Immigrant Niches and the Intrametropolitan Spatial Division of Labour.

Immigrants often bunch together in particular lines of work, which many scholars call employment niching. They also may cluster geographically; these districts can be neighbourhoods where workers reside or places of work (industrial quarters where labour is performed). The intrametropolitan spatial division of labour is perhaps best conceived as the relationships among employment concentrations in industrial niches and places of work shaped in large measure by the geographies of residence. The analysis of six immigrant groups reported in this paper models the effect of residential concentration on the chances that an immigrant holds a job in a particular line of work, labours in a particular work place, or does both—works in a particular job and work place. The study, which uses Greater Los Angeles' census tracts for the analysis, reveals that residential patterns help to govern the extent of this industrial segmentation and employment geography but that this relationship is not consistent across immigrant groups. The investigation adds to the literature on labour market segmentation by ethnicity, gender, nativity and home-work relations and offers new perspectives on the relationship between spaces of production and social reproduction in metropolitan places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]