Rethinking ‘ethnic neighborhoods’ after the mobility turn

Abstract

The study of ‘ethnic neighborhoods’ came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s when they were ‘discovered’ as the vibrant spaces of newcomers’ interactions in American cities. Jewish, Italian, and Chinese districts within the major cities of immigration were scrutinized if not celebrated for their ingathering and for the intra-ethnic support that these spaces of settlement gave to successive waves of people: helping each other find lodging and housing, not to mention their favorite foods, other pinochle players, or marriage partners. At the same time, two other aspects of these neighborhoods became clear, but which merit greater attention today within the rubric of mobility studies. First, no ethnic neighborhood was ever perfectly homogeneous; and second, even more pertinent to today’s perspective, people moved in and out in a state of continued mobility that has been little studied. What has been the relationship to the initial spaces of settlement for both immediate migrants and their descendants? At any given moment and over time, the ‘ethnic neighborhood’ has never been an absolutely fixed phenomenon.