Asian Immigrants' Reliance on Social Ties in a Multiethnic Labor Market

Abstract

We study how the social capital and closure properties of family- and ethnic-based social networks influence the incorporation of immigrants into their host society In so doing, we examine the relationship between immigrants' reliance on social ties and their employment. Data collected through ethnographic depth interviews of Asian immigrants in Los Angeles indicate that reliance on social ties usually operates informally, as when job seekers consult their more experienced and better-connected friends, relatives, and acquaintances and ask them to serve as intermediaries. These networks provide group-based resources that assist immigrants in making headway in their new society. Yet reliance on social ties is most common for moves into jobs of low occupational prestige that have low human capital requirements. Because of linguistic and cultural competence, immigrants who seek jobs from coethnic employers are often more self-reliant in the job search than those who seek work more broadly. In this way, ethnolinguistic closure encourages ethnic segmentation in the labor market. By contrast, reliance on social ties, another form of closure, facilitates job hunting in the wider domain of the labor market, where prospective employers may be of any ethnicity. Reliance on social ties thereby provides a mechanism by which immigrants gain employment throughout the multiethnic metropolitan labor market.

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