Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1997 A New Community in an Old Neighborhood: Common Territory Jing Zhang Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Zhang, Jing, "A New Community in an Old Neighborhood: Common Territory" (1997). Dissertations. 3663. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3663 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1997 Jing Zhang LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO A NEW COMMUNITY IN AN OLD NEIGHBORHOOD: COMMON TERRITORY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY ~.ND ANTHROPOLOGY BY JING ZHANG CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY, 1997 Copyright by Jing Zhang, 1996 All right reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my dissertation committee for their valuable advice, comments, and editing. I am especially grateful to Dr. Philip Nyden for his interest in my research and his suggestion to focus on the Argyle community; to Dr. Kirsten Gr0nbjerg for her encouragement and ideas to carry on this research; to Dr. Kathleen Mccourt for those discussions which helped formulate this dissertation; and to Dr. Gerald Suttles for his expertise, suggestions, and patience. I am greatly in debt to my interviewees in the Argyle community who provided the inspiration for this dissertation. Without their help, this research would not have been possible. Several community organizations and institutions involved in this research. The Asian Small Business Association, South-East Asia Center, Vietnamese Association of Illinois, Cambodian Association of Illinois, Lao Community Services Center of Illinois, Chinese Mutual Aid Association, Traveler and Immigrants Aid, Interchurch Refugee and Immigration Ministries, Teo Chew Mutual Assistance Association, Lakefront SRO, Winthrop Tower, St. Thomas Canterbury Church, Lutheran Chinese Church, and several Buddhist temples provided valuable assistance and insight and I extend my thanks to them all. I would like to thank Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago for University Dissertation Fellowship during 1992-1993; United Way of Chicago and Loyola University Chicago for Community Research Fellowship in Community Development during 1994-1995. I am indebted to many others who have helped me along the way: Dr. Judith Wittner and Dr. Helena Lopata gave me fieldwork opportunities through their graduate classes in which I became familiar with the Argyle community; Dr. Richard Block provided statistical data on crimes; Mr. Granston shared his knowledge of Asian iii Americans; Ms. Collette Speakman from Metro Chicago Information Center provided the Argyle community map; Ms. Laurie Garvin helped with the final editing; and my friends and my fellow graduate students boosted my morale with their good cheer and faith. Finally, I can never thank my family enough. Without them I may not have come so far. I thank my parents for teaching me to appreciate higher learning, and my younger brother for taking on all the family obligations that I was unable to. I hope my father who passed away in 1986 can finally rest in peace in the distant heaven. I would like to thank my husband for his commitment and support and my daughter Annie for her understanding, enthusiasm, and cooperation at a young age. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii List of Maps vii List of Tables viii List of Figures ix INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter I. LITERATURE REVIEW 4 Assimilation and Ethnic Options . 5 Anglo-Conformity and the "Melting Pot 5 Middlemen Minority . 7 cultural Pluralism . 7 Symbolic Ethnicity . 9 Social Structure and the Disadvantaged 10 Emergent Ethnicity . 10 Racial Discrimination and the Disadvantaged 13 Ethnic Conununity . 16 Human Ecology and Conununity-Lost . 17 Persistence of Conununity and Conununity Transformation 19 Summary . • . • . • • . • • . • . • • • . • 23 II. AN ATTENTION CATCHING COMMUNITY: ARGYLE IN UPTOWN 27 Physical Make-up, Population, and the Impact of Decline 30 Revitalization: the Ambition to Build a New Chinatown . 35 The Refugees from Southeast Asia -- the "Chinese Dream Goes International" ..... 38 A New Image and New Hope for Development 39 III. BUSINESS -- THE CENTER OF THE COMMUNITY 45 Starting a Small Self-employed Business 47 Groups in the Business Conununity . 47 The Road to a Self-Employed Business 52 Why Start a Self-Employed Business? . 55 Business Types, Operations, and Connections 64 Major Types of Businesses . 65 Business Expansion . 69 Traditional Ways of Payment and Credit Deferment Criteria . 70 Informal Ties and Public Involvements . 