Vietnamese American Place Making in Northern Virginia*
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http://www.jstor.org/stable/215658 . Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA* JOSEPH WOOD ABSTRACT. Vietnamese Americans have made places for themselves in Northern Virginia by reconfiguringthe geography of the suburban places they inherited, including former high-order central-placenodes. VietnameseAmerican residences, churches, cemetery plots, and other distinctive ethnic markersare by and largedispersed and rarelynoticeable. Their retail districts,however, serve them in multiple materialand symbolic ways, not unlike sub- urban Chinatowns.Keywords: Northern Virginia, place making,retail districts, suburbs, Viet- nameseAmericans. Suburbs,where most Americans live, are rarely regarded as refugesof American pluralism,and the vastliterature on themis largelysilent about immigration and ethnicity(Li 1995,1996; Allen and Turner 1996). Conventional models of immigra- tion andurban geography cluster immigrants in centralcities, in responseto hous- ing and employment opportunities. William Burgess's1920s-era concentric-ring model of urban social morphology makesclear the geographythat immigrantsare said to haveshaped. But more recentimmigrants are making their own placesin the suburbsof America.Los Angeles epitomizes a metropolitanarea-wide, multiethnic reworkingof suburbanlandscapes and geographies.Suburban Northern Virginia is also experiencingvibrant ethnic place making. Here immigrantswrite fresh chap- ters in the biographyof the Americansuburb, even as they recasttheir own values, beliefs, norms, and behavior. VietnameseAmericans in Northern Virginiahave undertakentheir place mak- ing through subtle and not-so-subtle acts of appropriationand accommodation. The landscapesthey areshaping reflect their perceptionsof suburbanopportunities within inherited geographies.They are assuredlynot constructing ethnic home- lands or culture regions in conventional cultural geographicalterms-usually an original shaping of place said to occur with "firsteffective settlement"(Zelinsky 1973; Conzen 1993). Instead, Vietnamese Americans are imbuing suburbs with their own novel meanings.Passersby may notice a clusterof Vietnamesestores in a shoppingplaza, a zone of SoutheastAsian cuisine, a Buddhisttemple or VietnameseCatholic church announcedwith a distinctivescript, or a reservedsection of a cemetery.Vietnamese Americanssee a vibrantcommunity center,economic enterprise,reflections of tra- dition, contested interests, and complex social and economic geographies.Place making involvesa continual processof shaping identity and expressingsocial rela- tionships. The Vietnamese American community is itself evolving; nowhere are * The National Endowment for the Humanities,through its National Conversationon American Pluralism,and George Mason University provided funding for researchon this project. *t, DR.WOOD iSa professorof geographyatGeorge Mason University,Fairfax, Virginia 22030-4444. The GeographicalReview 87 (1): 58-72, January1997 Copyright ? 1997 by the American Geographical Society of New York This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 59 pieces of Vietnam merely relocating wholesale (Hein 1995, 50). In making places VietnameseAmericans are enjoying and directing suburbangeographical change. VIETNAMESE AMERICANS IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA Vietnamesehave come to the United Statesin a seriesof distinctivewaves, their refu- gee status distinguishing them and other Indochinese from the larger category of Asian immigrants.The original1975 refugeewave includedhighly educated,profes- sional and elite membersof the formerU.S.-backed South Vietnamesegovernment who fled afterthe fall of Saigon. Some 40 percent of these immigrantswere Catho- lic-from a basepopulation in Vietnamthat was only lo percentCatholic-and some 20 percent had a university-leveleducation. "Boatpeople" were refugeesof more modest means who escaped in late 1970S and early198os. This second wavewas composed especiallyof Viet Hoa, a highly en- trepreneurial,Chinese ethnic minority.In general,more of the second-waveimmi- grantswere males, Buddhists,less affluent,and less educated (Dunning 1989). Still, they maintained strong family ties and kinship networks and adapted quickly to their new Americansetting, even if they did not