Inequality in income, earnings, and wealth has risen dramatically in the United States over the past three decades. Most research into this issue has focused on the causes—global trade, new technology, and economic policy—rather than the consequences of inequality. In Social Inequality, a group of the nation’s leading social scientists opens a wide-ranging inquiry into the social implications of rising economic inequality. Beginning with a critical evaluation of the existing research, they assess whether the recent run-up in economic inequality has been accompanied by rising inequality in social domains such as the quality of family and neighborhood life, equal access to education and health care, job satisfaction, and political participation.

Marcia Meyers and colleagues find that many low-income mothers cannot afford market-based child care, which contributes to inequality both at the present time—by reducing maternal employment and family income—and through the long-term consequences of informal or low-quality care on children’s educational achievement. At the other end of the educational spectrum, Thomas Kane links the growing inequality in college attendance to rising tuition and cuts in financial aid. Neil Fligstein and Taek-Jin Shin show how both job security and job satisfaction have decreased for low-wage workers compared with their higher-paid counterparts. Those who fall behind economically may also suffer diminished access to essential social resources like health care. John Mullahy, Stephanie Robert, and Barbara Wolfe discuss why higher inequality may lead to poorer health: wider inequality might mean increased stress-related ailments for the poor, and it might also be associated with public health care policies that favor the privileged. On the political front, Richard Freeman concludes that political participation has become more stratified as incomes have become more unequal. Workers at the bottom of the income scale may simply be too hard-pressed or too demoralized to care about political participation. Social Inequality concludes with a comprehensive section on the methodological problems involved in disentangling the effects of inequality from other economic factors, which will be of great benefit to future investigators.

While today’s widening inequality may be a temporary episode, the danger is that the current economic divisions may set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of social disadvantage. The most comprehensive review of this quandary to date, Social Inequality maps out a new agenda for research on inequality in America with important implications for public policy.

KATHRYN NECKERMAN is associate director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Suzanne Bianchi,  Henry E. Brady,  Coral Celeste,  Tiffani Chin,  Philip N. Cohen,  Sean Corcoran,  Janet Currie,  Paul DiMaggio,  Christine E. Eibner,  David T. Ellwood,  William N. Evans,  Neil Fligstein, Richard B. Freeman,  Jennifer Godwin,  Eszter Hargittai, Robert M. Hauser,  Robert Haveman, V. Joseph Hotz,  Michael Hout,  Christopher Jencks, Thomas J. Kane,  Meredith Kleykamp,  Gabriel S. Lenz,  Kara Levine,  Steven P. Martin,  Susan E. Mayer,  Marcia K. Meyers,  John Mullahy, Sheila E. Murray, Kei Nomaguchi, Lars Osberg, Anne R. Pebley, Meredith Phillips,  Sara Raley, Stephanie Robert,  Dan Rosenbaum,  Jake Rosenfeld, Howard Rosenthal,  Christopher Ruhm,  Gary Sandefur,  Narayan Sastry, Kay Lehman Schlozman,  John Karl Scholz,  Robert M. Schwab, Jonathan Schwabish, Steven Shafer.  Taek-Jin Shin,  Theda Skocpol, Timothy M. Smeeding,  Sidney Verba,  Andrea Voyer,  Jane Waldfogel,  Bruce Western,  Barbara Wolfe.

Uses the case study of the California Industrial Accident Commission to explore issues in sociological jurisprudence. It traces the progression of the Commission from a welfare agency with broad discretion in policymaking and interpretation into a relatively passive arbitrator of industrial accident claim disputes. The author examines the effect of the elaboration of legal rules and doctrines, the significance of the procedural aspects of law, and the interplay of the legal process and institutional change. He then notes the conditions which will either permit or restrain a legal process that will remain highly responsive to social needs.

PHILIPPE NONET is a sociologist on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley and associate of the Center for the Study of Law and Society.

