Ethnic Enclave

Abstract

Ethnic enclaves are spatial concentrations of coethnic immigrants organized by socioeconomic activities. Historically, ethnic enclaves emerged as a result of exclusionary policies and discrimination, but they persist because they serve invaluable functions for immigrants and later generation ethnics. Social scientists have disagreed on the conceptualization, benefits, and potential costs of ethnic enclave formation and enterprise for coethnics. The debate is rooted in disagreements about mobility pathways and measures of immigrant incorporation. Previously, sociologists studied the incorporation trajectories of immigrant groups expecting them to eventually integrate spatially by moving out of ethnic neighborhoods. Recent scholarship extends beyond linear assimilation theories of spatial incorporation to account for shifting settlement patterns of post‐1965 immigrant groups.