71 Emotional Bonds and Economic Significance: the Role of the Business 76 v Emotional Bonds . • . 76 Cultural Base and Cultural Experience 80 Economic Opportunities . 83 IV. ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITY STRUCTURE 88 Organization Evolution and Structure 90 Asian Service Organizations . • . 90 Asian Regional/Cultural Organizations 92 Temples and Churches . • . 94 Non-Asian Organizations . 97 "Double Missions": Cultural Identity and Assimilation 99 Family Counseling . 101 Taking Care of the Elderly . • . 105 Mental Heal th . • . 106 Cultural Programs and Cultural Events . 109 Internal and External Connections, and Organizational Network . .•....... 112 Different Resources and the Uneven Status of Different Groups .... 120 v. DIVERSIFIED BUT SEPARATE 127 "We Live in Different Worlds" 128 Language ..... 130 Culture and Religion 134 Immigrant and Refugee Life Experiences 137 Controversial Issues 139 Public Aid 139 Streets . 144 Timing and Manner of Entry 146 Self-help Networks 149 VI. IMAGE AND DEFINITION OF THE COMMUNITY 155 What is Community -- People, Place, or Business? 155 Forces Influencing Community Image Making 158 CONCLUSION 164 APPENDIX 178 Research Method and Reflections . 178 Topics of Inquiry -- Interview Guide 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY 196 VITA 205 vi LIST OF MAPS Page Map 1. Argyle Community . 28 Map 2. Argyle Market Area 82 vii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Housing Characteristics in Argyle and Uptown, 1990 32 Table 2. Characteristics of Business Owners SS Table 3. Type of Business 66 Table 4. Median Household Income and Per Person Income as Table S. Number of Programs and Clients of Refugee Organizations, FY' 9S . 101 viii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Population Change in the Argyle Community, 1980-1990 41 Figure 2. Number of Major Crimes in the Argyle Community, 1993-95 42 Figure 3. Crime Rates 100 Persons in 1995, Argyle vs. Uptown 43 Figure 4. Percent of Persons on Public Aid*, 1996 140 ix INTRODUCTION My interest in car.ducting this research on the Argyle community, or "New Chinatown," started when I was still involved in my dissertation coursework. Several of my courses focused on different dimensions of the community. During this time, I contacted many people from community organizations, churches, businesses, as well as tourists, shoppers, police patrol officers, and residents in the community. I found in my conversations that although the community was known variously as "New Chinatown", "North Chinatown", "Vietnamese Refugee Camp", or "Asian Village," few people outside the community knew how this community had developed or how it came to have these different names. The Argyle community has recently been proclaimed as a miracle of "economic success" in a low-income and high crime area. However, there is little known about what the refugees and immigrants have gone through to achieve this "success", and what this "success" means to them, nor is there any documentation on their self-help system, how this system has supported them emotionally and financially, and how it has structured their relationship in the community. People often portray the Argyle community, as well as larger Uptown community area of which it is a part, as a typical example of diversity and gentrification without replacing the low-income residents. However, little is known about how the people negotiate their space, relationships, and power during development. How people identify themselves in such a diversified space and cultural atmosphere, other questions, such as how such a community is defined; and whether it is possible to identify some general conditions of "healthy" community in spite of the wide range of cultural and economic differences existing in the community area, are going to be discussed in this dissertation. 2 In sociology, race and ethnic relations have been studied from two major perspectives. From the cultural perspective, sociologists attempt to understand the possibility of acculturation and assimilation of new immigrants into the mainstream culture. The cultural explanation of race and ethnic relations ranges from Anglo-conformity, melting pot, pluralism, and symbolic ethnicity. While discussing assimilation, sociologists from the cultural perspective singled out one particular group -- the self­ employed minorities and developed a theory called "middle man minority." This theory suggests that ethnic self-employed business owners have the mentality of a "sojourner" which motivates them to live a thrifty and isolated life. Their