UC San Diego

Marginalization is a common experience for immigrants and native-born minority group members as they seek to fight against alienation through understanding and gaining acceptance from the majority. In this dissertation I seek to clarify stratifying practices in the daily life of Arab American Christians and Muslims from three different ethno -national origins--Iraqi, Lebanese, and Palestinian. This dissertation examines how the ethno-national, panethnic (e.g. Arab American), and religious identities of Arab Americans play out on a day-to-day basis through the case of Arab-American entrepreneurs who own businesses in Metropolitan Detroit. This dissertation is based on over 100 interviews with Arab-American entrepreneurs and ethnic and religious organization leaders as well as nine months of observational work. First, I demonstrate that business networks among Arab Americans break along ethno-national and religious lines. Panethnic unity, while important in the political sphere, plays a minimal role in business. Next, I take a closer look at the reasons entrepreneurs provide for developing networks on the basis of ethno- national and religious identities. The majority of research on ethnic entrepreneurs emphasizes the importance of ethno-national and panethnic bonds in business. Rarely does this research include an analysis of religious identities that is separate from ethno-national identities. I argue that once the role of religion within ethno-nationals is examined, entrepreneurs report developing ties on the basis of shared religious communities. By answering how Iraqi, Lebanese, and Palestinian American entrepreneurs might be connected through experiences of stratification in economic action, this dissertation suggests that ties formed on the basis of shared religious community function differently than those formed on the basis a shared ethno-national and panethnic communities