Making Sense of Asian American Ethnic Neighborhoods

Abstract

Research on Asian American ethnic neighborhoods lacks appreciation of the national-origin, nativity, and socioeconomic diversity within this racial group. Using the 2000 U.S. Census, this paper creates a novel theoretical typology based on these features of diversity to characterize ethnic neighborhoods (N = 74) among Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese Americans in California. Korean and Chinese American ethnic neighborhoods are bimodally distributed into immigrant enclaves and resurgent communities. Communities of constraint and immigrant enclaves are overrepresented among Filipino and Vietnamese American ethnic neighborhoods. Linking the neighborhood data with the California Health Interview Survey 2007–2009 (N = 1,901), I demonstrate that Asian Americans living in resurgent communities have the highest likelihood of reporting good health. Furthermore, ethnic neighborhood type explains some of the differences in health across national-origin groups, indicating that the socioeconomic and nativity resources characterizing ethnic neighborhood environments vary systematically across groups and that this variation matters for important individual outcomes like health.