Arab-owned groceries serve as economic ladders for immigrant entrepreneurs in New York.

Evidence

In many ways the store is what gives Akram this complexity. His gregarious personality comes alive there, endowing Mike’s Food Center with a kind of familiarity between owner and customer that strikes me as quite unique. But the immigrant grocery store itself is not uncommon. If you’ve spent any time in New York City, you’ve probably been in one of them. These groceries are rungs of commerce for immigrant entrepreneurs that they can step on and hoist themselves up America’s economic ladder. Arab-owned grocery stores in New York City number over two thousand, most with Palestinian and Yemeni proprietors, making them a central location of Arab-American life in Brooklyn. Sociologists call the entrepreneurs of these stores “middlemen minorities,” ethnic businessmen and -women who function as intermediaries between inner-city clients and the conglomerates that want to sell them things but don’t want to deal with them directly, and Arab Americans are among New York City’s most numerous middlemen minorities. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 472

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the sociological term ‘middlemen minorities’ — ethnic entrepreneurs mediating between inner-city clients and distant conglomerates.
• XREF: Connects to Milgrom/Roberts work on middlemen and market intermediation, and to the broader immigrant-economy literature.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’ — grocery stores as another immigrant infrastructure/stepping-stone, though the connection is loose.