TY - JOUR
KW - Toronto
KW - Jews
KW - Textile Industry
AU - Daniel Hiebert
AB - Uses tax assessment rolls, census documents, and archival materials to reconstruct the occupational structure and residential distribution of Jews in Toronto during 1901-31. At the turn of the century, most Jewish 'heads' of households in Toronto were self-employed wholesalers, retailers or peddlers, but a large proportion of the community entered the blue-collar labor force, especially the garment sector, during 1901-15. Subsequently, during 1915-31 Jewish entrepreneurs began to establish their own clothing factories, often employing Jewish workers. The garment industry therefore became the principal vehicle whereby class oppositions entered a community previously dominated by ethnic and religious identities. The author uses three theories of ethnic labor-market and entrepreneurial behavior to analyze the causes and consequences of this evolving economic participation: dual labor-market theory, trader-minority theory, and the concept of an ethnic-enclave economy. While these theories help explain certain aspects of the Jewish experience, particularly the rise of Jewish entrepreneurship, they do not adequately address the implications of class divisions within ethnic communities or the role of the ethnic landscape in crystallizing and defusing these class oppositions. More attention should be given to the interweaving of class and ethnicity; the social geography and labor-market participation of ethnic groups provide a fundamental starting point for such an analysis. [J]
BT - Annals of the Association of American Geographers
C7 - Unknown(0)
ID - 500
IS - 2
LA - English
M1 - Journal Article
M3 - Print(0)
PY - 1993
SN - 00045608
SP - 243
EP - 271
EP - 
T1 - Jewish Immigrants and the Garment Industry of Toronto, 1901-1931: a Study of Ethnic and Class Relations
T2 - Annals of the Association of American Geographers
VL - 83
ER -