Neighborhood Poverty and Segregation in the (Re-)Production of Disadvantage

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Introduction: The Social Ecology of Disadvantage for Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 1-20

3. Hardline Policies, Blocked Mobility, and Immigrant Entrepreneurs

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 21-53

4. Re-producing Economic Inequality Across the US-Mexican Border

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 55-83

5. Mexican Segregation: Good or Bad for Business?

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 85-114

6. Gendered Differences Among Mexican Immigrant Shopkeepers

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 115-141

7. From “Illegal” to Neighborhood Shopkeeper: How Legal Capital Affects Business Performance

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 143-166

8. Conclusion: Making It in Business from the Outside-In

   • Dolores Trevizo, Mary Lopez

   Pages 167-175

9. Back Matter

   Pages 177-211

   PDF

Focusing on shopkeepers in Latino/a neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Dolores Trevizo and Mary Lopez reveal how neighborhood poverty affects the business performance of Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs. Their survey of shopkeepers in twenty immigrant neighborhoods demonstrates that even slightly less impoverished, multiethnic communities offer better business opportunities than do the highly impoverished, racially segregated Mexican neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Their findings reveal previously overlooked aspects of microclass, as well as “legal capital” advantages. The authors argue that even poor Mexican immigrants whose class backgrounds in Mexico imparted an entrepreneurial disposition can achieve a modicum of business success in the right (U.S.) neighborhood context, and the more quickly they build legal capital, the better their outcomes. While the authors show that the local place characteristics of neighborhoods both reflect and reproduce class and racial inequalities, they also demonstrate that the diversity of experience among Mexican immigrants living within the spatial boundaries of these communities can contribute to economic mobility.

• Entrepreneurship
• Small business
• emmigration
• immigration
• Mexican-American
• stratification
• Neighborhoods
• Stratification theory
• social capital
• Neighborhood poverty
• Class divide
• Los Angeles
• Immigration business
• Business outcomes
• Upward mobility
• inter-generational knowledge
• inter-generational mobility
• Pierre Bourdieu

• Sociology Department, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  Dolores Trevizo

• Economics Department, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  Mary Lopez

Dolores Trevizo is Professor of Sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, USA.


Mary Lopez is Associate Professor of Economics at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, California, USA.

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