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.
[...] I will analyse in a second section the new Chinatown, its spatial logics of deliberate aggregation and I will show that it fits to the concept of “ethnoburb”. Moreover I will highlight hat Chinese migration to Vancouver is now part of a transnational process. II/ The new Chinatown: a voluntary and intentional separation A. New socio-economic profile of Chinese migrants In the 1960's, there was no more restrictions about ethnic origins of immigrants. They were chosen because of there skills: it was a process of brain drain. [...]
[...] Limits of the model for Vancouver Therefore, the ghetto is the first and incontrovertible step in adaptation of new migrants to their new environment. Then, they go to suburbs; which means having access to the middle-class. However, this model met some limits in the middle of the 20th century in Vancouver. Indeed, this model fits above all to Mediterranean migrants, but not really to Africans and Asiatic migrants. Moreover, in the Chinese community in Vancouver, there were not a lot of women but male workers who sent money to there family stayed in China. [...]
[...] New Chinatowns in Vancouver are a kind of economic enclaves where business men and employees belong to the same community. The ethnic gathering let Chinese people to develop a welcome place for new immigrants. A new political representation Moreover, much more Chinese living in Vancouver are involved in politics at the provincial and federal level[12]. They are running in districts were there is a large part of Chinese population, in order to be elected. It is a huge difference with the ghetto where Chinese people were not involved (because they couldn't) in political life. [...]
[...] Los Angeles : University of Southern California - MITCHELL Katharyne, “Reworking democracy: contemporary immigration and community politics in Vancouver's Chinatown”, in Political Geography, 1998-08, vol.17, - TURLEY Alan, Urban Culture, New Jersey, Pearson LI, Wei, Spatial Transformation of an Urban Ethnic Community from Chinatown to Chinese Ethnoburb in Los Angeles, PhD dissertation. Los Angeles : University of Southern California FOURNEL Thomas, De Chinatown à la banlieue hongkonguisée : la métamorphose de la communauté chinoise de Vancouver in Géographie et culture printemps, n°45 CAO Huhua, L'immigration chinoise au Canada: logiques spatiales et nouvelles territorialités in Norois FOURNEL Thomas, De Chinatown à la banlieue hongkonguisée : la métamorphose de la communauté chinoise de Vancouver in Géographie et culture printemps, n°45 HIEBERT Daniel, The social geography of immigration and urbanization in Canada: a review and interpretation, Vancouver, RIIM GRAFMEYER Yves et ISAAC Joseph, L'Ecole de Chicago, Paris, Aubier 1994 [...]
[...] It is a more or less institutionalised form of social distance which is visible in the spatial separation. From the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese migrants were considered as a menace for the Canadian workers. 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. [...]
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