A butcher shop at Lexington Market in Baltimore (USA)

Microbusinesses typically offer a pathway of upward mobility for immigrants and, today, many stall owners at this market are Korean. Bill Devine, the owner of Faidley’s Seafood, explains the transition of vendors: “Wave after wave of new immigrants. This guy over here isn’t Krause anymore, he’s Ying Ying. You had the wave of Italians and Jews and Lithuanians, and you had the Greeks and the Irish and the Germans. They were all immigrants, and this was their opening to America. And what did they do? They raised their children to be doctors and lawyers and professional people. And the Koreans came over and did the same. And they’d write home and say, ‘We need somebody. Send more over.’ And then the Bosnians and the Serbs move in to replace that. It’s the way it’s always been. It’s history repeating itself, with a different group of immigrants.”