ABSTRACT
Portes and Manning first make the point that the proliferation of immigrant enclaves challenges traditional precepts of assimilation theory, as the persistence of ethnic identity and ethnic communities is more permissible and commonplace since the 1960s. Whereas social mobility in American society was in the early twentieth century more predicated on the suppression of ethnic ancestry and the acquisition of American cultural values, we have seen that socioeconomic prosperity in contemporary America can be promoted along with a continuing commitment to ethnicity and ethnic enclaves. Immigrant enclaves are growing as often as they are disappearing, and furthermore, they arise sometimes in the suburbs. Immigrant enclaves are furthermore an alternative for economic incorporation beyond the existing dichotomy of a segmented labor market in which there is an upper tier of jobs that offers good mobility ladders, and a lower tier of dead-end jobs in which minorities predominate.
