Rethinking Residential Assimilation: The Case of a Chinese Ethnoburb in the San Gabriel Valley, California

Abstract

In this paper, we re-examine new patterns of residential assimilation through the case of a sprawling Chinese ethnoburb in the San Gabriel Valley, California, focusing on the following questions: How have Chinese immigrants of diverse origins and socioeconomic backgrounds negotiated their way into the suburbia of an immigrant gateway metropolis? What is a Chinese ethnoburb like and how does it differ from traditional Chinatowns and from typical American suburban communities? What are the consequences and prospects of this new type of community development and what implications does the ethnoburb phenomenon have for our understanding of assimilation? We base our analysis on the U.S. Census data, data from prior case studies in the existing literature, and our own field observations. Overall, we seek to understand the ways in which contemporary globalization and international migration challenge the notion of assimilation. We also speculate on how new patterns of immigrant settlement create new issues facin...