– It is interesting to note that the Korean owners stereotype blacks and Puerto Ricans as unreliable and not as hardworking as the immigrants that work for them.  This point of view reveals the multifaceted prejudices that exist in the hiring sector.  Even among the Hispanics hired by the Koreans, skin color plays a predominant role.  Interviewees that look Puerto Rican are turned away from the job, further attesting to implicit racism.  I also found it interesting that both Chinese and Korean owners prefer to hire immigrants over nonimmigrants (regardless of the Chinese owners’ tendency to hire coethnics and the Koreans’ tendency to hire Hispanics).  This preference is due to the fact that the owners know more is at stake for the immigrants, especially if they are undocumented, and can thus ensure that these employees work in a cooperative manner.  Sewing Women further sheds light upon the fact that the shop owners fear that blacks and Puerto Ricans, who speak English well, will be more outspoken about their rights and wages. Chinese owners thus turn away blacks and Puerto Ricans looking for work because they fear that these workers, if hired, will report violations in their shops.

– I was particularly struck by the impersonal nature of work in the Korean sector.  This is most likely due to the fact that workers in Korean-owned shops are not coethnic, work as if on an assembly line, and are paid hourly.  The non-coethnic atmosphere in the Korean shops shifts the focus of work to productivity, especially since the workers are not tied to each other personally.  The competitive sentiments that exist in the Korean shops are seemingly absent in the Chinese shops, where coethnic workers are linked by their obligations to each other.

– Do differences within the coethnic Chinese workers (Mandarin vs. Cantonese, countryside vs. city origins) cause conflict on the job?