Commodification of Ethnicity

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Abstract
Ethnicity is commodified in the process of economic transition involved in immigration: Immigrants sell their labor power for economic survival. While a spatially enclosed ethnic community channels the traditional kind of mutual cooperation into the growth of the "ethnic capital," a common ethnicity of the Korean community, based on shared language and other cultural background, is appropriated as a product to sell, a reliable source for workers, and an object of consumption. To examine this proposition, the author analyzes Korean small businesses in the Los Angeles area, focusing on the human capital of Korean entrepreneurs, costs of reproduction of entrepreneurial labor, and the work processes.