Chinese Canadians in Business

Abstract

Conventionally, restricted opportunities in the open market, in combination with the presence of suitable ethnic resources, provide the explanation as to why some immigrant groups are more inclined towards business undertakings than others. More recently, the immigrant enclave thesis developed in the US suggests that some immigrant entrepreneurs are attracted to ethnic business because of its lucrative returns. Using the case of Chinese Canadians from the microdata of the 1996 Census of Canada, this paper finds that the net returns of self-employment vary among Chinese Canadians. Self-employment brings a net earning disadvantage for foreign-born Chinese-Canadian men, as well as for women irrespective of nativity. Only native-born Chinese-Canadian men in self-employment maintain a net advantage over their counterpart wage workers. These findings suggest that the Chinese Canadians engage in self-employment for different reasons, depending on gender and nativity. Thus, both the argument of business engagement as a “last choice” as implied in the blocked mobility thesis, and that of a “first option” as suggested in the immigrant enclave thesis can be valid even for the same ethnic group.