Little Saigon As a Model of Ethnic Commercial Belts1

Conveying a Sense of Community along Bolsa Avenue: Little Saigon as a Model of Ethnic Commercial Belts1 Colette Marie McLaughlin* and Paul Jesilow* ABSTRACT In the past, ethnic enclaves have functioned as homogeneous residential areas providing support and comfort to newly arrived immigrants. A new form of urban village is increasingly serving commuting immigrants who live in integrated residential neighbourhoods. Little Saigon, a Vietnamese commercial belt in Southern California, serves as a model of this emerging form. Participant observation and interviews with users of Little Saigon and other ethnic commercial belts in Southern California reveal that these areas provide users with places where they can experience the sense of community previously provided by ethnic ghettos. Little Saigon demonstrates that ethnic, commercial enclaves benefit diverse groups of individuals: in these places immigrants with limited English gain employment, older immigrants find solace, and “Americanized” immigrants and their children connect with their ancestral culture. Concomitant with the cultural advantages are the perpetuation of stereo- types, erosion of ethnic boundaries and persistent forms of specialized crime that threaten these areas’ success and yield negative perceptions of the areas’ ethnic groups. INTRODUCTION Ethnic populations have become dispersed throughout diverse urban areas; the urban villages where immigrants adapted their former non-urban culture and institutions to a new neighbourhood (Gans, 1962) are decreasing rapidly in * School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, USA. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd., © 1998 IOM 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK, and International Migration Vol. 36 (1) 1998 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0020-7985 50 McLaughlin and Jesilow number (Abu-Lughod, 1994a). Similar to the way that social networks link subgroups of diverse communities (Fischer, 1982), arterial thoroughfares connect dispersed members of ethnic groups. Strips of ethnic enterprises interspersed along miles of nondescript highways appear to compensate for the decrease in segregated, ethnic residential communities. They provide members of their ethnic group with a place to find social identity and specialized services and merchandise. Examples of unique business offerings are as diverse as the hundreds of ethnic groups living in metropolitan areas in Southern California: East-Asian Indian Americans purchase saris on Pioneer Boulevard; Jewish Americans dine on blini along Fairfax Avenue; Korean Americans savour kimchi on Olympic Boulevard; Mexican Americans listen to tejano on Florence Boulevard; and African Americans buy chitlins on Crenshaw Boulevard. Each specialized commercial belt has distinctive sounds, smells, tastes and sights that provide an ambiance reminiscent of diminishing ethnic neighbourhoods. Recent immigrant groups to the US are developing these ethnic communities for members dispersed throughout large metropolitan areas. Instead of primarily serving first-generation residents, these urban markets cater for multiple generations. Ethnic commercial enclaves’ specialized restaurants, groceries and shops are the backbone of these areas (Boyer, 1994). Their products, unavailable in most mainstream markets, attract ethnic customers. Commercial ethnic belts are more attractive than typically isolated and im- poverished ethnic slums. The newer areas do not resemble Park’s and Burgess’ undesirable zones of transition; their arterial locations are convenient for commuters and, as thriving commercial areas, they lack the physical decay that may elicit fear and avoidance from potential visitors (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). Interviews and observations are the sources of data used in this article to shed light on one ethnic commercial belt – Little Saigon. Existing research does not provide insights into such ethnic businesses. Qualitative research is a means to inductively generate theory in this area by collecting and analysing pertinent information (Glaser and Strauss, 1967: Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Agar, 1991). Ethnographic investigations and open-ended interviews can provide data that reveal ways in which this specific type of urban enterprise serves its users (Jacobs, 1993). An ethnography provides detailed description of social behaviour gained by observing people in their everyday settings and is usually conducted over an extended period of time (Calhoun et al., 1994). Surveys may be inadequate for learning much about immigrant communities for two major reasons: ethnic groups have a typically poor response rate (Loo, 1991) and surveys are not very helpful in understanding complex relationships (Kerlinger, 1986). Conveying a sense