Mutations of Vancouver's Chinatown: Spatial redistribution and new territorial logic's

Résumé du document

Large cities tend to be inhabited by minorities, immigrants and trans-national communities. In order to study this new dynamic, I have chosen the city of Vancouver (British Columbia) in Canada. Actually, I will be spending my 3rd year in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; that is why I am very interested in this city. Vancouver was for a long time the gateway for Chinese immigrants coming to Canada, because of its geographical situation. Today, Toronto is becoming the main city because of the number of immigrants that live there, but Vancouver remains very important for studying the Chinese community's settlements. In this paper, I will be especially interested in social geography of Chinese immigrants, and in the relationships between immigration and urban change. Indeed, types of habitat and geographical repartition in the city are the identification of the separation of social groups. New trends of settlement show the transformation of the place of the Chinese population in the social hierarchy in Vancouver.

Extraits

[...] Moreover, the clear distinction between poor inner-city and rich suburbs is overdrawn. Suburbs have recently become even more unequal, fragmented and socially polarized than they were in the past. They became immigrant reception zones. Whereas in the past immigrants generally gravitated toward the cheaper rents and the more extensive social institutions that facilitated their settlement in the inner city, they are now increasingly drawn to suburbs. It reveals new social geographies: traditional theories of immigrant settlement were built on the assumption that suburbanization was an outcome of both cultural assimilation and economic mobility. [...]

[...] It lets Chinatown investments be done. Local entrepreneurs are connected to extensive networks of Chinese capital across the Pacific Ocean[13]. It is a good example of globalization at the scale of a community. The housing market is also related by these flows of investments (mainly from Hong Kong but not only). Chinese capitalists are interested in Vancouver because search safe places on a political, financial and scholar plans. Concret investments of Chinese capitalists in Vancouver In 1987, there was a business immigration programme in Canada, so rich investors came and relaunched economy. [...]

[...] Mutations of Vancouver's Chinatown: spatial redistribution and new territorial logics Introduction Large cities tend to be more and more inhabited by minorities, immigrants and transnational communities. In order to study this new dynamic, I have chosen the city of Vancouver (British Columbia) in Canada. Actually, I will spend my 3rd year in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; that is why I am very interested in this city. Vancouver was for a long time the gate of Chinese immigrants coming to Canada, because of its geographical situation. [...]

[...] Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, is an example of an ethnoburb. Chinese people stand for around 1/3 inhabitant in Richmond. C. This new spatial concentration is a voluntary choice Phenomenon of aggregation Ethnoburbs are different from ghetto because they are voluntary. Indeed, ethnoburbs are result of deliberate creations of the ethnic groups to set up their own job and consumer markets in order to fit into broader national and international socio-economic and geopolitical contexts”[10]. Thus, the dynamics of ethnoburbs are different from those of ghettos and enclaves. [...]

[...] That is why they were marginalised by a specific head tax and by the suppression of the right of vote. The Chinese enclave was distinct both culturally and geographically. Vancouver's Chinatown was a spatial consequence of this official segregation. It was a real ghetto, because of a mood of Sino phobia. There was a discrimination against this community. Chinese immigrants had to crowd in unsanitary neighbours. Because it was hard for them to assimilate into the Canadian society, they formed ethnic ghettos. [...]