Search

This paper examines the cultural, social, and economic contributions of multi-ethnic neighborhood businesses to the transformation of German cityscapes. The diversity on N-Street in Stuttgart has been at the forefront of urban transformations and cultural production. I show that neighborhood stores and shopping streets are sites of urban experiments and cultural beginnings which produce new authenticities in the face of rapid urban homogenization. Combining theoretical debates about urban 'authenticities,' the creative potential of immigrant neighborhoods, and ethnic/cross-cultural economies, I analyze transformations of N-Street and the surrounding neighborhood. I argue that neighborhood shopping streets are relevant nodes and agents in urban transformations and the production of urban futures. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce N-Street's history, its current configuration of genuinely local urban cultures and economies, and its cultural complexity and cultural and economic innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper works through some of the epistemological and methodological consequences of an unreflexive use of white suburbs as the expected residential destination in U.S. spatial assimilation research. Foregrounding immigrant suburbanization in spatial assimilation occludes alternative geographic trajectories; simply put, spatial diffusion need not be central city to suburban decentralization. More problematically, spatial assimilation research often translates residential movement to the suburbs into increasing proximity with whites. This results in the degree of segregation from whites becoming the standard by which immigrant assimilative progress is gauged. Building on critical whiteness studies and recent research on aspatial assimilation, we develop some new theoretical entry points into the process of spatial assimilation. We treat metropolitan areas as constellations of neighborhoods rather than a central city–suburban doughnut and become circumspect in our use of whites as a referent category. Our investigation of spaces of assimilation in greater Los Angeles reveals that established immigrants are more dispersed residentially than recent conational arrivals, although the effect varies by group. For many immigrant groups, these dispersions from concentrations of initial settlement do not reduce segregation from whites. Segregation lessens over time, however, between immigrants and other native-born Americans. For many groups, but by no means all, a dispersed residential pattern is associated with higher quality neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the issue of "Re-Placing Whiteness," which is an amalgam of two very different papers about immigrants' residential patterns. Assimilation theory anticipates progress toward the mainstream as immigrants and especially their children experience social mobility, including shifts in the kinds of neighborhoods where they live. Of course, assimilation is not the only possible trajectory. A longstanding counterclaim is that American society obstructs the mobility of some groups, and a more recent argument is that some groups may not value residential assimilation as a goal. But from any theoretical perspective, there are good reasons not to focus solely on residence in white suburban neighborhoods as indicators of advancement. It would be constructive to offer a theory to explain why some early arrivals turn out to be very highly concentrated.

This paper is concerned with the determinants and consequences of immigrant/linguistic concentrations (enclaves). The reasons for the formation of these concentrations are discussed. Hypotheses are developed regarding“ethnic goods” and the effect of concentrations on the immigrant's language skills, as well as the effects on immigrant earnings of destination language skills and the linguistic concentration. These hypotheses are tested using PUMS data from the 1990 U.S. Census on adult male immigrants from non-English speaking countries. Linguistic concentrations reduce the immigrant's own English language skills. Moreover, immigrant's earnings are lower the lower their English-language proficiency and the greater the linguistic/ethnic concentration in their origin language of the area in which they live. The adverse effects on earnings of poor destination language skills and of immigrant concentrations exist independently of each other. The hypotheses regarding ethnic goods are supported by the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]