I would like to start my post this evening with the question: what does “co-ethnic” mean?  These two weeks, the theme for our seminar has been race and ethnicity.  More specifically, as part of this week’s readings, we are looking at a couple of research studies done by Dr. Eric Fong at the University of Toronto and Dr. Elic Chan, who is an honorary research associate and sessional instructor at our very own university – UBC!

In their article, Fong and Chan gave an overview of past research, findings, and theories involving co-ethnic clustering. Then, they talked about their research on Chinese and Indian immigrants who settled in Toronto.  Back to the question I posed in the beginning — what does “co-ethnic” mean? It is simply when you have people of the same ethnicity together.  In the case of “co-ethnic clustering,” we have people of the same ethnicity coming together and living in the same neighbourhoods. They then go on to discuss factors that contribute to co-ethnic clustering: co-ethnic preferences, economic resources, and the use of co-ethnic information resources. Their findings show that co-et

Ethnic preferences (the favouring of amenities that are relevant to their ethnicity, such as Asian malls) and using co-ethnic resources – specifically Asian real-estate agents – were predictive of co-ethnic clustering.

This article led me to ponder about my own ethnicity and how that affects my choice of people I hang out with.  A few weeks ago, I attended an event on campus in which the purpose was to bring together Chinese-speaking international students to talk about their identities in light of the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong.  With the exception of the Mandarin for Cantonese Speakers class I took in first-year, this was the first time I got together with so many Asian people all at once through by the factor of Chinese-speaking.  This makes me think about ethnic-clustering (mentioned above).  My reasons for being there though, were different.  One reason was to support friends who were there, but other reasons included interest in the topic.  Discussions focused on self-identity.  Participants were all from Asia – Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and I was the only Canadian-born-Chinese.  I identify with Chinese culture and values, but not with Chinese as a nationality as I’ve never been to China before.

I think the event and the class discussions have really connected for me in that I’ve been asking myself questions of my identity and how I come about to hang out with friends that I hang out with.  For example, I often see many Chinese students clustered together or athletes clustered together. My reason for clustering? Mainly as a result of work/volunteer and class involvement!

Source: Eric Fong and Elic Chan, “The Effects of Economic Standing, Individual Preferences, and Co-Ethnic Resources on Immigrant Residential Structuring” International Migration Review 44(1): 111-141.