A Seat at the Table: Immigrant Businesses and Placemaking

This dissertation argues that immigrant entrepreneurs creatively repurpose elements of neoliberal programs of improvement, designed to bolster entrepreneurial activity, to carve out a space for themselves (literally and figuratively) through informal social and spatial practices. It examines the everyday, placemaking practices of immigrant-run businesses in the suburban areas of Takoma Park, MD, Mount Rainier, MD and Falls Church, Virginia. Placemaking is defined as the way in which people imbue spaces with social and cultural meaning. Using informality and placemaking theories, the dissertation explores how subversions of neoliberal market logics are a means of placemaking. It offers ethnographic accounts of variety stores, a farmers market, and microlending and training programs. In doing so, it articulates a variety of space imaginaries and posits placemaking as a negotiation between home cultures, particular social contexts, and greater structural forces.