IMMIGRANT SELF-EMPLOYMENT - THE FAMILY AS SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE VALUE OF HUMAN-CAPITAL

We examine how self-employment among Asian and Hispanic immigrants is affected by family composition and human capital/class resources. Beca use of collective interests and strong personal ties, the family facil itates the pooling of labor power and financial resources. Enterprisin g immigrants draw on these resources when establishing and operating s mall businesses. Our findings also show the importance of human capita l/class resources in accounting for immigrant self-employment. Althoug h foreign-earned human capital is usually not highly valued in the hos t labor market, immigrants successfully use this human capital to achi eve business ownership, Interethnic variation in personal human capita l and family composition accounts for a substantial portion of the obs erved interethnic variation in self-employment.