Cityhood incorporation is a common local issue in theAmerican local history regarding different political, social, and economic factors. However, the creation of municipality becomes more controversial agenda in certain local regions when suburban ethnic communities are rapidly created by post-1965 immigration. It is reflected by the cityhood movement in Hacienda Heights in 2003, when Chinese/Taiwanese immigrants added ethnic elements in these public and civic activities. This study provides further observation and investigation to the impact that Chinese capitalize on their ethnic and non-ethnic social networks to increase their power in the community-based civic matters, while showing various dimensions on the responses from local multiethnic communities.
While nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants took comfort in social organizations based on networks carried over from China, this case history of recent Chinese immigrant communities in the San Gabriel Valley finds two kinds of social organizations operating complementarily. Transnational organizations, based on networks established in regions of origin, sustain community bonds among immigrants and their offspring. Local-focus organizations are a new type, formed among Chinese American suburbanites to empower them in local issues.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.