Russel Sage Foundation

In New York City, where one out of ten tenants are taken to housing court each year by their landlords, displacement has come to shape the political lives of Asian immigrant communities. This project examines the democratic implications of displacement by focusing on how residents in Manhattan’s Chinatown are politically responding to evictions, landlord harassment, cultural erasure, and other forms of dispossession. Wong’s work brings together literature in political science, Asian American studies, critical race studies, and urban governance, and provides a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which Asian immigrant communities are active in the making of urban space and urban politics, shifting away from a common narrative that portrays them as disengaged from democratic processes. Wong will employ a unique combination of methods including ethnography, participatory mapping, archival research, and oral history interviews.