Ethnic entrepreneurship and cultural dynamics: Immigrant workers in small-city revitalization

This paper examines how immigrant entrepreneurs contribute to the social, economic, and cultural revitalization of Lubbock, Texas, a mid-sized non-gateway U.S. city. Focusing on South Asian–owned grocery stores and Latinx-owned beauty salons, the study analyzes culturally grounded commercial ventures as everyday infrastructures of urban renewal. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines demographic analysis, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic observation, the paper shows how immigrant-led businesses generate employment, increase consumer traffic, and help stabilize commercial corridors often overlooked in conventional revitalization strategies. These enterprises also reshape the city’s cultural landscape by introducing culinary, aesthetic, and service-based practices that foster community pride, cross-cultural encounter, and a renewed sense of place. Beyond their economic role, they operate as informal social hubs, supporting networks of belonging, mutual assistance, and immigrant incorporation. At the same time, owners confront zoning restrictions, language barriers, labor precarity, and episodic xenophobic sentiment, which limit their full participation in urban development. The paper argues that inclusive urban policy should actively support immigrant entrepreneurship as a strategy for sustainable and equitable transformation. Engaging Richard Alba’s scholarship on assimilation and immigrant vitality, it demonstrates how immigrant agency can reconfigure urban futures beyond traditional gateway-city narratives across the contemporary United States and West Texas.