Immigration, Entrepreneurship, and the Family: Indo-Canadian Enterprise in the Construction Industry of Greater Vancouver

Margaret Walton-Roberts and Daniel Hiebert Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis (RIIM) www.riim.metropolis.globalx.net Department of Geography, University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 Ethnic enterprise The subject of "ethnic enterprise" -- businesses operated and maintained primarily by members of immigrant and/or minority groups -- has become a significant area of research since the 1960s, when it became apparent to researchers and policy makers that the level of self-employment among ethnic minorities was higher than average (Borjas 1986). More recently, this interest has been aligned with a growing body of literature documenting the importance of self-employment and small businesses generally, (1) some of which focuses specifically on the role of ethnic entrepreneurs in industrially advanced economies (Waldinger et al 1990; Ward 1991). This research reflects a growing concern with the intersection of increased immigration in western countries, industrial restructuring, and the resurgence of the small business sector in response to this restructuring. These issues resonate most clearly when considered within the context of urban economies which, in Canada as elsewhere, are the major reception areas for immigrants. Even the mainstream media has become captivated with the success of minority firms (for example, Vincent 1996), and one financial institution in British Columbia has adopted a practice common among Korean immigrant groups, lending circles, which rely on internal networking, mutual support and repayment enforcement within peer groups of entrepreneurs (see Light 1972). While popular commentators generally interpret the proliferation of ethnic enterprises in favourable terms, academic literature on the subject became sharply polarized in the 1980s. One "side" emphasizes the benefits of ethnic enterprise to group members, while the other focuses on the potential traps, or structural limitations these businesses can place on their owners and co-ethnic employees. Bun and Hui (1995), following Auster and Aldrich (1984), comment on this "intellectual schizophrenia" and show that these opposing interpretations of ethnic enterprise are part of broader ideological debates about the nature of capitalism and the relationship between cultural and economic forces. This empirical and theoretical-ideological split reached its crescendo in a brief "dialogue" between Edna Bonacich (1993) and Roger Waldinger (1993), which brought the structuralist/negative and culturalist/positive views into sharp relief. While some authors continue to champion one interpretation over the other (for example, Bonacich 1994), or see the ascendance of one side (for example, Barrett et al 1996), researchers increasingly agree that ethnic entrepreneurship is associated with a complex mix of problems and benefits. This form of economic organization is seen, more and more, as both emancipatory for immigrants attempting to better their standard of living but also as potentially exploitative, abusive and marginalizing (see Table 1). The particular mix of positive and negative qualities is likely to be situation-specific, depending on a variety of factors that include the pre-migratory characteristics of immigrants, the degree of openness of the adopted country's labour market, the degree of isolation of immigrant groups, and so on. While we feel that the turn toward a more balanced conceptualization of ethnic entrepreneurship is helpful, we believe there is still a crucial gap in this literature -- one that can be partly understood as an outcome of the polarized debates that dominated the field during the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the salience of cultural networks for immigrant and minority entrepreneurs, and the webs of economic interactions that arise within systems of ethnic loyalty. However, despite Light's (1980) important findings on the role of the extended family for Chinese entrepreneurs, the issue of the family -- both nuclear and extended -- has largely been ignored in studies of ethnic enterprise. …