of community along Bolsa Avenue 51 PROMULGATING VIETNAMESE CULTURE ON BOLSA AVENUE Vietnamese refugees to the US began to arrive in large numbers with the fall of Saigon in 1975 (Farber, 1987). The initial wave of immigrants fled their generational homes, the venerated burial places of their relatives, with few possessions. They were escaping expected “re-education” and other forms of punitive persecution because of their collaboration with the US. As described to us by one Vietnamese woman: “It was difficult to leave the place where we had always lived and where our ancestors were buried. My father explained to us that it was not safe for us to stay, that the communists would make life unpleasant for us.” The initial refugees were dispersed to four relocation centres throughout the US. Later immigrants, many of whom were from higher socio-economic backgrounds than their predecessors, were allowed to enter the country only if they could show that they had a host family. These policies were intentionally devised to avoid the formation of Vietnamese ghettos (Song, 1988). Language and other cultural differences between refugees and the inhabitants of their new homeland added to the immigrants’ distress (Smith and Tarallo, 1993). To function in their new culture, rapid cultural adaptations were required. In the past, immigrant urban villages had facilitated adjustment by alleviating some of the normlessness felt by immigrants by providing an area where they could continue cultural customs. Normlessness is associated with anomy, which occurs when accepted guidelines for behaviour are abruptly altered; it causes confusion, may produce psychological distress and has been related to increased rates of suicide (Durkheim, 1984; Ginsberg, 1980). Unlike Herbert Gans’ urban village, Little Saigon primarily serves persons living miles outside its boundaries. Little Saigon is considered a major business, cultural and social centre to seven out of ten Vietnamese (Dizon, 1994), but less than 5 per cent of California’s estimated 300,000 Vietnamese residents live in Westminster, the city in which the commercial area is located (US Bureau of the Census, 1992). This specialized area provides a place for immigrants to experience solidarity, empowering them with a sense of identity (Jenkins, 1996) as they adapt to a new culture, thus lessening anomy. Little Saigon allows Vietnamese Americans to cease deferring to the cultural mores of their new homeland in much the same way that the area interrupts a relentless procession of nondescript commercial buildings. Little Saigon is a model of how belts of ethnic businesses facilitate activities that furnish a sense of place. It illustrates how members of one cultural group, Vietnamese Americans, are served by one of Southern California’s major commercial 52 McLaughlin and Jesilow ethnic belts. Spatially dispersed Vietnamese Americans scattered throughout metropolitan communities travel miles to temporarily bask in culturally famil- iar surroundings with others who, like themselves, will soon return to live and function as visible minority members within a vastly disparate culture. Little Saigon’s businesses have blossomed from a few Vietnamese speciality shops in the late 1970s to more than 2,000 ethnic-oriented businesses flanking Bolsa Avenue (Dizon, 1994). The rapid growth of the area must be attributed, in part, to the relative economic well-being of the middle and upper class refugees, who were professionals, merchants, entrepreneurs, and government officials in Vietnam. Little Saigon’s cultural wealth also lures undesired visitors whose activities threaten the sense of community that Vietnamese Americans seek. Tourism, for example, undermines the ethnic commercial belt’s ability to sustain its distinctive cultural quality. Positive national accounts of Little Saigon (Karnow, 1992) have promoted it as a tourist destination close to millions of non-Vietnamese living and visiting Los Angeles and Orange Counties. An influx of outsiders threatens the community’s ability to maintain the ethnic boundary that most of its ethnic visitors find exhilarating. Little Saigon also acts as a lightning rod for surrounding Orange County media coverage of wrongdoing. Zones of immigrants have historically had more than their fair share of crime (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Park et al., 1925; Shaw and McKay, 1942) and imported Vietnamese customs appear to increase illegal activities. Vietnamese distrust banks and police. Life-savings are often in the form of jewellery in their homes and if robbed they do not report crimes to police (Song, 1988). Imported cultural mores prohibit public disclosure of personal hardship, and remembrance of corrupt police in their homeland enable specialized Vietnamese gangs to commit extortion and residential

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