Social capital and migration: Beyond ethnic economies
J. N. Pieterse
Full text: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468796803003001785
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Jan Nederveen Pieterse challenges the mainstream frameworks in the study of social capital, emphasizing that cross-cultural interactions transgress the conventional borders of bonding /bridging ties. Too often, though, studies of ethnicity and social capital have focused on animosities, instead of looking (constructively) at cross-group relations, Pieterse notes. The concepts of ‘ethnic social capital’ and ‘ethnic economy’ need reinvention, as they remain rooted in an Orientalist paradigm that equates ethnicity to foreigness, but “a particular kind of foreigness”, and deemscertain nationalities “more ethnic” than others (see Pieterse 2007). Analyses of bonding or bridging ties lack substance in absence of a look at intra- or cross- group economic interactions, and the article provides many examples in this sense – from the Ghanian informal business enterprise in Europe, North America and Asia, to the dynamic presence of Vietnamese enterprise in the Latino shopping centre Tropicana in East San Jose, or to the migration of Korean workforce to Japan.
As in his other works, Pieterse elegantly works with cultural references. He offers a captivating, yet informative, reading, without overwhelming the audience or diverting from the main point of the article. His examples dismantle cultural prejudice and emphasize the catalyzing potential of group enterprise. It may be argued that Pieterse shifts too radically from a stereotype-informed view of ethnicity to an optimistic perspective that leaves aside all intra- or cross group-tensions. Notwithstanding this inclination towards ‘giving the good news’, Pieterse’s article is a key reading for anybody interested in the interplay between social capital and multiculturalism (or preferably “interculturalism”).
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