Institute for Social Science Research

The purpose of this paper is to examine how capitalism produces and reproduces racial oppression, by examining the dynamics of one industry in one location:the garment industry in Los Angeles.The L.A. garment industry uses immigrants from Latin America and Asia as workers and contractors. I plan to show how both groups are oppressed by the system, although differentially, by laying out the entire structure of relations in the industry, and the role of immigrants in it.In the course of describing the industry, I hope to demonstrate its excessive corruption at all levels,a corruption that is endemic to capitalism. A system that is characterized by such social decay is totally unequiped to solve such fundamental social problems as massive impoverishment and racial oppression.

In this paper we take a structural approach to understanding the role of female,and particularly Mexican, immigrants in the Los Angeles economy. It is structural in that recent enduring, if not permanent, macro-economic changes generated by increased global competition are affecting the nature of employment. The resulting structural shifts are reinforced by changes in the labor supply created by extensive immigration. Together these factors are contributing to a growing stratification of the laborforce that over the last several decades has taken the form of growing inequality along several dimensions: income, generational, spatial, gender, and racial inequality. To illustrate the extent of the problem,we examine the most economically disenfranchised segment of the population,recent Latina immigrants in Los Angeles. It is our argument that this group provides an accurate barometer of growing immiseration pervading society, and insight into the broader reaches of the burgeoning class of working poor in the U.S. Further,we feel that analysis of Los Angeles, the city which has experienced both the most significant industrial growth and largest influx of immigrants in the United States during the last decade, offers unusually strong evidence of these trends.

By focussing on a discussion of the New Zealand Immigration Act of 1987,this paper intends to suggest that despite obvious disparities in size and location, New Zealand and the United States of America have much in common in terms of immigrant experience. Differences in the respective political, economic, social and cultural heritages may explain variations on the theme, but the theme,is common to both nations; the creation of one people -e pluribus unum,or,katahi tatou.

This paper will focus on the Mexico-origin component of the California immigrant population. Drawing on the results of field studies conducted throughout California and in west-central Mexico during the last ten years,the paper will describe how the profile of Mexican migration to California has changed since the 197Os, suggest explanations for these changes, and discuss their implications for public policy. Effects of the long-running economic crisis in Mexico and of the 1986 U.S. immigra-tion law will be highlighted.

The current key issue in the U.S.immigration policy arena is the continuing review of legal permanent immigration. As in the past, the legal immigration reform initiative in the 10lst Congress has come from the Senate where Senators Kennedy and Simpson introduced, and were successful in having passed, S. 358, a bill almost identical to the one that failed in the last Congress. The bill would create two separate immigration tracks, one for families (the "family connection" track) and one for labor market-bound im-migrants (the independent immigrant track), while setting a worldwide immigration ceiling of 630,000. This figure is about 130,000 higher than total legal immigration to the U.S. for fiscal year 1988.

This paper addresses the process of U.S. legal permanent immigration reform by focusing on the four major perceived problem areas of the current immigrant selection system: (i) ethnic diversity; (ii) immigration levels: (iii) family immigration and visa backlogs;and (iv) responsiveness to labor market conditions. It also offers some preliminary descriptive data on the recent U.S. legalization programs.

This paper addresses the status of "immigrant women" in a non-immigration country.International migration reflects the need of the receiving country for a certain kind of worker, i.e., workers with a temporary time perspective,and an instrumental orientation toward work, thus, flexible, hard-working and cheap, keeping reference groups and delaying gratification for return home. These are at least the initial characteristics which migrants exemplify par excellence.The recruitment and participation of women in the recruitment process should say even more about the work to be done and nature of the receiving society. Although women migrants are present in all contemporary European migratory processes, the Federal Republic of Germany is the country which most officially and systematically recruited and hired foreign women for its workforce before 1973. As potentially the most vulnerable member of the labour force,the status of foreign women in the German labour market may serve as an indicator of transformations in the economy as well as broader societal changes.

