Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Immigrants and investment never touch down in empty space, and the
property market takes new arrivals to neighbourhoods whose land use plan-
ning is managed by municipal governments responsive to local citizens and
their priorities. Chapter 6 deals with the vexed question of the reception of
wealthy immigrants by the Canadian-born, for the deployment of their wealth
in the urban land market caused some controversy. Both in Vancouver and
Toronto there was concern at the creation of ethnoburbs where Asian-themed
malls offered an unfamiliar presence not necessarily perceived as welcoming
to long-settled residents. Moving into long-stable elite neighbourhoods, the
preference of East Asian immigrants for large new houses led to widespread
demolition of older properties, a steep upward price movement, and resent-
ment at the disruption of an existing elite sense of place. The adjudication
process by local government stretched the conciliatory capacity of multicul-
turalism to the limit. An important issue here is the motivation of local resist-
ance. While critical race theory has identified racism among the long-settled
as the primary motive, my own emphasis incorporates also the intersection of
class and status dimensions, offering a more intricate construction of white-
ness than often appears in anti-racist literature.
Immigration involves an uneasy tension between there and here, between
routes and roots. Chapter 7 examines the early development of a civil soci-
ety within the new Chinese-origin enclaves of Vancouver and Toronto. The
family remains the basic ontological unit, but family life is agitated by the
unsettling of traditional certainties. Floating Life , expounds a critic of Clara
Law's film about a Hong Kong family in Australia, 'is fraught with anxiety
and a sense of trepidation if not outright dread' (Teo 2001). The role of
paterfamilias is confused by the difficulty of achieving economic success in
Canada and by subsequent absence associated with astronaut status. The
wife's position as child carer brought her into a broader Canadian context
particularly in school relations, but some vulnerability with the absence of
her partner. Children typically acculturate faster, and their superior lan-
guage facility to their parents brings uncomfortable role reversal. Beyond
the family unit, Chinese-Canadian organizations help to salve the anxieties
of newcomer status. Though the older clan and hometown associations are
in decline, the new supports of business and cultural organizations, immi-
grant churches and other places of worship, and immigrant service organi-
zations, notably SUCCESS, with its dozen offices and national reputation,
offer significant balm to the injuries of transnational life. These associations
provide avenues to integration, a growing sense of belonging, participation,
and identity re-configuration, and for a minority to philanthropy and esteem
inside Canada. But for many others, notably millionaire migrants and their
children, the lines across the Pacific remain open.
Chapter 8 examines not the conventional myth of return but rather its
repeated enactment in the eight or nine daily scheduled passenger flights
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