Giving Back to the Community

Abstract

My argument is that the assimilationist approach will become increasingly problematic as new types of neighborhoods such as ethnoburbs and multiracial neighborhoods emerge in major U.S. cities like Los Angeles and the personal and political experiences of Asian Americans become increasingly diverse within these shifting contexts. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to identify the eventual fate of Asians in the U.S., the article aims to explicate some of the processes through which these groups may create and maintain political ties to the ethnic community. With specific focus on the Korean American community in Los Angeles, the purpose of the study is to understand why some 1.5 and second generations return to the political institutions of the ethnic community despite residential and socioeconomic mobility into middle-class, suburban neighborhoods outside the ethnic enclave of Koreatown. In other words, what are the psychological, political, and structural advantages of maintaining ethnic tie...