Department of Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles

The network-based nature of migration and employment systems funnel immigrants into economic activities where they cluster with one another: whereas these clusters sometimes entail self-employment, they more frequently involve occupational and industrial specializations in which immigrants find themselves working as wage and salaried employees. This paper shows that the tendency to concentrate in ethnic niches is a distinguishing trait of the immigrant experience, characterizing migrant streams of any number of types, and persisting even as immigrants put down roots. Ethnic concentrations are to be found at the bottom rungs of the occupational ladder, where workers with no other resource but social support necessarily rely for help from others of their own kind. But the distinctively new breed of immigrants - the newcomers who arrive with high levels of education - turn out to be no less likely to converge on niches than their less-skilled counterparts.