Experiencing both the enormous benefits and the serious detriments of globalization and economic restructuring, Southern California serves as a magnet for immigrants from many parts of the world. This volume advances an emerging body of work that centers this region's future on the links between the two fastest-growing racial groups in California, Asians and Latinos, and the economic and social mainstream of this important sector of the global economy.
The contributors to the anthology—scholars and community leaders with social science, urban planning, and legal backgrounds—provide a multi-faceted analysis of gender, class, and race relations. They also examine various forms of immigrant economic participation, from low-wage workers to entrepreneurs and capital investors. Asian and Latino Immigrants in a Restructuring Economy documents the entrenchment of various immigrant communities in the socio-political and economic fabric of United States society and these communities' role in transforming the Los Angeles region.
Marta López-Garza is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Chicano Studies, and David R. Diaz is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
xi
List of Tables
xiii
Acknowledgments
xv
1.
Introduction
1
Part I
Women In The Global Economy
19
2.
Exploitation and Abuse in the Garment Industry: The Case of the Thai Slave-Labor Compound in El Monte
21
3.
Through Economic Restructuring, Recession, and Rebound: The Continuing Importance of Latina Immigrant Labor in the Los Angeles Economy
46
Part II
Macroeconomics
75
4.
The Promises and Dilemmas of Immigrant Ethnic Economies
77
5.
Economics and Ethnicity: Poverty, Race, and Immigration in Los Angeles County
102
Part III
The Informal Economy In Southern California
139
6.
A Study of the Informal Economy and Latina/o Immigrants in Greater Los Angeles
141
7.
Labor behind the Front Door: Domestic Workers in Urban and Suburban Households
169
8.
Doing Business: Central American Enterprises in Los Angeles
188
Part IV
Changing Political and Social Terrain
215
9.
Latino Street Vendors in Los Angeles: Heterogeneous Alliances, Community-Based Activism, and the State
217
10.
The Politics of Social Services for a "Model Minority": The Union of Pan Asian Communities
241
11.
Community Divided: Korean American Politics in Post-Civil Unrest Los Angeles
273
12.
Constructing "Indianness" in Southern California: The Role of Hindu and Muslim Indian Immigrants
289
13.
A New and Dynamic Community: The Case of Monterey Park, California
313
14.
The Politics of Adaptation and the "Good Immigrant": Japanese Americans and the New Chinese Immigrants
332
Part V
Ethnicity, Race, And Racism
351
15.
Variation in Attitudes toward Immigrants Measured among Latino, African American, Asian, and Euro-American Students
353
16.
Racialized Metropolis: Theorizing Asian American and Latino Identities and Ethnicities in Southern California
368
Part VI
Social Policy
391
17.
Salvadoran Immigrants and Refugees: Demographic and Socioeconomic Profiles
