Jihye Kim's From Sweatshop to Fashion Shop: Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the Argentine Garment Industry is as timely and important a contribution to the field of Asian–Latin American studies as it is to the little studied topic of Korean immigration to Argentina. Kim's book focuses on the evolution of the Korean-owned garment industry, a case that is particularly illustrative of this community given that ‘among the approximately 20,000 ethnic Koreans living in Argentina, an estimated 80 percent are engaged in the garment industry’ (p. 3) based on data from community organisations.
The book begins with an overview of the history of Korean immigration to Argentina, focusing on the motivations and socio-historical contexts in Korea that caused the main waves of migration from the 1960s to the present. The second chapter summarises the fluctuations of Argentina's economy, from its position as a wealthy nation in the nineteenth century, to import-substitution and industrialisation efforts throughout the mid-twentieth century, the weakening of labour institutions and social welfare programmes along with trade liberalisation during the military dictatorship, further neoliberal reforms and privatisations in the 1990s, the devastating economic crisis of 2001, and the recent period of post-crisis recovery. Kim describes the overall effects these changing macroeconomic contexts had on the garment industry and on ethnic Koreans’ involvement in it. These two informative chapters, along with the author's clear and persuasive writing, make the book accessible and captivating to both specialist and non-specialist readers.
The ensuing chapters delve deeper into the experiences, development and practices of Korean apparel businesses. Chapter 3 traces the ways that the earliest Korean immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s entered the garment industry, first as subcontracted sewers and knitters and then as independent manufacturers. Some of the factors that led to Koreans’ concentration in this line of work were the language barrier, the short period of training and little capital investment it required, and existing family and ethnic networks. Chapter 4 examines the expansion of these businesses from production to distribution at the peak of Korean migration in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter explores in detail the ways that co-ethnic and family networks provided substantial financial support and exclusive business opportunities, but also unsustainable competition and unpaid loans.
Chapter 5, a most illuminating and informative chapter, investigates the changing and expanding landscape of the Korean garment business in the new millennium. Here, Kim's research sheds light on the complex and sometimes troubled inter-ethnic and co-ethnic labour relations as well as on formal and informal business practices that characterise this sector. In particular, the chapter addresses the decades-long relations between Korean employers and undocumented Bolivian employees. While exploitative working conditions continue to exist, Kim's Bolivian and Korean interviewees express a mutual preference to work with one another. Bolivians cite slight advantages to working in Korean-owned compared to Bolivian-owned workshops, such as on-time and in-full payment of wages, shorter working hours (though these are still 12-hour shifts), better food and better-ventilated work environments. On the other hand, Korean employers perceive Bolivian employees through a stereotyped lens, as trustful, diligent and quietly submissive. In examining the mixture of formal and informal business practices not only of Koreans but of the Argentine garment industry at large, Kim rejects the ‘common misconception that ethnic or cultural features are the exclusive determinant of the industry's informal business and employment practices’ (p. 98), an accusation frequently levelled at the Koreans and Bolivians in Argentina. Instead, Kim reveals how the boundaries between formal and informal practices are unclear to begin with and that informal practices – such as tax avoidance, informal and mixed (half-formal and half-informal) employment contracts, or the smuggling of garments from China – are shaped by ‘individual, ethnic, and contextual influences within the complex and dynamic processes of government controls and regulations’ (p. 15) rather than being an ethnic group tendency.
The last chapter illustrates how Korean Argentines break away from the career patterns typically observed in 1.5 or second-generation immigrants elsewhere, particularly those in the United States. Whereas existing literature on migration – mostly based on developed host countries – has recorded a tendency of later generations to prefer professional careers and upward mobility within mainstream society over their parents’ small businesses, their Korean Argentine counterparts have chosen to remain in the garment industry, in great measure because of the larger income it generates even compared to typically high-income professions such as medicine, law and engineering.
A key conceptual framework of this book is that of ‘mixed embeddedness’ that ‘recognizes the crucial significance of immigrant social capital and ethnic resources’ but also situates them within a ‘wider social, economic, and political contexts of the host country’ (p. 4). While Kim's research highlights substantial ethnic resources – such as gye (rotating credit system) and the circulation of capital and expertise among family and community members – it also registers business connections with the Jewish community which had dominated the garment industry in prior decades, and the complicated labour relations formed with co-ethnics, other immigrant groups, and native Argentines against the backdrop of changing economic situations, industry-wide informal practices and robust (yet often unenforced) labour laws. As such, this study provides a comprehensive and complex, rather than reductive, understanding of Korean experiences and entrepreneurship. Also notable and enriching is the weight given to the multitude of experiences of Korean immigrants as recounted directly by interviewees, from the earliest of Korean immigrants to second-generation ethnic Koreans born in Argentina, that reflect the subjectivity, heterogeneity and hybridity of the Korean diaspora in Argentina and beyond.
Applying the theory of mixed embeddedness – beyond broad economic and political situations and the industry's structure – to the many issues that might have affected the ‘emergence, consolidation, and evolution of the Korean garment business’ (p. 5), From Sweatshop to Fashion Shop should be of interest to readers in multiple disciplines studying Argentina, the Korean diaspora, Asian–Latin American connections, inter-ethnic labour relations and ethnic entrepreneurship, among other topics. An aspect that could be further explored in future research would be the function of race in this industry and environment. While Kim's interviewees did not much raise the topic of racism and discrimination – other than to point indirectly at a general lack of ‘social capital’ – racial ideas, stereotypes and hierarchies appear to permeate inter-group relationships and perceptions among ethnic Koreans, Bolivians, Jews and mainstream Argentines.
