Patterns of Trade in Ethnic Enclaves: A Study of Arab and Hispanic Small Businesses‪.‬

Introduction There is a growing volume of literature examining the nature of the economic behavior of immigrant populations in ethnic enclaves, the characteristics of the ethnic economies that develop within these areas, and the patterns of entrepreneurial activity that influence the creation and development of ethnic businesses. Economic and sociological studies of immigrant populations in the U.S. in the last three decades suggest that people are motivated to migrate to the United States for primarily financial reasons. Once a certain level of wealth accumulation is reached, these immigrants often go back temporarily to their home country, returning later for additional work in a cycle that can repeat itself many times as long as the financial motivation remains (Piore, 1979; Bonacich and Modell, 1980). The current wave of labor migration between Latin America and the United States, for example, has been shown to exhibit the same characteristic, as the bulk of Hispanic immigrant labor is originally intended to be temporary.