Since the end of the nineteenth century, changes in the organization of the work-place have had a major impact on both the ethnic division of labor and on residential segregation in American cities. New labor-market structures and hiring practices established new occupational hierarchies, income strata, and social networks among workers in general and among members of different immigrant groups in particular. By focusing on Polish immigrant workers in the leather industry in Wilmington, Delaware, in the early-twentieth century, the author first establishes the ethnic division of labor and then proceeds to relate the work-place experience to the immigrant residential community experience. Once established, the Polish immigrant neighborhood became an important element in the leather industry's labor exchange relationship through union organizing and political activities.[1]. © 1990.

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ethnic community labour segmentation USA, Delaware, Wilmington Polish immigrants leather workers division of labour residential segregation twentieth century