Immigration in New York City

Immigration in New York City

What are the Barriers to Economic Success Faced by West African Immigrants?

Secondary questions:

How does being an immigrant affect becoming a successful small businessman in America?

What access to resources and capital do immigrants from West Africa have when starting a business? What challenges do they face?

These questions are worth asking because the despite the growth of new ethnic populations on both sides of the Atlantic, scholarly work existing at the outset of the 1990s had not presented consistent findings on the determinants and implications of the spread of ethnic enterprise (Waldinger et al. 1990). Most studies had generated, but not tested, hypotheses. The study will examine ethnic entrepreneurship by presenting and using a model of immigrant enterprise. The primary focus is on migrant experience in Western industrial societies of the post-World War II period. I will outline a model of immigrant enterprise. This model offers an explanation for immigrant enterprise that emphasizes the interaction between the opportunity structure of the host society and the group characteristics and social structure of the immigrant community. The entry barriers into small-scale enterprises are lowered to immigrants with limited capital. Opportunities for ownership arise in the process of ethnic succession, as older groups move into higher social positions and leave behind vacancies for new small business owners. Two kinds of group characteristics that promote recruitment into entrepreneurial positions are identified: first, the situational constraints faced by immigrants, as well as certain groups' cultural norms, breed a predisposition toward efficient performance in work settings, especially in small business; second, resource mobilization is facilitated if immigrant firms can draw on their connections with a supply of family and ethnic labor.

In addition I will examine ethnic strategies for entrepeneurship in examining the strategies employed by ethnic entrepreneurs to create solutions to problems facing their enterprises. These strategies include: obtaining information through personal networks; acquiring training and skills on the job; using family and co-ethnic labor; building special relationships with and delivering special services to customers; dealing with competition through self-exploitation, business expansion, supporting ethnic associations, and strengthening ties with other families through marriage; and seeking protection from governments officials and owners outside their ethnic communities through bribery, paying penalties, searching for loopholes, and organizing protests. Ethnic entrepreneurs need these distinctive strategies for three reasons: first, it allows them to exploit distinctive sociocultural resources; it allows them to compensate for the typical background deficits in respect to wealth, valid educational credentials, political power, and influential contacts; third, it helps them to overcome political and economic obstacles that they face as social outsiders, and that majority entrepreneurs escape. The analysis reveals that very different and widely separated ethnic groups pursue rather similar strategies (Waldinger et al., 1990).

Labor market disadvantages push minority members toward self-employment in small business. However, only those minority groups with advantages for small business in one way or another can develop a significant level of ethnic business. Some minority groups have cultural characteristics conducive to the development of small business such as work ethic, future orientation and ethnic ties. Immigrant and alien groups have other non-cultural advantages for small business associated with their alien status. In addition, the social structure of the host society can also encourage or constrain ethnic business. Residential succession and racial segregation, the changes in industrial structure and government policy have been indicated as major structural factors that have influence on ethnic business in western industrial societies (Min, 1987).

My hypothesis is that West African immigrants face serious challenges in entrepeneurship and small business enterprise when immigrating to the U.S., in particular New York City Mohamed, from the chapter "Third Avenue," is a case in point. He emigrated from Sierra Leone in the 1980s to NYC. As a result of his experiences in buying and selling small goods, he bought a 99 cents store to own on Third Avenue in East Harlem. Mohamed wants to work for himself. In contrast to the liquor store down the street, his store is hardly thriving. Mohamed has few influential contacts, little political power and education credentials. He even faced some threats to his business from the city government. He uses his contacts to the fullest extent, however, and he was resourceful enough to corral the resources to initially buy the store. He also faces competition from other businesses.

The political economy of capital and commodities sheds light on the situation of enterpreneurship and West African immigration. Karl Marx asks where arises the enigmatic character of the product of labor, as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity. According to Marx, it arises from a social form. The equality of all kinds of human labor takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of labor as values; the measure of the magnitude of the value of the products of labor; and finally the relationship between the producers, within the social characteristics of their labors are manifested, take on the form of a social relation between the products of labor. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labor acquire a socially uniform objectivity as values, which is distinct from their sensuously varied objectivity as articles of utility (Marx, 1976).