Ethnic enclaves in which new immigrants are offered work can be as dangerous as they are helpful. One the one hand, immigrants have easy accessibility to jobs as soon as they arrive in the country. There’s a solid opportunity for money without having to leave their safe ethnic bubble. There’s no requirement to know English or to have papers. The people who hire them are of the same ethnic origin, speak the same language, and may even be from the same region that they used to live in. There is a promise of social and economic mobility.
But as we learn in Guest’s “God in Chinatown”, a model in which a community has businesses large enough to hire all these immigrants workers but not large enough that these same immigrant workers can’t have their own businesses one day- why, that is almost impossible. The reality is much starker; immigrants are lured by the shared characteristics between them and their employers. How could they scam me?, they think. We speak the same language, eat the same food, and share the same traditions. Are we not one people helping each other get by in a new, daunting environment until we get our bearings? In actuality, immigrants become trapped in this economically-oriented community. They are paid substandard wages and subjected to miserable working conditions and hours, all the while being cornered into one place, so they can never branch out of the community, learn English, and find a higher paying job. This may not be true of all cases, but certainly in many, especially in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
However, it can be noted that these entry-level positions are one of the only ways immigrants can find jobs without a high level of education and residency. What happens when these enclaves, exploitative as they may be, are shut down and immigrants have no way to send money home or provide for themselves? It is the responsibility of the government to help an underfunded, unsuitable area for work and raise it to a level that is safe and clean. The manner that they achieve this goal is up for debate. A quick Google search revealed that the auto body shops in Willets Point were eventually torn down by the De Blasio administration. There are two sides to argue; either the demolition is beneficial because it will introduce renovations that will increase value into the property, or it is detrimental because it displaces many small business owners whose voices were not heard in the process. Was this development plan the right decision? Was there no other way to improve conditions in the neighborhood without destroying the livelihood of those who had toiled there? Perhaps the workers of the auto shops can find new employment and will benefit from the affordable housing being introduced into the area. But is anyone working with these displaced workers? Or does the macrovision overshadow the individual lives of an ethnic enclave? It is hard to know which side to prioritize.