Winner of the 2007 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“This story of hope for both immigrants and native-born Americans is a well-researched, insightful, and illuminating study that provides compelling evidence to support a policy of homegrown human investment as a new priority. A timely, valuable addition to demographic and immigration studies. Highly recommended.”
-Choice 

"Dowell Myers has described a future full of hope-if as a nation we are able to understand the power of immigration, to reach understandings about our mutual societal responsibilities, and to unleash the full capabilities of immigrants who want to contribute to American society. It is an approach that is hopeful but is also entirely possible and indeed may be the only way that our nation can assure that its present prosperity and progress continue into the future."
-HENRY CISNEROS, executive chairman, CityView

"Always an incisive analyst of contemporary immigration, Dowell Myers moves the debate forward in this rigorous volume by highlighting the interconnected fates of the aging baby boomers and upwardly striving immigrants. His clear-eyed reading of the California experience shows how forging a new social contract between these groups can help us move from a politics of conflict over immigration to a politics of mutual advantage."
-JOHN MOLLENKOPF, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director, Center for Urban Research, City University of New York Graduate Center

"In this immensely readable book, Dowell Myers probes the soft center of American politics and finds the solidity needed to erect a new social contract to bridge the divide between the largely white baby boom generation and the increasingly diverse group of younger Americans. With deft analysis and reasoning, he exposes the short-sightedness of current fears about immigration and the American future. Immigrants and Boomers is a book that will inform citizen and scholar alike about ways to move beyond contemporary impasses."
-RICHARD ALBA, Distinguished Professor, The State University of New York, Albany

"Immigrants and Boomers is a tour de force. Dowell Myers displays creative analytical acumen to delineate the mutual self-interests between aging, mostly white baby boom cohorts and highly diverse 'replacement' cohorts that are currently in school and entering the workforce. Comparing California's demographic and economic narratives since 1970 with those of the United States, Myers convincingly demonstrates how various facets of interdependencies between generations-schooling, work, child, and elderly care-warrant a renewed social contract that will serve the interests of both old and young, now and in the future. This is superb social policy analysis; heeding Dowell's recommendations is in the national interest."
-MARTA TIENDA, Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies and professor of sociology and public affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Virtually unnoticed in the contentious national debate over immigration is the significant demographic change about to occur as the first wave of the Baby Boom generation retires, slowly draining the workforce and straining the federal budget to the breaking point.  In this forward-looking new book, noted demographer Dowell Myers proposes a new way of thinking about the influx of immigrants and the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers. Myers argues that each of these two powerful demographic shifts may hold the keys to resolving the problems presented by the other.

Immigrants and Boomers looks to California as a bellwether state—where whites are no longer a majority of the population and represent just a third of residents under age twenty—to afford us a glimpse into the future impact of immigration on the rest of the nation. Myers opens with an examination of the roots of voter resistance to providing social services for immigrants. Drawing on detailed census data, Myers demonstrates that long-established immigrants have been far more successful than the public believes. Among the Latinos who make up the bulk of California’s immigrant population, those who have lived in California for over a decade show high levels of social mobility and use of English, and 50 percent of Latino immigrants become homeowners after twenty years. The impressive progress made by immigrant families suggests they have the potential to pick up the slack from aging boomers over the next two decades. The mass retirement of the boomers will leave critical shortages in the educated workforce, while shrinking ranks of middle-class tax payers and driving up entitlement expenditures. In addition, as retirees sell off their housing assets, the prospect of a generational collapse in housing prices looms. Myers suggests that it is in the boomers’ best interest to invest in the education and integration of immigrants and their children today in order to bolster the ranks of workers, taxpayers, and homeowners America they will depend on ten and twenty years from now.

In this compelling, optimistic book, Myers calls for a new social contract between the older and younger generations, based on their mutual interests and the moral responsibility of each generation to provide for children and the elderly. Combining a rich scholarly perspective with keen insight into contemporary political dilemmas, Immigrants and Boomers creates a new framework for understanding the demographic challenges facing America and forging a national consensus to address them.

DOWELL MYERS is professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California.

