Constructing multiethnic space: East Asian immigration in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Item
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Title
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Constructing multiethnic space: East Asian immigration in Fort Lee, New Jersey
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:edcf9945013b:11194
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identifier
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11550
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Creator
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Matsumoto, Noriko,
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Contributor
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Philip Kasinitz
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Ethnic studies | Asian American studies | East Asians--New Jersey--Fort Lee--case studies | immigrants--United States--social conditions | New Jersey--New York metropolitan areas--case studies | race and ethnic relations | suburbs--North America
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Abstract
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This dissertation investigates the social formation and organization of the East Asian ethnic communities in Fort Lee, from the 1970s to the present. Beginning in the later-twentieth century the American suburb became an important site for immigrant settlement. A rapid influx of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants into Fort Lee, located in the metropolitan area of New York, has had an important influence on the social structures and everyday practice of this formerly white suburban community. The research is considered against existing social scientific theories of immigration including models of "spatial assimilation" and "ethnoburb." The central research question concerns how assimilation and ethnic retention are structured among East Asian immigrants and their offspring in Fort Lee.;The findings suggest that three East Asian groups have formed distinct co-ethnic communities with different institutional structures and social organization. At the same time, coterminous residency in a specific suburban space has offered the possibility for development of new interrelations and informal pan-Asian affinities. Although the borough's diversity has facilitated immigrant incorporation, this has neither erased group differences nor the racialization of East Asians. The middle-class status of immigrants and the relative receptiveness of the locality have had a significant bearing on the processes of assimilation and ethnic retention.;The dissertation proposes the concept of "multiethnic space" to account for the synchronicity of these processes as a product of everyday practice, relational power, and group formation. Assimilation and ethnic retention are considered as relational---rather than as mutually exclusive polarities. Practice is enacted in social relations with others: the various transformations of the multiethnic suburb are interdependent.;Multiple methods were employed for the collection and analysis of the data, including: in-depth interviews with members of East Asian groups and native whites; ethnographic observations of community life and local events; analysis of census data (1950--2009); the analysis of archival records, including local community documents, and press accounts from the 1970s through the first decade of the twenty-first century.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
