Sewing Women

Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry

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by Margaret Chin

Columbia University Press

Due/Published June 2005, 208 pages, cloth

ISBN 0231133081

New York City's garment industry is one of the largest immigrant employers in the city with more than 70 percent of all manufactured clothing being produced in Chinese- and Korean-owned factories.
In rich detail, Margaret Chin offers a portrait of the work lives of the Asian and Latina women who reinvigorated New York Citys garment industry in the 1990s. Her study explores the roles of ethnicity and gender in shaping immigration strategies and the work environment. Chin, whose mother worked in Chinatowns garment industry, bases her work on extensive interviews with women workers and her own observations from the shop floor. The book compares the working conditions and hiring practices of the Korean-owned and Chinese-owned sectors of the garment industry. While Chinese owners hire Chinese immigrants, who are primarily documented and unionized workers, Korean-owned shops hire mostly undocumented Mexican and Ecuadorian workers. Chin's comparison of the two arrangements illuminates how ethnic ties both improve and hinder opportunities for immigrants. The book concludes with a discussion of changes in the garment industry in the aftermath of 9/11.

"Sewing Women provides a new and illuminating perspective on New York's garment industry and the dynamics of work among today's immigrants through a carefully argued and insightful comparison of Chinese- and Korean-owned garment shops and their Chinese and Hispanic workers. This richly-textured account, based on in-depth qualitative research, makes fascinating reading and will be of great interest to scholars and students of contemporary immigration, ethnicity, work, and gender." -- Nancy Foner