The Ne Entrepreneurs Ho Race, Class, and Gender Shape American Enterprise [Hardcover]

For many entrepreneurs, the American Dream remains only partially fulfilled. Unequal outcomes between the middle and lower classes, men and women, and Latino/as, whites, and blacks highlight continuing inequalities and constraints within American society. With a focus on a diverse group of Latino entrepreneurs, this book explores how class, gender, race, and ethnicity all shape Latino entrepreneurs' capacity to succeed in business in the United States.Bringing intersectionality into conversation with theories of ethnic entrepreneurship, Zulema Valdez considers how various factors create, maintain, and transform the social and economic lives of Latino entrepreneurs. While certain group identities may impose unequal, if not discriminatory, starting positions, membership in these same social groups can provide opportunities to mobilize resources together. Valdez reveals how Latino entrepreneursas members of oppressed groups on the one hand, yet rugged individualists striving for the American Dream on the otherwork to recreate their own positions within American society. The New Entrepreneursby Zulema Valdez makes important contributions to exploring these issues, exploring the interconnections between migration, race, labor, gender, and entrepreneurship. . . The research shows that many of those who are most committed to the American dream of entrepreneurship are exactly those who are most excluded from its full realization. In a persuasive use of an intersectional framework, Valdez reveals how privilege and disadvantage are reproduced for business owners, finding evidence of cumulative advantage and disadvantage in entrepreneurs' goals and motivations . . . Valdez's robust ethnographic approach . . . prompts her to remix some long-established sociological approaches so that she can account for how the intersecting dynamics of race, ethnicity, class, and gender shape embedded opportunities for success which, when realized, shape entrepreneurs' very understalC&