Geopolitics

• Ethnoburbs defy the traditional assumption that Chinese immigrants arrive poor and have to settle in urban Chinatowns before earning enough money to move to the suburbs.
• Instead, educated and wealthy Chinese immigrants arriving in the past few decades have settled in upper- to upper-middle-class neighborhoods.
• Shifting Chinese immigrant settlement patterns reflect the changing profile of Chinese immigrants and the effects of globalization and geopolitics.

Changing Chinatowns

• Chinatowns – inner-city, compact Chinese residential and commercial quarters – represent the prototypical ethnic enclave, a geographic area with high concentrations of a particular ethnic group.
• A number of Chinatowns were displaced in the name of urban development or because of violence.
• Since the repeal of those policies, the fate of Chinatowns in different locations has varied dramatically.
• Some intentionally developed Chinatowns, like the one Las Vegas opened in 1995, are commercial plazas with mostly restaurants and shops.

Emergence of ethnoburbs

• Another type of immigrant community has been emerging since the 1960s as a result of changing immigration policies: ethnoburbs.
• Then, during the second half of the century, the center moved steadily eastward as large numbers of new Chinese immigrants directly settled in the suburban San Gabriel Valley, signifying the emergence of an ethnoburb.
• For example, ethnoburbs in Silicon Valley emerged with high-tech industries attracting skilled and affluent Asian Americans who are highly politically involved.

Ethnoburbs are different from Chinatowns

• Residents in ethnoburbs are more racially and socioeconomically diverse, suggesting greater potential for racial tensions and class conflicts than traditional ethnic enclaves.
• Many ethnoburbs have supplanted Chinatowns as the commercial and cultural centers of contemporary Chinese diasporas.
• Obviously, not all Chinese people live in Chinatowns or ethnoburbs.

Geopolitics and integration

• Recent decades have seen increasing anti-Asian hate amid rising geopolitical tensions with the People’s Republic of China, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
• The long-term effects of these trends on Chinese diasporas are unclear.
• We hope that ethnoburbs will not become, like historical Chinatowns, the only refuge for Chinese immigrants to live.
• Learning from history’s mistakes is key to building a fair and just society for all, the Chinese diaspora included.