Why Immigrants Stay in Fashion: Insights from New York's Garment Industry

For many observers the influx of immigrants into New York's garment industry seemed to exemplify the deleterious impact of undocumented immigration: native displacement and a simultaneous deterioration of wages and working conditions. This article argues that this conventional view is incorrect. There is little evidence linking immigrant presence to the availability of undocumented workers. Rather, the immigrant presence is the consequence of the industry's basic labor strategy; immigrants have moved into garments as an older labor force deriving from earlier waves of migration has cyckd out.