![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article examines the social uses of immigrant business spaces that correspond to different stages of breakout, or the movement of a business from a limited, primarily co-ethnic customer base to a wider, primarily non-co-ethnic customer base. Using participant observation and interview data from three Latino immigrant-dominated shopping malls in the USA, we assess how the degree of breakout at each mall and the resulting degree of heterogeneity in customers is associated with different kinds of social uses of the spaces. We find that Latino immigrant business spaces that have yet to begin a transition towards breakout are important sites of bonding for Latino immigrants and serve to strengthen their ethnic solidarity. Latino immigrant business spaces that are in the midst of transitioning towards breakout facilitate casual interaction between Latino immigrant and non-Latino residents, while those Latino immigrant entrepreneur spaces that have achieved breakout act as spaces of cultural consumption by non-Latinos.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. We use the term ‘Latino immigrants’ out of convenience to denote immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries in North, Central and South America. Further, we favor the term ‘business owner’ over ‘entrepreneur’ since not all business owners are entrepreneurs in the Schumpeterian sense of the term (Carland et al. Citation1984).
2. Anderson (Citation2004, 14) defines ‘cosmopolitan canopy’ as a public space that ‘offers respite and an opportunity for diverse peoples to come together to do their business and also to engage in “folk ethnography” that serves as cognitive and cultural base on which people construct behavior in public.’
3. http://visitlakestreet.com/directory/category/mercado-central/P0/, accessed on 5 May 2014.
