D.Murali

Chennai: Immigrant flows can be seen both as an issue and an opportunity. “For example, the city of Vienna created a public housing complex in the 1990s called ‘Global Yard’ which mixes native-born Viennese with foreign-born residents at a fifty-fifty ratio to encourage greater social integration,” writes Marie Price in one of the essays included in ‘The Sage Companion to the City’ (www.sagepublications.com), edited by Tim Hall, Phil Hubbard and John Rennie Short. A contrasting example is of cities in the Middle East, such as Dubai and Riyadh, where “foreign-labour is admitted on a temporary basis and it is often segregated from the native population in discrete residential zones.”

As cities are the places where foreign-born and native-born are most likely to come into contact, they become vital settings for both tolerance and intolerance of ethnic and cultural difference, the author observes. She suggests that cities can make public space available for festivals and other events that display the cultural diversity of residents.

The essay discusses a core issue surrounding urban immigrant settlement: spatial segregation, be it voluntary or forced. Generally, forced segregation is an indicator of immigrant marginalisation and discrimination; and self-segregation is often seen as being conducive to building solidarity and an ethnic economy.

Chinatowns are an example; while the early ones were a case of segregation, the latter Chinatowns, especially in many Southeast Asian cities do not owe their origin to segregationist policies, Price states. “The advantages of Chinese ethnic clustering are still evident today in the phenomenon of the ethnoburb.” She quotes Wei Li for a definition of ethnoburb as “suburban ethnic clusters of residential and business districts in large metropolitan areas.”

Ethnoburbs are typically multi-ethnic communities in which one ethnic community has a significant influence but may not be the majority, Price explains. “They function in many ways like an inner-city enclave but they also tend to have better schools, cheaper housing, lower crime, and greater anonymity associated with the suburbs.”

The ethnic economy often relies upon trust, because of the lack of formal financial services available to newly-arrived populations. “Many agreements are carried out on a handshake and the knowledge of social and economic isolation if an agreement is not honoured.”

It is not unusual that cities become host to groups and associations formed by immigrants as ethnic and economic support. “Thus, in a gateway city there might be an association of Indian computer programmers or Korean dry-cleaners.” Equally important, says Price, are hometown associations created by immigrants in destination cities to support communities back home by collecting funds ‘to build schools, sports facilities, churches, clinics or provide electricity.’

An interesting case study in the book, about the immigrants absorbing the host city, is that of ethnic Japanese entrepreneurs in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They had begun to arrive in large numbers in the early twentieth century. “Initially brought over to work in the surrounding coffee plantations, Japanese immigrants acquired their own lands, moved to their city, and became an important force in commerce and the agro-industrial economy of Brazil. This same ethnic community was mobilised in the early 1990s.”

When the Brazilian economy was in a crisis, many Japanese Brazilians took advantage of changes in Japanese immigration law that allowed people of Japanese ancestry to legally enter Japan as permanent residents, recounts Price, citing research by Roth. “Tens of thousands left Brazil, but many have also returned finding that they were more Brazilian (and less Japanese) than they realised.”

Packed with insights.

**

BookPeek.blogspot.com