Ethnicity and Enterprise: Self-Employment Among Hispanic and Asian Immigrants in Chicago

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The increased salience of immigrant business has attracted a growing body of research, but two major questions, which this proposal addresses, remain: What is distinctively ethnic about the immigrant firm? Do these distinctive ethnic characteristics contribute to the firm's survival, profitability, and growth? This research is a longitudinal comparative study of self- employed persons in retail and service businesses in Chicago. The researchers will conduct 850 interviews with new small- business owners in the following groups: Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Koreans, Chinese, Philipinos, Blacks and Whites, reinterviewing them two years later. They are testing a model of ethnic immigrant incorporation into the labor market. The methods include event history analysis over time to analyze survival or mortality of the businesses over time. The study is novel in several ways. First, the data is unique, consisting of the comprehensive list of applicants for a General Business License in the city of Chicago. Second, the theoretical model of ethnic entrepreneurial development is novel in arguing that the interaction between ethnic group characteristics and the opportunity structure produces two distinct patterns of entrepreneurial development that are associated with the two modes of labor market incorporation of immigrant groups: replacement labor and replacement entrepreneurs. The two patterns of immigrant incorporation and business development are associated with the type of migration, social background, and organizing capacity of the group, differences that will affect business survival, profitability, and success.