Changing neighborhood: ethnic enclaves and the struggle for social justice.

• Date: 22 June 2008
• Author: Liu, Michael,Geron, Kim
• Published date: 22 June 2008
• Author: Liu, Michael

ONE OF THE LEGACIES OF THE ASIAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IS THE FORMATION OF distinctive ethnic neighborhoods. Today, new forms of enclaves have taken shape distant from the downtown locations of the traditional urban enclaves of Chinatown and Japantowns. Yet, since the late 1960s, it is within urban sites that Asian Americans have most intensely mobilized and built their organizational resources for social justice. This article will focus on Asian-American activism in urban communities, particularly traditional Asian ethnic enclaves, around land use, affordable housing, and labor and community preservation. In doing so, we explore the reasons struggles unfolded in these enclaves, drawing and building on activism within Asian-American communities, as well as the continuing relevance of ethnic enclaves to Asian-American efforts to achieve social justice.

To understand the role of ethnic enclaves in the economy and politics of the Asian-American community, we provide a brief history and description of the types of Asian ethnic enclaves. We examine the historic intersection and evolution of enclaves and social justice organizing, the role of community activists in ethnic enclave-based struggles, the contemporary state of enclave activism, and the prospects for continuing activism.

Ethnic enclaves are specific localities where ethnic minorities congregate, and possess three common features: co-ethnic owners and employees, spatial concentration, and sectoral specialization (Logan, Alba, and McNulty, 1994). Viewed instrumentally, enclaves provide protection from hostile elements in society, aid in the retention of cultural norms (including language), offer work in, and sometimes the option of owning, an intra-ethnic business, and allow for participation in community, religious, and cultural organizations and residence with members of the same ethnic group.

Changing Character of Enclaves

Since ethnic enclaves have evolved from locations in central cities to suburban sites, it is necessary to develop a taxonomy of Asian-American enclaves that illustrates the four distinctive types:

Traditional enclaves are neighborhood communities forged before World War II by Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants. Housing segregation and discriminatory laws forced Asian immigrants into urban ethnic enclaves. They created their own institutions and their own internal labor markets (Pascual, 1996). These communities evolved into centers for residential housing, community and religious organizations, ethnic shopping, and employment. Enclaves were a means for protection and survival; as such, members of the ethnic community defended them from extinction. Traditional Chinatowns, Japantowns, and the International District in Seattle are current examples of this form of enclave.

Satellite enclaves developed after the 1965 Immigration Act brought new immigrants in large numbers to urban centers. Traditional enclaves were already overcrowded, and the new immigrants formed these new enclaves to provide residential space and easy access to the traditional enclave for goods and services. The Richmond District in San Francisco, Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and Quincy in Massachusetts are representative of this type of enclave. For example, Quincy is described as a "One-Step-Up" enclave; in the 1980s, Asian Americans began to settle in this town, which is located adjacent to Boston. The residents are mostly families, with middleclass incomes, who maintain close ties to Boston's Chinatown (Chung, 1995).

New Enclaves formed as new economic enclaves for the newly arriving immigrant and refugee population. Ethnic entrepreneurs first create stores that provide goods and services to the ethnic community. These enclaves may or may not have a residential component. South Asians, Koreans, and refugees from Southeast Asia have all built new enclaves. Many cities have encouraged the development of these enclaves, for the new immigrants have revitalized blighted or underutilized land. Little Saigon in Westminster, California, and Little India in Artesia, California, are examples.

Ethnoburbs are suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas. The local context of the ethnoburb characteristically has a strong ethnic economy, with strong ties to the global economy. Ethnoburbs are also multiethnic communities, in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration, but not necessarily a majority (Li, J., 1998). Most of these suburban communities changed demographically after the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Law. Monterey Park, California, is a prototype of such a community. The majority of its population is now Asian American, primarily Chinese (Fong, 1994; Saito, 1998). Another example of an ethnoburb is Cupertino, California, located near San Jose. This city experienced rapid demographic changes in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000, with the Asian American population growing from 6.7 to 45%, as large numbers of middle-class Asian immigrants moved there in search of better schools, as well as for other quality of life reasons (Lai and Geron, 2006: 67). In both of these communities, Asian Americans have built electoral coalitions to win local political office.

