Introduction: The apparel industry and North American economic integration

The economic and social consequences of international trade agreements have become a major area of inquiry in development studies in recent years. As evidenced by the energetic protests surrounding the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 1999 and the controversy about China's admission to the WTO, such agreements have also become a focus of political conflict in both the developed and developing countries. At issue are questions of job gains and job losses in different regions, prices paid by consumers, acceptable standards for wages and working conditions in transnational manufacturing industries, and the quality of the environment. All these concerns have arisen with regard to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and can be addressed through an examination of changes in the dynamics of the apparel industry in the post-NAFTA period.1 In this book, we examine the evolution of the apparel industry in North America in order to address some of these questions as they pertain to North America, with an eye toward the broader implications of our findings. We also consider the countries of the Caribbean Basin and Central America, whose textile and apparel goods are now allowed to enter the U.S. market on the same basis as those from Canada and Mexico (Odessey 2000). © 2009 by Temple University Press. All rights reserved.

Poverty and Place in the Context of the American South

In the United States, poverty has been historically higher and disproportionately concentrated in the American South. Despite this fact, much of the conventional poverty literature in the United States has focused on urban poverty in cities, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. Relatively less American poverty research has focused on the enduring economic distress in the South, which Wimberley (2008:899) calls “a neglected regional crisis of historic and contemporary urgency.” Accordingly, this dissertation contributes to the inequality literature by focusing much needed attention on poverty in the South.

Each empirical chapter focuses on a different aspect of poverty in the South. Chapter 2 examines why poverty is higher in the South relative to the Non-South. Chapter 3 focuses on poverty predictors within the South and whether there are differences in the sub-regions of the Deep South and Peripheral South. These two chapters compare the roles of family demography, economic structure, racial/ethnic composition and heterogeneity, and power resources in shaping poverty. Chapter 4 examines whether poverty in the South has been shaped by historical racial regimes.

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) United States datasets (2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2013) (derived from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement) provide all the individual-level data for this study. The LIS sample of 745,135 individuals is nested in rich economic, political, and racial state-level data compiled from multiple sources (e.g. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Agriculture, University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, etc.). Analyses involve a combination of techniques including linear probability regression models to predict poverty and binary decomposition of poverty differences.

Chapter 2 results suggest that power resources, followed by economic structure, are most important in explaining the higher poverty in the South. This underscores the salience of political and economic contexts in shaping poverty across place. Chapter 3 results indicate that individual-level economic factors are the largest predictors of poverty within the South, and even more so in the Deep South. Moreover, divergent results between the South, Deep South, and Peripheral South illustrate how the impact of poverty predictors can vary in different contexts. Chapter 4 results show significant bivariate associations between historical race regimes and poverty among Southern states, although regression models fail to yield significant effects. Conversely, historical race regimes do have a small, but significant effect in explaining the Black-White poverty gap. Results also suggest that employment and education are key to understanding poverty among Blacks and the Black-White poverty gap. Collectively, these chapters underscore why place is so important for understanding poverty and inequality. They also illustrate the salience of micro and macro characteristics of place for helping create, maintain, and reproduce systems of inequality across place.

NAFTA and uneven development in the North American apparel industry

The various contributions to this book have documented how NAFTA-inspired firm strategies are changing the geography of apparel production in North America. The authors show in myriad ways how companies at different positions along the apparel commodity chain are responding to the new institutional and regulatory environment that NAFTA creates. By making it easier for U.S. companies to take advantage of Mexico as a nearby low-cost site for export-oriented apparel production, NAFTA is deepening the regional division of labor within North America, and this process has consequences for firms and workers in each of the signatory countries. In the introduction to this book we alluded to the obvious implications of shifting investment and trade patterns in the North American apparel industry for employment in the different countries. In this concluding chapter we focus on Mexico in the NAFTA era, specifically the extent to which Mexico's role in the North American economy facilitates or inhibits its economic development. W e begin with a discussion of the contemporary debate about Mexico's development, which turns on the question of how to assess the implications of Mexico's rapid and pro-found process of economic reform. Second, we focus on the textile and apparel industries as sectors that have been significantly affected by changes in regulatory environments at both the global and regional levels. Third, we examine the evidence regarding Mexico's NAFTA-era export dynamism, and in particular we emphasize the importance of interfirm networks, both for making sense of Mexico's meteoric rise among apparel exporters and for evaluating the implications of this dynamism for development. Fourth, we turn to a consideration of the national political-economic environment that shapes developmental outcomes for all Mexicans. Although regional disparities within Mexico are profound, aspects of government policy, such as management of the national currency, and characteristics of the institutional environment, such as industrial relations, have nationwide effects, and critics of NAFTA charge that these factors are contributing to a process of economic and social polarization that is ever more evident (Morales 1999; Dussel Peters 2000). Finally, we suggest that the mixed consequences of Mexico's NAFTA-era growth can be taken as emblematic of the contradictions that the process of globalization poses for economic and social development. The anti-sweatshop campaign in North America is one example of transnational or crossborder movements that are emerging to address the negative consequences of this process. In bringing attention to the problem of sweatshop production in North America, activists are developing strategies that rely on a network logic that is not dissimilar to the approaches reflected in the various chapters of this book. © 2009 by Temple University Press. All rights reserved.

