Seeing beyond an ‘ethnic enclave’: the time/space of Manchester Chinatown

Abstract

Research on Chinatowns stresses the spatial aspects of their production as communal urban spaces. This is particularly evident in the prevailing rhetoric of ethnic ‘enclaves’ that is common in the literature on Chinatowns. This article stresses the importance of taking into account the temporal dimensions of the examinations of space and migrants’ relationships with the city. The argument maintains that, although Manchester Chinatown incorporates many layers of time, only some of them are acknowledged. This view ties both space and people into a particular temporality that is associated with a predetermined culture and tradition. The article shows how relocation from Chinatown to a non-ethnically defined urban area makes it possible for community organisations to depart from the essentialised ethnic, cultural, and social associations produced through dominant understandings of migrant communal space.

Keywords:

• Chinatown
• Manchester
• space
• time
• migrant community

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Małgorzata Jakimów for her help with conducting and transcribing the interviews and to the participants of the ‘Diasporic Conviviality, Cosmopolitanism and Urban Spaces’ workshop held in Manchester in July 2011. I am indebted to Adi Kuntsman, Astrid Nordin, Encarna Guiterrez-Rodriguez, Garbi Schmidt, Karen Buckley, Nina Glick-Schiller, Pal Nyiri, Rosemary Sales, William A. Callahan, and the anonymous referees for their thoughtful comments and constructive criticisms on the earlier versions of this article. All inconsistencies in the argument are mine.

Notes

1. Manchester Guardian was the name of the Guardian newspaper from its foundation in Manchester in 1821–1959, when it was changed to the Guardian.

2. An article in the Manchester Guardian in February 1912 estimated the total number of Chinese immigrants in Manchester to be around one hundred (Manchester Guardian, 20 February 1912).

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was enabled by a seedcorn grant from the cities@manchester and the British Inter-University China Centre research fellowship.