User:Ivan Hubert Light

Ivan Light (PhD UC Berkeley, 1969) is professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of eight books, including most recently, Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, and Regulation in Los Angeles, but also Ethnic Economies (with Steven Gold, 2000), Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Immigrant Absorption in the United States and Israel (with Richard E. Isralowitz, 1997), Race, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship in Urban America (with Carolyn Rosenstein, 1995), Immigration and Entrepreneurship  (with Parminder Bhachu, 1993), Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles (with Edna Bonacich, 1988), Cities in World Perspective (1983), and Ethnic Enterprise in America (1972).

Internal and international immigration of entrepreneurs has been a priority in Ivan Light’s cosmopolitan and multi-method research. His immigration research has directly treated  African American internal migrants, and Mexican, Chinese, Iranian, Japanese, and Korean international migrants to the United States. Recent research has dealt with immigration to France, Germany, Israel, and the Netherlands. Deflecting Immigration explained the causes of inter-local deflection of Mexican immigration within the United States. His research on rotating credit and savings associations still stands as the locus classicus of social capital theory. His research career pioneered, promoted, and expanded the concept of “ethnic economy.” Ivan Light received the “Distinguished Career Award” of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2000. He was elected President of the section in 2001.