Chinatown Divided: A Relational Account of the East Asian Co-ethnic Gentrification of Flushing, Queens

Abstract

Though dominant understandings about the gentrification of minority communities in the United States largely suggest that the process is always white-led, the primary gentrifiers of Flushing, Queens—a historic, working-class Asian neighborhood—seem to be other Asians. Extant literature about minority co-ethnic gentrification in the U.S. suggests that Black and Latinx/e gentrifiers often feel racial solidarity with lower-income co-ethnics and aim to “uplift” them. Given uniquely large socioeconomic disparities within Asian communities that intersect with multiple demographic cleavages, this study aims to test the generalizability of the “racial uplift” hypothesis (Boyd 2005) to a co-ethnically gentrifying East Asian neighborhood. In this thesis, I ask: how do higher-income East Asian newcomers and longtime, working-class East Asian community members of Flushing conceptualize their community and their places within it amid co-ethnic gentrification? Analyzing 37 interviews with East Asian gentrifiers and the gentrified, I find that, rather than being rooted in “racial uplift,” for wealthier (and younger) Asians, co-ethnic gentrification in Flushing represents the creation of a new kind of Chinatown. As such, despite their shared racial identity with the neighborhood’s gentrifiers, longtime working-class community members are largely excluded from this new Chinatown and feel an increased estrangement from their home.