| Summary: | The prevalence of ethnically bounded economic enterprises and economies in
western industrial nations has encouraged scholars and planners alike to examine the
particular factors that encourage minorities and immigrants to enter self-employment.
Typically the resulting claims fall into two camps: the first stresses the positive attributes,
both economic and socio-cultural, that immigrants bring with them that facilitate and
encourage self reliant forms of economic organization, while the second emphasizes
negative structural influences that coerce immigrants and minorities into engaging with
exploitative capitalist methods of organization. The debate becomes highly polarized due to
these opposing interpretations, and other methods and levels of analysis, such as social
construction theory and issues of racialization and discrimination, are neglected.
In the case of Indo-Canadian construction related entrepreneurs, I attempt to overcome the
dualistic tendencies of this debate by investigating the often subtle intersection of cultural
and economic factors involved in minority enterprise through an ethnographic inquiry. This
approach reveals how seemingly economic mechanisms such as; labour relations, client
contact and contracting processes, are in fact culturally informed. My results suggests that
co-ethnic labour, more so than co-ethnic clients, play an essential role in the operation of
these enterprises, whether entrepreneurs are immigrants or native born. These connections
are imbued with cultural as well as economic significance and exhibit the importance, and
potential problems, of kin and co-ethnic support in economic organization. Whilst my
results indicate processes of change are ongoing within immigrant/ethnic economic
groupings, they also point to the resilience of ethnic connection through enterprise. === Arts, Faculty of === Geography, Department of === Graduate
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