In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity.Abrahamson, Mark . "Urban Enclaves: Identity and Place in America." Review by: David M. Hummon. Contemporary Sociology. American Sociological Association. Vol. 25 No. 6 (Nov. 1996): pp. 781-782. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration of ethnic firms.Portes, Alejandro, and Leif Jensen. "Disproving the Enclave Hypothesis: Reply." American Sociological Review. Vol. 57. no. 3 (1992): 418-420. Their success and growth depends on self-sufficiency, and is coupled with economic prosperity.
Douglas Massey describes how migrant networks provide new immigrants with social capital that can be transferred to other tangible forms.Massey, Douglas S. (1990). The Social and Economic Origins of Immigration. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 510(1), 60–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716290510001005: pp. 60. As immigrants tend to cluster in close geographic spaces, they develop migrant networks—systems of interpersonal relations through which participants can exchange valuable resources and knowledge. Immigrants can capitalize on social interactions by transforming information into tangible resources, and thereby lower costs of migration. Information exchanged may include knowledge of employment opportunities, affordable housing, government assistance programs and helpful NGOs.Massey, Douglas S. "Why Does Immigration Occur? A Theoretical Synthesis." The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind, editors. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. By stimulating social connections, enclaves can generate intangible resources that help to promote the social and economic development of its members.
By providing a space for people who share the same ethnic identity to create potentially beneficial relations, ethnic enclaves can assist members in achieving economic mobility. By reducing their exposure to language and cultural barriers, enclave economies can improve co-ethnics' incorporation into the economy. Enclaves can help to explain the success of some immigrant groups. Additionally, while the ethnic enclave theory was developed to explain immigrant incorporation into the receiving society, it has also been linked to migration processes at large as successful incorporation of immigrants has the potential to lower migration costs for future immigrants, an example of chain migration.
Despite their immediate benefits, the long-term implications of participation in an ethnic enclave are a topic of debate. Enclave economies have been linked to a glass ceiling limiting immigrant growth and upward mobility. While participation in the enclave economy may assist in achieving upward mobility through increased availability of employment opportunities in the enclave labor market, it may also impede acquisition of host country skills that benefit the immigrant over the long-run.Edin, Per-Anders, Peter Fredriksson, and Olof Aslund. "ETHNIC ENCLAVES AND THE ECONOMIC SUCCESS OF IMMIGRANTS—EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT." The Quarterly Journal of Economics. no. 1 (2003): 329-357. Such delays constrain immigrants to activity within the enclave and secludes them from the larger economy. Opportunities available to mainstream society can thus be out of reach for immigrants who haven't learned about them. Thus, the accelerated path toward economic mobility that lures new immigrants into enclave economies may impede success. One 2024 study, for example, found that voluntary relocation from an ethnic enclave led to greater economic outcomes for those who were relocated and their children. Integration into an ethnic enclave may delay and even halt cultural assimilation, preventing the immigrants from benefiting from mainstream institutions.Sanders, Jimy M. and Nee, Victor. "Limits of Ethnic Solidarity in the Enclave Economy." American Sociological Review. 52. no. 6 (1987): 745-773.
History
Ethnic enclaves have been prominent urban features for centuries. Examples include a new Armenian one near Beirut, an old one in Bucharest, and an even older Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem. ()(, ) Urban quarters have often belonged mainly to residents having a particular sectarian or ethnic origin.
Historically, the formation of ethnic enclaves has been the result of a variety of socioeconomic factors that draw immigrants to similar spaces in the receiving city, state, or country. Cultural diversity brings together people who don't understand each other's language but a group can communicate more easily with neighbors in an enclave. In some cases, enclaves have been enforced by law, as in a ghetto. Roman colonies were established to control newly conquered provinces, and grew to absorb the surrounding territory. Some enclaves were established when a governing authority permitted a group to establish their own new town, as in the English town of Gravesend, Brooklyn in 1645.
