Conclusion: Making It in Business from the Outside-In

Abstract

This chapter argues that moving into the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie is much harder for people who must overcome more than racial and gender discrimination, undocumented immigration status, or poverty. We demonstrate that while these factors are important, people live in communities that are nested in space and time. That, as we show, space and time affect the very viability of the entrepreneurship strategy suggests they also affect social mobility. Yet, precisely because disadvantaged neighborhoods create a harsh social ecology, this book offers a story of grit and survival. Some intra-ethnic differences among the immigrants in our study improved the odds of a modicum of success under these neighborhood conditions, and some intra-ethnic variation illuminates how temporality operates on their life chances.