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Focusing on shopkeepers in Latino/a neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Dolores Trevizo and Mary Lopez reveal how neighborhood poverty affects the business performance of Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs. Their survey of shopkeepers in twenty immigrant neighborhoods demonstrates that even slightly less impoverished, multiethnic communities offer better business opportunities than do the highly impoverished, racially segregated Mexican neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Their findings reveal previously overlooked aspects of microclass, as well as "legal capital" advantages. The authors argue that even poor Mexican immigrants whose class backgrounds in Mexico imparted an entrepreneurial disposition can achieve a modicum of business success in the right (U.S.) neighborhood context, and the more quickly they build legal capital, the better their outcomes. While the authors show that the local place characteristics of neighborhoods both reflect and reproduce class and racial inequalities, they also demonstrate that the diversity of experience among Mexican immigrants living within the spatial boundaries of these communities can contribute to economic mobility.
List of contents
List of Figures.- List of Tables.- Preface and Acknowledgements.- 1. Introduction: The Social Ecology of Disadvantage for Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs.- 2. Hardline Policies, Blocked Mobility and Immigrant Entrepreneurs.- 3. Re-Producing Economic Inequality Across the U.S-Mexican Border.- 4. Mexican Segregation: Good or Bad for Business?.- 5. Gendered Differences Among Mexican Immigrant Shopkeepers.- 6. From "Illegal" to Neighborhood Shopkeeper: How Legal Capital Affects Business Performance.- 7. Conclusion: Making it in Business from the Outside-In.- Appendices.- References.- Index.
About the author
Dolores Trevizo is Professor of Sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Mary Lopez is Associate Professor of Economics at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Summary
Focusing on shopkeepers in Latino/a neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Dolores Trevizo and Mary Lopez reveal how neighborhood poverty affects the business performance of Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs. Their survey of shopkeepers in twenty immigrant neighborhoods demonstrates that even slightly less impoverished, multiethnic communities offer better business opportunities than do the highly impoverished, racially segregated Mexican neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Their findings reveal previously overlooked aspects of microclass, as well as “legal capital” advantages. The authors argue that even poor Mexican immigrants whose class backgrounds in Mexico imparted an entrepreneurial disposition can achieve a modicum of business success in the right (U.S.) neighborhood context, and the more quickly they build legal capital, the better their outcomes. While the authors show that the local place characteristics of neighborhoods both reflect and reproduce class and racial inequalities, they also demonstrate that the diversity of experience among Mexican immigrants living within the spatial boundaries of these communities can contribute to economic mobility.
