Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor-Market Formation in an Immigrant Community

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9406596 LAWSON Research on the dramatic restructuring that has characterized economic activities throughout the world in recent decades has tended to focus on either the economic dimensions of change or on the social implications of changing economic activities for workers. Relatively little attention has been given to the links between labor markets and social processes within the labor force, however. This doctoral dissertation research project will examine these links through a case study of the changing composition of labor in the outerware garment industry of the Seattle metropolitan area. This industry has been a primary place of employment for many of the nearly 40,000 Asian immigrants who have moved to the Seattle area since 1985. As a result, most workers in the outerware industry now are women from southeast Asia. Secondary sources will be used to document the transformation of the industry in recent decades in order to establish a framework for consideration of industry's current structure. A second phase of the research will include analysis of quantitative data, including the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the U.S. Census of Population, in order to provide information about the household structure and labor-force participation of southeast Asian immigrants. In-depth interviews also will be conducted with garment industry owners and managers and with female garment workers from Vietnam and Cambodia to determine the circumstances of their immigration and the character of their experiences from both economic and social perspectives. This research will make important contributions to geographic knowledge in a number of different ways. It will add to empirically based insights into the general role of labor markets in industrial change and to the specific roles of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class is the transformation of labor markets. In addition, this project will generate new knowledge about the ways that social and economic processes interact. As a doctoral dissertation research improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.