Last class we discussed the affects living in ethnic enclaves can have on people, in terms of how they affect people’s ability to be a part of the mainstream United States. At first, when I started reading “Chinese: Divergent Destinies in Immigrant New York”, I was convinced that enclaves were the roads to living in places outside of the enclaves. When Zhou discussed the Old Chinatown, she said that most second-generation Chinese immigrants move out of Old Chinatown, and this is supported by the fact that Old Chinatown contains mostly new immigrants and elderly people. I took this to mean that they moved out of Chinatowns in general, but really they just move into another Chinese enclave, Sunset Park.  As a result, Zhou calls Sunset Park an extension of Chinatown. In reality, according to Zhou, many people are stuck in the enclaves, if they work in the enclave economy, since they are not exposed to English and since many are undocumented.

The Old Chinatown in the past has even made efforts to protect Chinese immigrants from outside society, and this seems to go against the idea of immigrating to the United States. For example, associations called tongs were made to “preserve the status quo” in the enclave. Immigrants cannot become comfortable with society if their status quo is intentionally being preserved. Now, however, these organizations do promote integration into society and provide English classes. They still do not focus on English though, as the organizations like the CCBA focus their schooling on Chinese language classes.  Shouldn’t the focus be English?

I am slightly confused on the meaning of suburb after reading Zhou’s and Li’s article. Li calls places like Flushing and Sunset Park, ethnoburbs, and makes it clear that he believes that they are very different from Chinatowns. Li describes ethnoburbs, as if they are places for wealthy immigrants. This makes sense if Li is talking about how ethnoburbs, such as Flushing formed, as it formed from well off Taiwanese settling there, since they did not fit in with the Cantonese in Chinatown. They were followed by the mainland Chinese. Now however, Zhou says that many people who come to Flushing are working class coming to meet their middle class relatives. This does not sound like a suburb Li that Li talks about.