Divergent experiences and patterns of integration: contemporary Chinese immigrants in metropolitan Los Angeles, USA

ABSTRACT

Since China’s open-door and economic reform in 1979, new waves of emigration from the country have been increasingly diverse with highly skilled immigrants on one hand and unskilled or undocumented immigrants on the other. Based on data from an online survey and in-depth interviews of contemporary Chinese immigrants in metropolitan Los Angeles, we explore two main questions: (1) How do Chinese immigrants negotiate integration and identity as they navigate multiple pathways to resettlement? (2) Why do patterns of convergence and divergence emerge simultaneously and within the same ethnic group? We find that, although Chinese immigrants as a group are economically well-integrated, their lived experiences on the ground do not fit neatly into linear models of assimilation. We also find that their patterns of integration, identity formation, coethnic interaction, and sense of belonging are multivariate, and even peculiar and counterintuitive. These divergent patterns emerge from the interactive processes of immigrant selectivity and social transformations in the context of reception at the dual levels of the host society and ethnic community.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese immigration
• segmented assimilation
• immigrant selectivity
• intragroup diversity
• ethnic community

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Shaohua Zhan for his helpful comments, and Aricat Rajiv George, Grace Gao, and Misha Garg for their research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The targeted population of our online survey include anyone who was born in mainland China or Hong Kong or Taiwan, was above aged 21, and had lived in Greater Los Angeles for more than a year. A survey firm was tasked to collect about 60% of the data based on the specifications to draw a representative sample of the population. However, detailed procedure of sampling was not accessible to the researchers due to commercial reasons. The other 40% of the online survey data were collected through snowballing by the research team to ensure data quality. The response rate for our snowball sampling was above 90% because it was done by interpersonal referral. The data collected by snowballing generally match the data collected by the survey firm. Our sample also include a smaller number of respondents living in Orange and San Bernardino counties. Our sample is relatively large and the data were checked against the 2015–17 American Community Survey data for Los Angeles with little discrepancy, hence the problem of sampling errors was at minimum.

2 Included in the Los Angeles study was also a sample of Indian immigrants (158 survey respondents, 35 interviews, and one focus group), as well as 20 interviews alongside two focus groups with native-born Americans of other ethno-racial backgrounds were also conducted (Zhou, Zhan, and Ling 2016).

3 All pseudonyms are Anglicised based on the preference of our interviewees, most of whom use Anglocised names in real life.

4 Estimated in 2017 American Community Survey, see ‘Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: May 2019’, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2019/asian-american-pacific-islander.html, accessed on 12 September 2020.

5 A term coined by Wei Li (1998) to refer to middleclass suburbs dominated by non-white minorities groups.

6 The top-three metropolitan areas receiving Indians were New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C.

7 For example, education, occupation, income, and place of residence.

8 Table not shown.

9 San Gabriel, located at the heart of the San Gabriel Valley, is one of the largest Chinese ethnoburbs in metropolitan Los Angeles.

10 Interview with Amber.

11 Interview with Amber.

Additional information

Funding

The study was primarily funded by an Academic Research Fund tier 2 grant from the Ministry of Education Singapore (#MOE2015-T2-2-027) and partially from the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair’s fund at UCLA, USA.