Latino/a entrepreneurship in the United States: A strategy of survival and economic mobility

Abstract

In this chapter, I provide a theoretical and empirical overview of the entrepreneurial experience of Latino/as in the United States. In the first section, I discuss the traditional approach to ethnic enterprise. Next, I provide an exploratory investigation of self-employment among diverse Latino/a-origin groups. Because many of these Latino/a groups are recent migrants to the United States and/or their populations are small, this analysis serves as a preliminary first look at self-employment across distinct Latin American national-origin groups. Finally, although ethnic entrepreneurship among the Latino/a population overall remains understudied (with the exception of Cuban immigrants and their descendants), I present research that has explored the entrepreneurial and self-employment practices of the more traditional and larger Latino/a population in the United States. © 2008 Springer-Verlag US.