The socio-spatial incorporation of new immigrants in the postindustrial city: Korean immigrant entrepreneurs in Los Angele

Korean immigrants have been increasingly employed by the small business sector of the U.S. metropolitan economy. This proliferation of Korean small firms in urban areas reproduces elements of Korean culture and supports the labor market structure of the urban economy. Both ethnic culture and the economic structure combine to generate a specific spatial pattern of immigrant entrepreneurship. This study explores the spatial ordering of immigrant-owned small businesses. Korean entrepreneurs in Los Angeles have been chosen for this case study, since they represent the largest Korean business community in the U.S., and because the form of entrepreneurship they practice is a manifestation of the changing urban economy. A guiding hypothesis in this research has been that the decentralization of Korean-owned small firms away from the spatially concentrated ethnic community in Los Angeles, Koreatown, indicates the incorporation of the ethnic economy into the structure of the metropolitan economy. The findings from the empirical analyses suggest that the initial concentration of Korean population and Korean shops in Koreatown exerts centrifugal forces as growth opportunities are exhausted. Areas dominated by low-income and ethnic minority populations then offer more attractive business opportunities. These results reveal how Korean business locations are conditioned by the entrepreneurs' material and symbolic resources and the structural components of the small ethnic firms sector, which is associated with an ethnic division of labor.