Neighborhood Segregation and Business Outcomes: Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles County
Abstract
With original survey data, we contribute to a discussion of how segregation and poverty affect the performance of Mexican immigrant-owned storefronts in Los Angeles. We find that though both neighborhood segregation and poverty hinder performance as measured by the number of paid employees, poverty is more important. This was true even of businesses operating for 10 or more years. Although we find some support for the “mixed economy” and “ethnic enclave” theses, we find more support for the theory of concentrated disadvantages. We conclude that the spatial segregation of Mexicans in Los Angeles hinders the performance of Mexican-owned storefronts because of the social isolation it creates and even more so because segregation concentrates poverty. We also found that both our respondents’ class background (in Mexico) and how soon they began to operate business in the formal economy (with legal capital) determines the number of paid employees they hire.
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Biographies
Dolores Trevizo is Professor of Sociology at Occidental College. Her main areas of scholarship are protest movements in Mexico and Mexican immigrant entrepreneurship in the U.S. She is the author of Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968-2000 (2011, Penn State Press).
Mary J. Lopez is Associate Professor of Economics at Occidental College. Her main areas of scholarship are the impact of immigration policy on educational outcomes and Mexican immigrant entrepreneurship in the U.S.
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Article first published online: February 27, 2016
Issue published: September 2016
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