washington Area Opportunity Structure and Latino Entrepreneurs
• 5 Class Resources, Group Cohesion and Business Strategies
• 6 Ethnicity and Business Strategies
• 7 Gender and Resource Mobilization Strategies
• 8 Social Networks, Social Capital and Embeddedness
• 9 Conclusion: The Social Bases and Consequences of Latino Entrepreneurship
• Appendix A: Research Instruments
• Appendix B: Study Participants Data
• Notes
• References