Cultural Endowment, Disadvantaged Status and Economic Niche: The Development of an Ethnic Trade

Abstract

Japanese-American immigrants have developed, and at times have dominated, niches in the economy. Operating as a one-man business, the yard care worker (or maintenance gardener) is one telling case. Culturally rooted agricultural know-how and ethnic solidarity along common prefectural lines contributed to the growth of the ethnic trade. By closing options in the market, host hostility exacerbated ethnic fixations. Although marginal early on, the Japanese gardener became entrenched until such time that the succeeding generation, far better educated, moved out and up.