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A Scandinavian restaurant wants to hire a Scandinavian server. Vietnamese immigrants specialize in nail salons from New York City to Burnaby. South Asians tend to predominate in Metro Vancouver’s trucking and taxi industries.

Welcome to the realm of “ethnic economies,” an umbrella term for an expanding phenomenon in North America and Europe in which informal economies, from small to vast, are built and sustained by certain immigrant and ethnic groups.

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Ethnic economies don’t receive much attention in the West. And the few scholars who are interested usually portray them as morally neutral. While some business leaders rave that ethnic economies are wonderfully positive, since they’re based on the affinity that can exist between people of the same ethnicity and language, others raise questions about workplace exclusion.

In highly diverse Metro Vancouver, it is ethnic Chinese economies that are beginning to draw attention. News stories are emerging about a Chinese housing market, Chinese signs on retail outlets, Chinese-specific hiring practices, Chinese malls (there are more than 100 in Canada), a Chinese rental market and Chinese ride-for-hire programs, many of which are exclusive to ethnic Chinese.