Making Connections: How Do Immigrants\u27 Social Networks Influence Their Employment Outcomes?

This paper examines the relationship between the size of local ethnic networks and immigrants’ likelihood of being self-employed in 11 metropolitan areas in the U.S. I use American Community Survey data from 2005 to 2011. A two-stage discrete choice logistic specification models agents’ decisions to have a job or not, and if so, to work for wages or be self-employed. Generally, the likelihood of being self-employed decreases with network size, but the opposite holds true for salaried employment. I also interview self-employed Hmong in Saint Paul to explore the effect immigrants’ attitudes toward different employment options have on their work outcomes