Each of these types of enclaves has been the site of race-based campaigns for equity, representation, and social change. Yet, for Asian-American social justice activists, urban enclaves, particularly the traditional ones, have been the most crucial environments. In this article, we focus on the particular relationship between urban enclaves and Asian American activism.

Asian Immigration and Enclave Formation

Before the establishment of black communities in New York and Chicago, and in contrast to white immigrant neighborhoods that sprang up in the 19th century as transitional sites for acculturation into U.S. society, Chinese immigrants formed Chinatowns as defenses against racial violence upon their arrival in the 1850s. In the first part of the 20th century, Japanese and Filipino immigrants also built ethnic enclaves. These enclaves grew to become community centers where new immigrants lived and worked together, shared resources, built social and political organizations, and nurtured distinctive social and cultural lives. Ethnic enclaves are often initially located in neighborhoods in flux. Some evolve over time to be permanent; others are temporary and disappear as individuals from the ethnic group move away (Laguerre, 2000).

Until World War II, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos comprised the overwhelming proportion of Asian immigrants. They began arriving to the United States in significant numbers as laborers for the agricultural, mining, and transportation industries in the latter half of the 19th century. They all encountered discrimination and physical violence and were forced to live in segregated housing and neighborhoods in cities, mining towns, and rural areas. They built enclaves to have a measure of relative safety. Yet, as early as 1871, a white mob attacked the Los Angeles Chinese enclave over a minor incident among the Chinese residents (Chan, 1991: 48). Some Chinese moved to avoid the violence and formed new Chinatowns in the Northeast region (Zhou, 2004).

Over time, Asian immigrants constructed extensive communities. Little Tokyo, a Los Angeles community that formed in the late 1800s near downtown, swelled to 30,000 residents by the 1930s, with thriving businesses, religious institutions, and community groups. The Japanese section of Seattle's Intemational District included 45 restaurants, 20 barbershops, bathhouses, laundries, 30 hotels and lodging houses, four groceries, two newspapers, and two monthly magazines (Chin, 2001: 27). In California, Stockton's Filipino community grew to thousands between World War I and II and was known as "Little Manila" (Laguerre, 2000).

During World War II, Japanese community enclaves were virtually closed down and boarded up as Japanese Americans were shipped off to internment camps. When Japanese American merchants and residents returned, they found a significantly smaller geographic community, as others had taken over the land and property in the Japantowns. Public redevelopment and urban renewal in the subsequent decades also contributed to the reduction and near elimination of these communities. One group of Asian enclaves had been seriously diminished.

Post-World War II Challenges to Survival

Following World War II, many of the remaining inner-city ethnic enclaves, which were located in close proximity to downtown financial and commercial districts, came under increasing threat of displacement by corporate interests and local governments. Urban renewal plans often targeted ethnic enclaves as redevelopment zones. Using the power of eminent domain, local governments forced out residents and small businesses, making way for capital investment, often international, to cater to tourists and implement urban gentrification plans.

In San Francisco, the financial district began to outgrow its original location in the 1960s; developers and city leaders sought to expand into ethnic enclaves, including Chinatown, Manilatown, and the South of Market area, to gain access to more land (Hartman and Kessler, 1978). For Manilatown, urban renewal reduced what was once a 10-block neighborhood, to one block, anchored by the International Hotel. As other hotels were closed down and were replaced with new developments, many of the older generation of Filipinos were forced to move to other parts of the city. Chinatown's close proximity to downtown also made it a prime target for urban renewal.

This process of urban renewal also occurred in other cities. In 1964, the first of several efforts by urban renewal forces in Philadelphia reduced the size of the Chinatown. Community residents resisted an effort in 1966 to place an expressway thorough the community. Community opposition stopped this and...