The Formation of Ethnic Resources and Social Capital in Immigrant Neighborhoods: Chinatown and Koreatown in Los Angeles

Why does ethnicity have varied effects on socioeconomic outcomes, such as educational achievement, for different national-origin groups, even after holding constant key socioeconomic and contextual factors? Why do the children of Chinese and Korean immigrants in the United States, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds, excel and succeed in the educational arena in disproportionately large numbers? This paper draws on my prior ethnographic studies of the Chinese and Korean immigrant communities in Los Angeles to develop a community perspective for explaining how neighborhoods are shaped by ethnicity and how ethnic communities generate resources conducive to social mobility that benefit coethnic members to the exclusion of noncoethnic members sharing the same physical space. Why does ethnicity have varied effects on socioeconomic outcomes, such as educational achievement, for different national-origin groups, even after holding constant key socioeconomic and contextual factors? Specifically, why do the children of Chinese and Korean immigrants in the United States, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds, excel and succeed in the educational arena in disproportionately large numbers? Much of the intellectual debate on ethnic differences in socioeconomic outcomes is between the cultural perspective, which emphasizes the role of internal agency and the extent to which ethnic cultures fit the requirements of the mainstream society, and the structural perspective, which emphasizes the role of social structure and the extent to which ethnic groups are constrained by the broader stratification system and networks of social relations within it.