The lack of access to economic capital and of knowledge regarding residential neighborhoods can constrain newly arrived immigrants to regions of affordable housing. Social dynamics such as prejudice and racism may concentrate co-ethnics into regions displaying ethnic similarity. Housing discrimination may also prevent ethnic minorities from settling into a particular residential area outside the enclave. When discussing the ethnic enclave as defined by a spatial cluster of businesses, economic success, and growth can be largely predicted by three factors. These factors include 1) the size and population of the enclave, 2) the level of entrepreneurial skills of those in the enclave, and 3) the availability of capital resources to the enclave. Successful enclaves can reach a point where they become self-sufficient, or "institutionally complete" through the supply of new immigrants and demand of goods offered in the market. They only reach this point after first supplying for the needs of co-ethnics and then expanding to meet needs of those in the larger market of the host society.
The term "ethnic enclave" arose in response to a publication by Alejandro Portes and Kenneth Wilson in 1980.Waldinger, Roger. "The Ethnic Enclave Debate Revisited."International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 17. no. 3 (1993): 428-436. Portes and Wilson identified a third labor market in which Cuban immigrants in Miami took part. Instead of entering the secondary labor market of the host society, Portes and Wilson discovered that new immigrants tended to become employed by co-ethnics running immigrant-owned firms. The collection of small immigrant enterprises providing employment to new immigrants was defined as the enclave economy.Portes, Alejandro, and Kenneth Wilson. "Immigrant Enclaves: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Cubans in Miami." American Journal of Sociology. 86. no. 2 (1980): 295-319.
Theories
Enclave economy hypothesis
Observations of the Cuban ethnic enclave economy in Miami led Alejandro Portes and Kenneth Wilson to conclude that participation in an enclave economy provided immigrants with an alternative, speedy option to achieve economic mobility in a host society. The discourse pioneered by Portes and Wilson produced the construct for a body of literature that came to be known by the ethnic enclave hypothesis. While never empirically defined, the term "ethnic enclave" began to be widely used to represent two distinct definitions: that of an enclave economy and that of a residential area of high co-ethnic concentration. The most fundamental concept within the enclave hypothesis is that of social capital, which lays the foundation for the establishment of migrant networks and the advantages associated with them.
Cumulative causation
With the rise in globalization and ease of international transportation, patterns of immigration show the role of ethnic enclaves for contributing to increased migration over time. New immigrants unintentionally lower costs for future immigration of co-ethnics by pooling together resources for themselves. Thus, by achieving mobility in the receiving country themselves, immigrants create a social structure that makes it easier for future immigrants to become upwardly mobile. According to Douglas Massey, "Networks build into the migration process a self-perpetuating momentum that leads to its growth over time, in spite of fluctuating wage differentials, recessions, and increasingly restrictive immigration policies." Ethnic enclaves thus contribute to continued immigration by providing co-ethnics with a space to make connections that ultimately lower migration costs and promote economic mobility. Many worn path taken by former immigrants are made accessible to enclave members, making immigration easier to future generations. By generating further immigration, migration leads to its own cumulative causation over time.
Modes of incorporation
An approach that analyzes ethnic enclaves and their members by their modes of incorporation is preferred to a neoclassical model, which states that the economic success of immigrants depends on the education, work experience, and other elements of human capital that they possess. Sociologists have concluded that these factors do not suffice in explaining the integration and success of immigrants measured by occupational mobility and earnings.
Social
Upon arrival to a foreign country, immigrants face challenges in assimilation and integration processes and thus experience different modes and levels of incorporation within the host society. Many factors influence the level of ease or challenge experienced by immigrants as they make the transition and undergo physical, social, and psychological challenges. The segmented assimilation model notes that there can exist a "consciously pluralistic society in which a variety of subcultures and racial and ethnic identities coexist" Waters, Mary C. "Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City." International Migration Review. 28. no. 4 (1994): 795-820.Waters, p. 799.
One influential factor in an immigrant's journey is the presence of relatives or friends in the receiving country. Friends and family, making up a kinship network, who are willing to help the newcomers can be classified as a type of capital commonly referred to as social capital. Upon arrival, many immigrants have limited or no access to human capital and thus rely heavily on any available source of social capital. The cost to immigration is large, however this burden can be shared and thus eased through an immigrant's access to social capital in the receiving country. Kinship networks in the receiving country can provide aid not only for the physical and economic needs of immigrants, but also for their emotional and socio-psychological needs.Menjívar, Cecilia. "Immigrant Kinship Networks and the Impact of the Receiving Context: Salvadorans in San Francisco in the Early 1990s." Social Problems. 44. no. 1 (1997): 104-123.
Quality of kinship networks