 

"The thoughtful contributors to this useful volume have provided a unique and comprehensive vision for the study of poverty. Laboring Below the Line is one of the most important publications on poverty and low-wage work in the last several decades. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in confronting the problems and challenges of inequality."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"This excellent volume is a welcome addition to the renewed stream of ethnographic examinations of the lives of America's poor. Laboring Below the Line concentrates on perennial issues of making a living by people in highly constrained circumstances, a subject not so central to many earlier ethnographies. It should be read by all those concerned with poverty policies as a corrective for the abstract and reductive models that dominate that field."
-LEE RAINWATER, professor of sociology emeritus, Harvard University

"Laboring Below The Line offers a much needed view of what people do to get by, raise families, get ahead, and grapple with issues of identity, esteem, and efficacy while laboring in a world that simultaneously demands and undervalues the work that they do. In establishing a dialogue between ethnographic and structural analysis, the authors remind us that the personal and the global can-indeed must-inform one another in research as well as in political action. They penetrate facile assumptions about the 'low-skill' nature of low-wage workers and work. They show how life chances are constrained by the growing inequities of global political economy, while recognizing the agency individuals do exercise in the workplace, the community, and in their own lives."
-ALICE O'CONNOR, associate professor of history, University of California, Santa Barbara

"For anyone hoping to move beyond the misleading stereotypes that dominate our culture, Laboring Below the Line offers rich portraits and analysis that take us deep into the everyday realities of labor and poverty in America. This indispensable book challenges conventional myths with accessible frontline research from the nation's leading scholars and shows new ways to confront and respond to America's enduring crisis."
-JOHN GILLIOM, associate professor of political science, Ohio University

As the distribution of wealth between rich and poor in the United States grew more and more unequal over the past twenty years, this economic gap assumed a life of its own in the popular culture. The news and entertainment media increasingly portrayed the lives of the poor with such stereotypes as the lazy welfare mother and the thuggish teen, offering Americans few ways to learn how the "other half" really lives. Laboring Below the Line works to bridge this gap by synthesizing a wide range of qualitative scholarship on the working poor. The result is a coherent, nuanced portrait of how life is lived below the poverty line, and a compelling analysis of the systemic forces in which poverty is embedded, and through which it is perpetuated.

Laboring Below the Line explores the role of interpretive research in understanding the causes and effects of poverty. Drawing on perspectives of the working poor, welfare recipients, and marginally employed men and women, the contributors—an interdisciplinary roster of ethnographers, oral historians, qualitative sociologists, and narrative analysts—dissect the life circumstances that affect the personal outlook, ability to work, and expectations for the future of these people. For example, Carol Stack views the work aspirations of an Oakland teenager for whom a job is important, even though it strains her academic performance. And Ruth Buchanan looks at low-wage telemarketing workers who are attempting to move up the economic ladder while balancing family, education, and other important commitments. What emerges is a compelling picture of low-wage workers—one that illustrates the precarious circumstances of individuals struggling with the economic conditions and institutions that surround them Each chapter also explores the capacity for economic survival from a different angle, with ancillary commentary complementing the ethnographies with perspectives from other fields of study, such as economics.

At this moment of governmental retrenchment, ethnography's complex, nonstereotypical portraits of individual people fighting against poverty are especially important. Laboring Below the Line reveals the ambiguities of real lives, the potential for individuals to change in unexpected ways, and the even greater intricacy of the collective life of a community.

FRANK MUNGER is professor of law and adjunct professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

CONTRIBUTORS: Frances Ansley, Ruth Buchanan, Aixa N. Cintron-Velez, Kathryn Edin, Michael Frisch, Joel F. Handler, Philip Harvey, Julia R. Henly, Sanders Korenman, Laura Lein, Timothy Nelson, Carl H. Nightingale, Saskia Sassen, Carol Stack, Lucie White.
 

