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This paper considers how and why an Asian enclave of small businesses has appeared in a poor neighborhood characterized by Puerto Rican and other Latino immigration in the post-industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. We begin by examining the role of the US in the world system, and argue that the US hegemonic role and specific political economic aspects of global capitalism (ie. deindustrialization) account for some of the migration stream. Next, using socio-economic and historical data, interviews, and observations, we outline the history of Worcesters economy and immigration patterns. We demonstrate that the increasing economic inequality leaves few promising employment options for newcomers to Worcester. Drawing on existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurs and ethnic enclaves, we argue that some aspects of the literature appear to shed light on the Vietnamese enterprises which have so visibly appeared (e.g., ethnic niches), while others, (e.g., middle-man minority theory) are not now reflected in local conflict. We conclude by considering the prospects for immigrants to this neighborhood in light of its political economic context.

However rare, a call to the secular and universal values of the Enlightenment is a special pleasure in an era of fractional identities where the dominant intellectual process is one which poses a "victim Olympics" as the highest form of analysis .That said, Wagar's assertion of the desirability of a "democratic, liberal, and socialist world commonwealth" would, should it actually become someone 's praxis, require an historic agent. Wagar leaves this in a voluntarist mode: people should become self-consciously internationalist and form, as metaphorically and not so metaphoricallylimned in his provocative novel, a "world party."

In January of 1999 a new student movement announced itself on the cam-puses of American universities. It began a campaign for a sweat free campus and it did so in dramatic fashionby occupying over the next four months Administration buildings on seven campusesDuke (January 29), Georgetown (February 5), Wisconsin (February 8), Michigan (March 17), Fair?eld (April 15), and North Carolina and Arizona (April 21). In each case, the students demands were focused on labor exploitation in the apparel industrythe sweatshop problem.

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