“That is Real America!”: Imaginative Geography among the Chinese Immigrants in Flushing, New York City

Abstract

Imaginative geography is lived. It is grounded in everyday life, embedded in local context, and influences place identity and place making. By using Chinese immigrants in Flushing, New York City, as an example, this article will explore the formation of multi‐scalar imaginative geographies of the receiving nation, city, and neighborhood among immigrants in their everyday work and travel. The study demonstrates that after migration, physical distance is replaced by the social and cultural distance across which imaginative geographies are formed, reconstructed, and contested. In the case of Flushing, the easy access to ethnic resources leads to a superficial exposure to the world outside the community, thus the geographic knowledge among the Chinese immigrants largely remains imaginative. The imaginative community nurtures a sense of insider‐ness that stands in large contrast with the sense of the outsider‐ness beyond the community, reflected in daily language, racial consciousness, perceived boundaries, and the sense of place among the Chinese immigrants in Flushing.

Key words:

• imaginative geography
• Thirdspace
• migration
• Chinese immigrants
• New York City

Notes

1. The relevant questions on the interview guide include: Among all the major migration destinations, why did you choose the United States and New York City? Before arrival, what were the images of the U.S. and New York City in your mind? After arrival, what experiences were out of your expectation? How often do you go outside of New York City and Flushing? For what reason? And how? What are the challenges of everyday mobility? Describe atypical daily/weekly/yearly travel. How often do you communicate with people of other race and ethnicity? For what reason? What is your experience? Since the interviews were semi‐structured and interactive, some of the follow‐up questions emerged during the conversation, which were substantial to understanding the formation of imaginative geographies.

2. After the connections were built with some of the interviewees, the researcher became WeChat friends with them. WeChat posts serve well to contextualize the findings of this research. However, no data were directly used from them. Therefore, WeChat was used as a space for observation.

3. The interviewer asked each participant to name five most familiar places both in the U.S. and in New York City and describe each. Figures 2 and 3 are based on the aggregate data from the question. Figure 2 uses the cartogram‐geoprocessing tool developed by ESRI (http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d348614c97264ae19b0311019a5f2276, last accessed 24 December 2016). In the cartogram, the size of each state is not based on their actual size, but on the familiarity among the Chinese in Flushing. Figure 3 is a word‐cloud based on the familiarity of the places in New York City. Using the shape of an apple as the background illustrates the nickname of New York City as the “Big Apple” that is popular among the Chinese immigrants in Flushing.

4. The imagined boundaries in Figure 4 are determined by the aggregate data of identification of Flushing boundaries during mental mapping and interviews.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shaolu Yu

Dr. Shaolu Yu, Urban Studies, Rhodes College, 2000 N. Parkway, Memphis, TN 38112, USA; [[email protected]] or [[email protected]].