"Stories Employers Tell should be required reading for policymakers, advocates, practitioners-for those who care about our inner-city youth and the racial bias they encounter in getting a decent job."
- HUGH B. PRICE, National Urban League

"What role does race play in the job market? Most economists address this question by analyzing large national surveys. What this misses is a deep understanding of what employers look for, what are their attitudes and preconceptions, and how they go about hiring people. In this excellent book, Philip Moss and Chris Tilly make a major contribution to understanding racial differentials in our economy."
- PAUL OSTERMAN, MIT

"Drawing upon an important data set in four of our largest cities, Stories Employers Tell provides a comprehensive analysis of employer perceptions of racial groups in a changing labor market. In the process, the authors reveal how the overlapping of employer skills assessment and prejudice have profound implications for the labor market experiences of inner-city black and Latino workers. This book is must reading not simply for social scientists, but for concerned citizens and policymakers as well."
- WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Harvard University

"Despite tight labor markets and remarkably low levels of unemployment, race still plays far too great a role in determining who gets a job. Why? Philip Moss and Chris Tilly provide us with a mountain of evidence that employer perceptions of the urban labor force play a powerful role in providing opportunity to some and quick escort out the door to others. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in labor markets, inequality and equity."
- KATHERINE NEWMAN, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Is the United States justified in seeing itself as a meritocracy, where stark inequalities in pay and employment reflect differences in skills, education,and effort? Or does racial discrimination still permeate the labor market, resulting in the systematic under hiring and underpaying of racial minorities, regardless of merit? Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s African Americans have lost ground to whites in the labor market, but this widening racial inequality is most often attributed to economic restructuring, not the racial attitudes of employers. It is argued that the educational gap between blacks and whites, though narrowing, carries greater penalties now that we are living in an era of global trade and technological change that favors highly educated workers and displaces the low-skilled.

Stories Employers Tell demonstrates that this conventional wisdom is incomplete. Racial discrimination is still a fundamental part of the explanation of labor market disadvantage. Drawing upon a wide-ranging survey of employers in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles, Moss and Tilly investigate the types of jobs employers offer, the skills required, and the recruitment, screening and hiring procedures used to fill them. The authors then follow up in greater depth on selected employers to explore the attitudes, motivations, and rationale underlying their hiring decisions, as well as decisions about where to locate a business.

Moss and Tilly show how an employer's perception of the merit or suitability of a candidate is often colored by racial stereotypes and culture-bound expectations. The rising demand for soft skills, such as communication skills and people skills, opens the door to discrimination that is rarely overt, or even conscious, but is nonetheless damaging to the prospects of minority candidates and particularly difficult to police. Some employers expressed a concern to race-match employees with the customers they are likely to be dealing with. As more jobs require direct interaction with the public, race has become increasingly important in determining labor market fortunes. Frequently, employers also take into account the racial make-up of neighborhoods when deciding where to locate their businesses.

Ultimately, it is the hiring decisions of employers that determine whether today's labor market reflects merit or prejudice. This book, the result of years of careful research, offers us a rare opportunity to view the issue of discrimination through the employers' eyes.

PHILIP MOSS is professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

CHRIS TILLY is University Professor of Regional Economics and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

A Volume in the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality

In 1978, determined to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs, Congress overwhelmingly approved the creation of special Offices of Inspectors-General (OIGs) in many federal departments. Moore and Gates here provide the first evaluation of this important institutional innovation. Clearly and objectively, they examine the powerful but often imprecisely defined concepts—wastefulness, accountability, performance—that underlie the OIG mandate. Their study conveys a realistic sense of how these offices operate and how their impact is affected by the changing dynamics of politics and personality.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Science Perspectives Series

MARK H. MOORE is Hauser Professor of Nonprofit Organizations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

MARGARET JANE GATES was Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The image of the "underclass," framed by persistent poverty, long-term joblessness, school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and drug use, has become synonymous with urban poverty. But does this image tell us enough about how the diverse minorities among the urban poor actually experience and cope with poverty? No, say the contributors to In the Barrios. Their portraits of eight Latino communities—in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Albuquerque, Laredo, and Tucson—reveal a far more complex reality.

In the Barrios responds directly to current debates on the origins of the "underclass" and depicts the cultural, demographic, and historical forces that have shaped poor Latino communities. These neighborhoods share many hardships, yet they manifest no "typical" form of poverty. Instead, each group adapts its own cultural and social resources to the difficult economic circumstances of American urban life. The editors point to continued immigration as an issue of overriding importance in understanding urban Latino poverty. Newcomers to concentrated Latino areas build a local economy that provides affordable amenities and promotes ethnic institutional development. In many of these neighborhoods, a network of emotional as well as economic support extends across families and borders.

