Market dominant minorities

The term "market dominant minorities" was coined by Amy Chua in her 2001 book World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. The term refers to immigrant minorities to a country that through means of facility, become disproportionately wealthy and powerful, as compared to the indigenous majority. The result of this is that class lines are then synonymous with ethnic lines, and class conflicts often become indistiguishable from ethnic conflicts.

Definitions are required to continue with this analysis, Chua explains. "Indigenous" and "immigrant" are relative terms -- often the immigrant society has an established history in the country. Still, it is a newer ethnicity than the local population. The local populations are often are unconnected to the outside world, ill-educated, and otherwise rendered incapable of entering into the closed culture of the wealthy minority. It is worthy to note that this incapability, instead of being qualified in racist terms, as it traditionally had been, is maintained through varied cultural differences, such as language and religion.