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Migration in China and Asia pp 149–171Cite as

Intra-metropolitan Opportunity Structure and Immigrant Self-employment

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Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Migration ((IPMI,volume 10))

Abstract

The rapid increase of immigrant population in metropolitan areas across the United States brings significant changes to urban labor market. While many immigrants integrate into the formal labor market through participation in wage and salaried work, a substantive proportion of Latino and Asian immigrants are making their way into ethnic entrepreneurship through their own businesses. Using 2000 Census microdata for the Atlanta metropolitan area as a case study, this research investigates the effect of intra-metropolitan opportunity structure and local area context, especially spatial structure, urban employment pattern, social environment and ethnic concentration, on Asian and Latino immigrants’ incidence of self-employment. These two groups grew rapidly both in the total labor force and among the self-employed in Atlanta. It is found that living in central city and inner ring suburbs depresses Latino immigrants’ entrepreneurial activities. The growth of trade jobs and concentration of immigrants in a local area both give rise to immigrant entrepreneurship. Results suggest that traditional theories like disadvantage theory needs to be reassessed in the context of new immigrant gateways, while the ethnic enclave hypothesis is still validated. Potential policies to promote immigrant entrepreneurship are also discussed.

A version of this chapter was published in Economic Development Quarterly.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This paper uses self-employment and entrepreneurship interchangeably, making reference to those individuals who have own incorporated or not-incorporated business, professional practice, or farm.

  2. 2.

    The 20-county Atlanta region is identified on the PUMA level as well. These counties are: Dawson County, Forsyth County, Cherokee County, Bartow County, Paulding County, Carroll County, Douglas County, Coweta County, Fayette County, Spalding County, Cobb County, Gwinnett County, Dekalb County, Fulton County, Barrow County, Walton County, Clayton County, Newton County, Rockdale County and Henry County. The PUMAs that completely or substantively contain the above counties are included for analysis.

  3. 3.

    In general, the central city PUMAs have median housing age of or before 1960s, and inner ring suburban PUMAs have median housing age of 1970s, and outer ring suburban PUMAs have median housing age of 1980s and 1990s. Exceptions are made to four PUMAs who have median housing age of 1980s but are designated as inner ring suburbs due to their adjacency to the central city in order to make a contiguous ring. Detailed analysis showed that housing built of and before 1970s make up between 37 % and 48 % of total housing in each of these four PUMAs. While Lee and Leigh (2007) also used these two criteria (adjacency and housing age), their ring partition is somewhat different as census tract-level data were used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

    Cathy Yang Liu

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  1. Cathy Yang Liu
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Correspondence to Cathy Yang Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, Hainan, China

    Jijiao Zhang

  2. Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Howard Duncan

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Liu, C. (2014). Intra-metropolitan Opportunity Structure and Immigrant Self-employment. In: Zhang, J., Duncan, H. (eds) Migration in China and Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_10

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