My main objective is to show, on the example of Paris, why is it that precisely immigrants become providers of flexibility in the garment manufacturing in that city and how does the system function. The reference to Berlin for comparison, has a double purpose: first it is a control case which shows that in the absence of local opportunity structures, the apparently similar labour supply engages in different kind of economic behavior than in Paris; second, the comparison, put in a historical perspective makes it possible to raise questions about possible future developments. Namely, given the recent developments in the Eastern Europe, the opening of the Berlin vall end the prospect of German unification, and given also general trends o n the labour market towards more a-typical jobs, could one foresee a revival of the garment industry in Berlin along the similar pattern as in Paris?

Entrepreneurial activity has served as a route of economic advancement and social mobility for many of the more successful immigrant groups in their new host countries. In addition to varying ethnic resources, the formation of small-businesses by new immigrants depends greatly on characteristics of the host country and the specific urban area. Moreover, interaction of location and ethnicity factors may influence entrepreneurial behavior of immigrant groups; i.e. the role of location may differ for each immigrant group. This role of location has been given only cursory treatment in most previous studies of immigrant entrepreneurs.

This paper outlines the relation between theories of entrepreneurship among immigrant groups and studies on entrepreneurship in space. Then, it focuses on case studies of self-employment among recent immigrants in Israel, Canada end California, basing the analysis on national censuses of population from the early 1980s. Special attention has been put on the influence of location on the propensity of immigrants from various origins to engage in self-employment, and on the types of entrepreneurial activities performed by different immigrant groups. The influence of human capital attributes, ethnic networks and local opportunity structures on spatial variations in entrepreneurial behavior of immigrants is discussed.

Immigrant entrepreneurship is assessed in the context of changing realities of the 1970s and 1980s. These years witnessed a certain revival in the role of small businesses in job creation in many Western countries. A new role has been assigned to local entrepreneurs in public economic development efforts, replacing post-war strategies, based on capital-intensive industrialization (Storey 1988). International migration flows have also reemerged as a political and economic phenomenon of major importance, due to the passage of liberal immigration legislature in countries of destination during the period of economic growth and prosperity in the 1960's, and due to pressures in the countries of origin, aggravated by the economic crises of the 1970's and 1980's. Thus, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship among immigrant groups has a growing sugnificance in assessing local econimic development processes and social change.

Diversity is one of the major current themes in the field of immigrant and ethnic studies. Scholars are increasingly attentive to national-origin diversity among groups such as Hispanics in the United States (Portes and Truelove 1987;Nelson and Tienda 1985). They argue that differences in group characteristics, migration histories, and reception contexts affect the adaptation of immigrant groups. In some cases, however, ethnic diversity does not stop at the nationality level,and may take different forms. For instance, Iranians consist of ethno-religious subgroups (Armenians, Bahais, Jews, and Muslims), whereas Vietnamese include ethnic Chinese from Vietnam (Bozorgmehr 1990; Desbarats 1986; Sabagh et al. 1989). Armenians have co-ethnic counterparts of different national origins such as Iran, Lebanon, or the Soviet Union. The aim of this paper is document internal diversity among Armenians and thus demonstrate the need for taking into account subethnicity among Armenians.

The increasing visibility of foreign businesses in the commercial web of cities, their entry into the usual street scene, the reactions of French society and the socio-political issues knotted around urban perception of immigra-tion have provoked and even forced the interest of resear-chers and also public powers, territorial communities and political parties.This interest is particularly enhanced by the fact that the emergence of immigrants in the field of entrepreneurship naturally poses the important question of the integration of immigrants in French society and how to get there- question henceforth publicly situated at the heart of French society with the creation in February, 1990 of the"Haut Comite a l'integration! ,(High Comity for Integration)

The geographer is naturally tempted to approach these questions through the angle of space and the relations that foreign entrepreneurs maintain with it at different e-chelons. So it would be that for a shopkeeper the choice of an urbanized area or a dynamic neighborhood, the seeking-out of a good location at an advantageous point in a system of streets and thoroughfares constitute elements as important for the strategy of an individual or group as the application of appropriate methods of management.Spatial strategies have rapidly evolved since the outset of the 8Os, and new plans for action are being elaborated within French and European space in the perspective of the great single market of 1992. But before taking up this important point, it would appear helpful, in the framework of this international colloquium in this mecca of research on the ethnic enterprise, to provide a run-through on the progression of research in France dealing with this subject and to venture a brief synthesis of our most recent findings concerning the upsurge and characteristics of ethnic entrepreneurship in France.