necessarilyassimilate as quicklyas many of the first-waveimmigrants did (Desbarats1986; Yu and Liu 1986; Dunning 1989, 77). In the 198os the immigrationcohorts began to mirrorthe demographiccharac- teristics of Vietnam itself (Allen and Turner 1988, 191). By this time, too, many Amerasianswere contributingto the immigrationstream, though they faced much the same prejudice among Vietnamese Americans as they had faced in Vietnam. Most recently,former political prisonersor reeducationdetainees have been arriv- ing. All are participatingin place making in Northern Virginia. Particularhistorical reasons led Vietnamese to the United States and certain Vietnamese to Northern Virginia (Andrews and Stopp 1985; Desbarats1985). Al- though neither the District of Columbianor Virginiawas historicallyan important destination for immigrants,Pentagon connections are today highly significantfor first-waverefugees from a number of countries to Northern Virginia. Moreover, jobs in a dynamic,suburban-focused metropolitan economy are an immediate ex- planation for the suburbandestinations of these immigrants.Global economic and political change has catapultedthe region into the spotlight for recentimmigrants, with English now the second language in 25 percent of Northern Virginia house- holds. Chain migration has brought subsequent waves, and immigrants have as- similated quickly,especially if they have local relativesand English-languageskills. As recentlyas 1994Vietnamese were second only to Salvadoransin the number of immigrantsentering the Washingtonmetropolitan region. Now some 50,000 Viet- nameseAmericans live in the metropolitanarea, most of them in NorthernVirginia (Sun and Nguyen 1995, 12) (Figure 1). SuburbanNorthern Virginia includes within it relict proto-urban places, like FallsChurch, settlement of which dates from 1699.Such places have emerged in re- cent years as nodes for suburban central-placeactivities as the rapid post-World This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6o THE GEOGRAPHICALREVIEW ~ . I Loudoun ,!2 Northern Vurganu Na t @s> 'XYIilan)'s,uty crneW WASHdINGTON CCouner tyC X .g. X W ar II ubur ofNorthrn Vigini enveoped hem.Arlington is the butWilliamI still generallyIsuburbanO f i C n fothet AmeracnsmitCorner /\ __ I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~t Virginia portion of the original District of Columbia, which the federal govern- Arlingtynscmeca cetr.. pato srecr-ae eai ti. h 90 TysonsCorner, which ledtyo rti onr.Ecsieln nSee ifrn u whchldtrealdcien Claenon Thne.17Svrino ee onra landscape.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~Aexndi widely,migration has formed a wedge-shapedsector (Prastein 1990).affluent~~~~~~~~~~er Less and usuallyrecent immigrants congregate temporarily in well-known FG1TeVietnamese preerncein Northern Virginia,1990 dsourcedU Buestaudofrogarden-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~x`theCesu Waringonsubrbnization moftdnsl Northlern Vrginia destnvelopedithem Arlngtondi Sthtes govern- Virinineuplortilon egbrod Bofutevorignata Vietnamese.raditcto o iil Columbia,Pk twhich n19 thel ocnufedrchald rc e mae,ntreturned. to Virini inm1860 bercauenitwas oenamsiere toomeripheral.ve wihad versioofCaednma uooile-orinteSeventhr Corners,rigo,Fifx nal hercdeeoment ofn whichled4to reAltog decinetinCarendn.Te 19705anhversinc ofpeseSeven Cornrsea Tysons,Cograiner, which-shled ometorti elnnsevnctornePras.eiEach i adfferentbues hidstoially iprtaent typegraofcntral-pace atvtymnodeil in aelkon emrigasuurbn- lingtonmongthmpexs mostdensl shetldrefue dwesoestinationes inatthesUnitedthStates, dfamlie,and beyondt. Byu98 smeostecet fVietnamese Americans diprewithinhero- live drewus1984).bAlhougshaarnovibl Vietnamese. Amrian have sinc disersed eventmre- This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 61 corded more than 9 percentVietnamese Americans, but the number of tractswith i percent and more is considerable. A traditionalmodel of ethnic residentialconcentration does not work for Viet- namese Americans-or for other Asian Americans in metropolitan Washington. Wilbur Zelinskyand BarrettLee (1993)call such complex distribution heterolocal- ism, by which they mean that physicalproximity is increasinglyless a prerequisite for ethnic identity and community. KevinDunn's (1993)study of VietnameseAus- traliansin Cabramatta,a suburb of Sydney,revealed a similarpattern,