Stressing the network's facilitation of immigrants' searches for jobs and housing, migration network theory has conceptually overlooked the manner in which immigrants' social networks also expand the supply of jobs and housing in target destinations by means of the ethnic economy. An expanded migration network theory takes into account the ethnic economy's role in creating new resources in the destination economy. However, the power of this objection wanes in the context of working-class immigrations that generate few entrepreurs. Introduced here, the concept of immigrant economy responds to this contingency. Unlike ethnic economies, in which co-ethnics hire co-ethnics, immigrant economies arise when immigrants hire non-co-ethnic fellow immigrants. This situation usually arises when very entrepreneurial immigrant groups coexist in a labor market with working-class immigrant groups that generate few entrepreneurs of their own. Using evidence from the garment industry of Los Angeles, this paper estimates that only a third of immigrant employees found their jobs in a conventional ethnic economy. Half owed their employment to the immigrant economy in which, for the most part, Asian entrepreneurs employed Latino workers.This study expands immigrant social network theory and examined employment patterns in the garment industry in Los Angeles, California, among Latino workers employed by Asian immigrant entrepreneurs. The study determined that a large percentage of immigrant employees found their jobs through the immigrant economy. Entrepreneurship increased the supply of local jobs and expanded the economy at destination at no expense to natives. Immigrant entrepreneurs bought firms from nonimmigrant owners or started new ones with an immigrant labor supply. Massey's index is flawed due to its exclusion of the role of entrepreneurs. Migration networks facilitate entrepreneurship, but some ethnic groups have fewer entrepreneurs, such as Mexicans and Central Americans. A 1993 Los Angeles survey identified 3642 garment factories in its county. Mean employment was 27.1 persons. The garment industry was the 4th largest industry in the area in 1996, with 98,700 employees. It represented 6% of all wage and salary employees in the City and 5.5% of the immigrant labor force in the County in 1990. 93% of garment workers in 1990 were immigrants. It is estimated that 51% of garment factory owners were Asians; most employees were Latinos. Census figures on sewing machine operators indicated 47.3% of owners were Whites and 42.45 were Asians. 53.3% of employees were other ethnic groups, 14.5% were Asians, and 32.2% were Whites. It is estimated that 47.2% of total employment was due to the immigration economy. 71.5% of the total employment in the garment industry was in the immigrant sector.

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California manufacturing labor market urban economy Los Angeles entrepreneur United States immigrant population