The first major assessment of inner-city Latino communities in the United States, In the Barrios will change the way we approach the current debate on urban poverty, immigration, and the underclass.

JOAN MOORE is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

RAQUEL PINDERHUGHES is assistant professor of urban studies at San Francisco State University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Norma Stoltz Chinchilla, Phillip Gonzales, Guillermo J. Grenier, Nora Hamilton, James Loucky, Joan Moore, Felix M. Padilla, Raquel Pinderhughes, Nestor P. Rodriquez, Alex Stepick, Mercer Sullivan, Avelardo Valdez, Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez, James Diego Vigil.

Discusses the place and position of the professional in society today. Wilbert E. Moore attempts to define the characteristics of the professional and to describe the attributes that give professionals the basis for status and esteem. Dr. Moore maintains that the modern scale of professionalism demands a full-time occupation, commitment to a calling, authenticated membership in a formalized organization, advanced education, service orientation, and autonomy restrained by responsibility. The author discusses the professional's interaction on various levels—with his clients, his peers, his employers, his fellows in complementary occupations, and society at large.

WILBERT E. MOORE was past president of the American Sociological Association, a sociologist at Russell Sage Foundation, and visiting professor at Princeton University.

"In this rigorous piece of scholarship, Model manages to cut through the myths and stereotypes that surround the issue of West Indian American economic achievement. Meticulously examining how the 'West Indian advantage' actually works, West Indian Immigrants is not only a welcome addition to the literature on Caribbean Americans, but also a thoughtful discussion of what West Indian success implies, and does not imply, about native African Americans."
-PHILIP KASINITZ, CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College

"Suzanne Model's West Indian Immigrants is a tour de force, a masterpiece of sociological logic. With exquisite detective work, Model, who proves herself to be a social science equivalent of Hercule Poirot, is able to solve a theoretical mystery that has endured for decades. By showing us definitively the sources of West Indian success in the United States, Model reveals also the continuing power of race to determine life chances."
-RICHARD ALBA, State University of New York at Albany

"Suzanne Model has provided us with a finely-honed demolition of a series of myths, 'wisdoms,' and canards that surround the West Indian immigrant experience in the United States. Cultural determinist explanations for West Indian racial 'exceptionalism' undergo comprehensive destruction. Model argues convincingly that the West Indian experience is better understood in comparison with the general pattern and trajectory of post-Civil War immigrant histories in the United States than in comparison with the African American experience. This is an important book."
-WILLIAM DARITY, Duke University

West Indian immigrants to the United States fare better than native-born African Americans on a wide array of economic measures, including labor force participation, earnings, and occupational prestige. Some researchers argue that the root of this difference lies in differing cultural attitudes toward work, while others maintain that white Americans favor West Indian blacks over African Americans, giving them an edge in the workforce. Still others hold that West Indians who emigrate to this country are more ambitious and talented than those they left behind. In West Indian Immigrants,  sociologist Suzanne Model subjects these theories to close historical and empirical scrutiny to unravel the mystery of West Indian success.

West Indian Immigrants draws on four decades of national census data, surveys of Caribbean emigrants around the world, and historical records dating back to the emergence of the slave trade. Model debunks the notion that growing up in an all-black society is an advantage by showing that immigrants from racially homogeneous and racially heterogeneous areas have identical economic outcomes. Weighing the evidence for white American favoritism, Model compares West Indian immigrants in New York, Toronto, London, and Amsterdam, and finds that, despite variation in the labor markets and ethnic composition of these cities, Caribbean immigrants in these four cities attain similar levels of economic success. Model also looks at “movers” and “stayers” from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana, and finds that emigrants leaving all four countries have more education and hold higher status jobs than those who remain. In this sense, West Indians immigrants are not so different from successful native-born African Americans who have moved within the U.S. to further their careers. Both West Indian immigrants and native-born African-American movers are the “best and the brightest”—they are more literate and hold better jobs than those who stay put. While political debates about the nature of black disadvantage in America have long fixated on West Indians’ relatively favorable economic position, this crucial finding reveals a fundamental flaw in the argument that West Indian success is proof of native-born blacks’ behavioral shortcomings. Proponents of this viewpoint have overlooked the critical role of immigrant self-selection.

