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SOSC 300K

SOSC 300K. Note 8: Immigrant Economy. Major Issues. 1. The Theory: Embeddedness and immigrant economy A. Definition of Social capital B. the positive and negative effects of social capital in immigrant economy 2. An Example: Chinese Immigrant Economy in colonial Asia.

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SOSC 300K

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  1. SOSC 300K Note 8: Immigrant Economy

  2. Major Issues • 1. The Theory: Embeddedness and immigrant economy • A. Definition of Social capital • B. the positive and negative effects of social capital in immigrant economy • 2. An Example: Chinese Immigrant Economy in colonial Asia

  3. Embeddedness and immigrant economy • Immigrant economy: immigrants tend to organize themselves to respond to the economic opportunities in host society • Immigrants not only physically move to a new society but they also carry the social capital from their original society

  4. Four Types of Social capital • 1. Value introjection: the source that prompts individuals to behave in ways other than naked greed. In other words, individuals are expected to behave according to a higher group morality • 2. Reciprocity exchange: individuals are expected to pursue selfish ends through social interaction (the social relationship is translated into material interests) • 3. Bounded solidarity: situational circumstances that can lead to the emergence of principled group-oriented behavior quite apart from any early value introjection, such as the making of working-class consciousness • 4. Enforceable trust: individual members subordinate their present desires to collective expectations in anticipation of “utilities”—long-term market advantages by virtue of group membership

  5. Bounded Solidarity and Immigrant Economy (1) • How did the bounded solidarity develop? • 1. Confrontation between immigrants and the receiving society is capable not only of activating dormant feelings of nationality among immigrants but of creating such feelings where none exists before • 2. Levels of confrontation account for the different strength of reactive solidarity.

  6. Bounded Solidarity and Immigrant Economy (2) • Levels of confrontation are determined by the following factors: • 1. The cultural and linguistic distance between home country and receiving society and the distinctness of immigrants relative to the native-born population govern, to a large extent, the magnitude of the clash • 2. The possibility of “exit” from the host society to return home • Bounded solidarity shared with the first source of social capital (value introjection) an element of moral obligation. Individuals behave in certain way because they must (either because they have been socialized in the values or they enact emergent sentiments of loyalty to people like them)

  7. Bounded Solidarity and Immigrant Economy (3) • For the immigrant communities that ethnic identity has already been formed in their host society (such as Chinese, Jewish and Latinas), the emergent solidarity is reinforced out of confrontation with a foreign society with a sense of cultural continuity and autonomous presence • But for some other immigrant communities (such as peasants from Poland and southern Italy in the U. S.), their ethnic identity was made in the host society (“made in America” in this context) • In the second case, where does the social capital generate from? • Social capital arising out of situational confrontation is strongest when the resulting bounded solidarity is not limited to the actual events but brings about the construction of an alternative definition of the situation based on reenactment of past practices and a common cultural memory

  8. Enforceable Trust (1) • Social capital of a community is based on the internal sanctioning capacity of the community itself but not on outward confrontation • This source of social capital shares with reciprocity exchange a strong instrumental orientation: individuals behave according to expectations not only because they must, but out of fear of punishment or in anticipation of rewards

  9. Enforceable Trust (2) • Enforceable trust varies greatly with the characteristics of the community— • A. If the community is the sole or principal source of certain rewards, enforceable trust is strong. • B. When immigrants can draw on a variety of valued resources (from social approval to business opportunities) from their association with outsiders, the enforceable trust in the community would be low. • C. What happens on the outside must be balanced with the resources available in the ethnic community itself.

  10. Enforceable Trust (3) • A second- or third-generation Chinese American or Jewish-American may still choose to preserve their ethnic ties though outside discrimination disappears. They sustain their ethnic networks because they offer opportunities • In contrast, a resource-poor immigrant community will have trouble enforcing normative patterns even if its members continue to face severe outside discrimination (the case of Haitian community in Miami)

  11. Negative Effects (1) • Costs of Community Solidarity: the existence of a measure of solidarity and trust in a community represents a precondition for the emergence of a network of successful enterprises. However, the exacerbation of these sentiments and obligations can conspire against exactly such a network • --successful entrepreneurs’ pressure from the demands of co-ethnic people

  12. Negative Effects (2) • Constraints on Freedom: an expression of the age-old dilemma between tightly knit immigrant communities and individual freedom in the modern metropolis • E. g. San Francisco’s Chinatown: top family clans and Chinese Six Companies regulated the business and social life of the community, guaranteeing its normative order and privileged access to resources for its entrepreneurs. Such assets came at the cost of restrictions on most member’s scope of action and access to the outside world. In Victor Nee and Brett de Barry Nee’s interview, in Californian Chinatown “any young person who wants to make some changes, they [people of the supreme associations] call him a communist right away.”

