Shopkeepers, diamond dealers, and doctors: Networks of inclusion and exclusion among Asian Indian immigrants in New York and London (England)

Social networks have long been identified as crucial to migration flows and the economic behavior of immigrants. This study extends and challenges that claim by providing a relational account of migration and social and economic mobility. In doing so, it clarifies the role and meaning of networks in influencing migration streams and mobility, and the role of ethnicity in creating solidarity within social ties. Based on life history interviews with Gujarati Indian immigrants in New York and London, four ideal types of voluntary migration streams are identified. These migration streams are part of a reciprocal causal process wherein migration streams produce and reproduce networks that aid the physical, social, and economic mobility of immigrants. This interaction between migration and social ties has distinct consequences for inequalities found in the economic incorporation of immigrants in their host societies. By comparing the different networks represented by the four migrant streams, the contours and practices of solidarity, inclusion, and exclusion are identified. The findings suggest that concrete relations between individuals rather than individual attributes affect inclusion and exclusion from particular opportunities for mobility such as niche employment. Network location and the consequent transactions that occur in the process of bargaining for power in a niche further explain inequalities between individuals whose attributes otherwise look similar. Finally, the findings raise general questions about the origins of solidarity, the operation of trust, and the relevance of modernization theory in explaining processes of migration and of the economic behavior of immigrants.