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Title: MODERN ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A PATHWAY OF ECONOMIC MOBILITY?
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: The growth in the number of Latino-owned businesses is now outpacing the growth rate of the Latino population and the start-up growth of all other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The sociological literature on ethnic entrepreneurship has tended to depict Latino-owned businesses as driven by necessity, operating in largely resourceconstrained environments, and focuses heavily on first generation immigrants. This dissertation explores modern ethnic entrepreneurship including its potential for economic return, the interplay between business strategies and ethnic identity, and the role of institutions in advancing minority entrepreneurship. I use quantitative and qualitative methods to understand what it is like to be an ethnic entrepreneur today including 101 interviews with entrepreneurs and institutional investors. Through census data, I find entrepreneurship to be an alternative and lucrative pathway among high-skilled Latinos. This is reinforced by a subset of interviews with microbusiness and scaled business owners that examines how they make sense of their ethnoracial identity in relation to their business. I find that ethnic strategies can yield benefits as a business strategy but choosing when and how to leverage an ethnic identity is largely reserved for entrepreneurs who have obtained higher education, the later generations, and those operating in professional industries. Interviews with investment professionals shed light on the institutional logics that systematically block minority-owned investment firms’ wealth-generating opportunities. Together, these findings aim to illuminate the experience of modern Latinx entrepreneurs seeking economic mobility outside of formal labor structures, with important implications for increasing diversity and capital allocation to minority-owned businesses.
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Authors: Orozco, Marlene
Institution: Stanford University
Department: Sociology
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Methodology and Data Collection, Migration and Immigration, Population Data Science
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