  13. Negative Effects (3) • Leveling Pressures: the fear that a solidarity born out of common adversity would be undermined by the departure of the more successful members • Minorities in the U. S. inner city • The longer the economic mobility of a group has been blocked by coercive nonmarket means, then the more likely the emergence of a bounded solidarity that negates the possibility of advancement through fair market competition and that opposes individual efforts in this direction

  14. Chinese Immigrant Networks in Colonial Asia Primary origins of Chinese overseas (before W. W. II.)

  15. Straits-born Hokkien Teochew Cantonese Hakka Hainanese Chinese Immigrant Economy • Transnational Business Networks: operated along sub-ethnic lines (native-place and dialect groups) • The case of inter-war Singapore

  16. The Big Three Singapore Chinese Rubber Manufactures Teo Eng Hock’s (1871-1958) People’s Rubber Goods Manufactory Tan Kah Kee’s (1874-1964) Tan Kah Kee & Co. The Nanyang Rubber Manufacture

  17. Tan Lai Ho (1923) (1935) (1920) Interlocking Relationship among the Singapore Chinese Business Elites (with the Tan Kah Kee family as the center) Goh Shiok Neo (1874-1974) Teo Po-ke (1876-1916) Tan Kah Kee (1874-1964) * * Lim Nee Soon (1879-1936) Chew Hean Swee (1884-1964) Yap Geok Twee Lim Chong Kuo Tan Ai Eng Chew Pek Leong Tan Guan Aik Elizabeth Yap Guat Eng Long Kong Chian Tan Ai Lay Tan had four wives and at least 18 children. The chart here only refers to those married to important capitalists of the rubber-pineapple complex or banking in Singapore. * Marriage ties (number in the parenthis is the year of the marriage taken place) Parental relationship Sources: 1) C. F. Yong 1987; 2) Interview of Tan Keong Choon (1918- ) (son of Tan Kah Kee’s brother Tan Keng Hian), OHC Synopsis Report, No. 52, Reel 13 (date of first recording: 30/08/1981), National Archives, Singapore

  18. Importation of Rubber Shoes by Countries Source: 1. 1927: NKZ, V. 17, N. 5: 48; 2. 1928-1930: NKZ, V. 18, N. 3, 11-12; 3. 1931, NKZ, V. 19, N. 3:13; 4. 1932-1933: NKZ, V. 20, N. 4: 38-39; 5. 1934: NKZ, V. 22, N. 4: 24-5.

  19. Estimated Retail Prices of Rubber-soled Canvas Shoes, 1931 * Based on the following most popular trademarks: “Washington”, “Moon & Star”, “3 Heroes” and “B. B. B.”

  20. The Tan Kah Kee & Co. Tan Kah Kee & Co. hired, 4,088 employees in the beginning of 1929, and all of them were ethnic Chinese (Supplement to SSGG, Friday, July 11, 1930, Annual Report of the Labor Department for the year 1929, Appendix F).

  21. Rubber Shoes (Survey of Oct. 1930-Sept. 1931) Source: NKZ, V. 18, N. 3: 26. Cotton Textiles (Survey of June 1934) Source: NKZ, V. 20, N. 8: 95. Trade Volumes of Wholesale Agents of Japanese Commodities, by Ethnic Origins

  22. The concentration center of Japanese goods: High Street, Singapore Photo of High Street, Singapore (circa 1940); Source: National Archives, Singapore

  23. commission trade between Cantonese export agents in Kobe and Osaka areas as well as Cantonese wholesale agents in Singapore from the mid-19th. c. re-export to Cantonese business from Java, Sumatra and Siam Trans-national Cantonese Business Networks in the Trade of Japan Goods in Southeast Asia Based on NKZ, V. 26, N. 12: 126-8.

  24. Hong Kong Firms in the Exhibition of Chinese National Product, Singapore, October 10, 1936

  25. Bounded Solidarity in the Singapore Chinese business community: Enforceable Trust in the community: Which of the following negative effects can be applied to the case? 1. costs of community solidarity 2. constraints of freedom 3. leveling pressures Questions and Discussion

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