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33 Int'l Migration Rev. 5 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/imgratv33 and id is 1 raw text is: Immigrant Incorporation in the Garment Industry of Los Angeles' Ivan Light Richard B. Bernard Rebecca Kim University of California, Los Angeles Stressing the network's facilitation of immigrants' searches for jobs and housing, migration network theory has conceptually overlooked the manner in which immigrants' social networks also expand the supply of jobs and housing in target destinations by means of the ethnic economy. An expanded migration network theory takes into account the ethnic economy's role in creating new resources in the destination economy. However, the power of this objection wanes in the context of working- class immigrations that generate few entrepreneurs. Introduced here, the concept of immigrant economy responds to this contingency. Unlike eth- nic economies, in which co-ethnics hire co-ethnics, immigrant economies arise when immigrants hire non-co-ethnic fellow immigrants. This situation usually arises when very entrepreneurial immigrant groups coexist in a labor market with working-class immigrant groups that gen- erate few entrepreneurs of their own. Using evidence from the garment industry of Los Angeles, this paper estimates that only a third of immi- grant employees found their jobs in a conventional ethnic economy. Half owed their employment to the immigrant economy in which, for the most part, Asian entrepreneurs employed Latino workers. In the last two decades, immigration research has documented the contribution of migrants' social networks to the inception, growth and direction of migra- tions (Bozorgmehr, 1992; Portes and Borocz, 1989; Fawcett, 1989; Boyd, 1989; Morawska, 1989: 260; Wilpert and Gitmez, 1987; Gurak and Caces, 1990). Massey (1988:396; 1990) defines migration networks as sets of inter- personal ties that link migrants, former migrants, and nonmigrants in origin and destination areas through the bonds of kinship, friendship, and shared community origin. A long-standing concern (Tilly, 1978), migrant networks became of renewed interest when researchers sought to connect macro- and micro-determinants of immigration. Micro-determinants govern the migration choices of individuals. Theorists of individual choice conceptualize migrants as 'The authors thank Connie Hum for research help. We also thank Manuel Garcia y Griego for critical suggestions. Please address reprint requests to Ivan Light, Department of Sociology, UCLA, Box 951551, Los Angeles, CA 90095. 0 1999 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0197-9183/99/3301.0125 IMR Volume 33 Number 1 (Spring 1999): 0005-0025 5

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