Investing in the Homeland: Foreign Assets and Patterns of Immigrant Economic Incorporation

This dissertation consists of three separate studies that examine patterns of immigrant incorporation in the United States. The first study tests competing hypotheses derived from conflicting theoretical frameworks−transnational perspective and cross-national framework− to determine whether transnational engagement and incorporation are concurrent processes among Chinese, Indian, and Mexican immigrants. This study measures transnational engagement and incorporation as home and home country asset ownership using multi-panel, nationally representative data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) collected in 2003 and 2007. Results support a cross-border framework and indicate that transnational asset ownership decreases among all immigrant groups, while U.S. asset ownership increases. Findings from this study also indicate that due to disadvantaged pre-migration SES and low human capital, Mexican immigrants are less likely than other immigrants to own home country assets during the year after receiving their green card.

The second study examines the doubly disadvantaged position of elderly immigrants in the U.S. wealth distribution by applying the life course perspective to the dominance-differentiation theory of immigrant wealth stratification. I analyze elderly immigrant wealth in respect to U.S.-born seniors and younger immigrant cohorts using two data sets: the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the New Immigrant Survey (NIS). The Survey of Income and Program Participation (2001 to 2005) is a nationally representative survey of U.S. households. The first series of analyses reveals a significant wealth gap between U.S.- and foreign-born seniors which is most pronounced among the wealthiest households in my sample; however, U.S. tenure explains much of this difference. The second series of analyses suggests that elderly immigrants experience greater barriers to incorporation compared to their younger counterparts.

In the third study, I apply a transnational lens to the forms-of-capital and opportunity structure models of entrepreneurship in order to analyze the role of foreign resources in immigrant business start-ups. I propose that home country property use represents financial, social, and class resources that facilitate immigrant entrepreneurship. I test my hypotheses using survey data on Latin American immigrants from the Comparative Immigrant Entrepreneurship Project. Findings from these analyses suggest that home country asset ownership provides financial and social capital that is related to an increased likelihood of immigrant entrepreneurship.

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

My dissertation investigates twin financial interventions—urban development and emergency management—in a single small town. Once a thriving city drawing blacks as blue-collar workers during the Great Migration, Benton Harbor, Michigan has suffered from waves of out-migration, debt, and alleged poor management. Benton Harbor’s emphasis on high-end economic development to attract white-collar workers and tourism, amidst the poverty, unemployment, and disenfranchisement of black residents, highlights an extreme case of American urban inequality. At the same time, many bystanders and representative observers argue that this urban redevelopment scheme and the city’s takeover by the state represent Benton Harbor residents’ only hope for a better life. I interviewed 44 key players and observers in local politics and development, attended 20 public meetings, conducted three months of observations, and collected extensive archival data. Examining Benton Harbor’s time under emergency management and its luxury golf course development as two exemplars of a larger relationship, I find that the top-down processes allegedly intended to alleviate Benton Harbor’s inequality actually reproduce and deepen the city’s problems. I propose that the beneficiaries of both plans constitute a white urban regime active in Benton Harbor. I show how the white urban regime serves its interests by operating an extraction machine in the city, which serves to reproduce local poverty and wealth by directing resources toward the white urban regime and away from the city.