West Indian Immigrants is a sweeping historical narrative and definitive empirical analysis that promises to change the way we think about what it means to be a black American. Ultimately, Model shows that West Indians aren’t a black success story at all—rather, they are an immigrant success story.

SUZANNE MODEL is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City is an exemplary contribution to the literature on international migration, Asian American studies, ethnic economies, and ethnic conflict. It advances our understanding of the social position of Korean American business owners from the early 1990s to the present and in so doing provides a timely portrait of contemporary conditions in urban America."
-JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

"Min has provided a highly readable account of how Korean business owners collectively handle their relationships with other ethnic groups. It reminds us that the study of ethnic businesses should also explore their collective activities."
-AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

"In Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, Pyong Gap Min draws on ethnography, in-depth interviews, survey research and an analysis of the ethnic and mainstream press between the 1980s and the present to explore a paradigmatic case of immigrant entrepreneurship-that of Korean greengrocers in New York. Min's research shows how the entrepreneurs relied on high levels of ethnic solidarity to address their conflicts with white suppliers, black customers. and government agencies. Once conflicts subsided, so did levels of ethnic solidarity. This elegantly theorized book adds considerably to our understanding of the Korean-American experience, ethnic entrepreneurship, and contemporary urban America."
-STEVEN J. GOLD, professor, graduate program director, and associate chair, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University

"Pyong Gap Min's Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival returns to and amplifies our knowledge of the celebrated black-Korean economic conflicts of the early 1990s in New York City. Here finally is the scholarly follow-up that explains why those ethnic conflicts ended. However, Min's richly detailed book also disperses persistent misunderstandings of the whole era by showing that Korean immigrant entrepreneurs had collective conflicts with whites and Latinos as well as blacks in that stormy period. In explaining all this, with very rich evidence, Min criticizes a social science community that has paid lip service to the role of ethnic organizations without empirically examining that role .... Min depicts a gritty ethic entrepreneurship as it is, not as it's supposed to be."
-IVAN LIGHT, professor of sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

"Based on more than fifteen years of fieldwork in New York City, in-depth surveys, and secondary sources (census data, newspapers), Min has written the definitive social history of Korean small businesses and their struggles and also breathed new life into middleman minority theory. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival will be required reading for scholars and student in immigrant and ethic studies and also in economic sociology."
-CHARLES HIRSCHMAN, Boeing International Professsor of Sociology and Public Affairs, University of Washington

Generations of immigrants have relied on small family businesses in their pursuit of the American dream. This entrepreneurial tradition remains highly visible among Korean immigrants in New York City, who have carved out a thriving business niche for themselves operating many of the city’s small grocery stores and produce markets. But this success has come at a price, leading to dramatic, highly publicized conflicts between Koreans and other ethnic groups. In Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businesses—especially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groups—powerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups.

Korean produce merchants, caught between white distributors, black customers, Hispanic employees, and assertive labor unions, provide a unique opportunity to study the formation of group solidarity in the face of inter-group conflicts. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival draws on census and survey data, interviews with community leaders and merchants, and a review of ethnic newspaper articles to trace the growth and evolution of Korean collective action in response to challenges produce merchants received from both white suppliers and black customers.

When Korean produce merchants first attempted to gain a foothold in the city’s economy, they encountered pervasive discrimination from white wholesale suppliers at Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. In response, Korean merchants formed the Korean Produce Association (KPA), a business organization that gradually evolved into a powerful engine for promoting Korean interests. The KPA used boycotts, pickets, and group purchasing to effect enduring improvements in supplier-merchant relations.

Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years has been accompanied by a corresponding reduction in Korean collective action, suggesting that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational.

This important new book charts a novel course in immigrant research by demonstrating how business conflicts can give rise to demonstrations of group solidarity. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of stories—about immigration, race, work, and the American dream.

PYONG GAP MIN is professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.