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  • Socio-spatial Patterns of Acculturation:Examining Hmong Habitation in Milwaukee's North-side Neighborhoods
  • Lynne M. Dearborn (bio)

Hmong Immigrants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city known for the historical contributions of European immigrants, has attracted a diverse new wave of non European immigrants in the past two decades. Like those of the past, these new immigrants are transformed through acculturation within Milwaukee's neighborhoods. Although the city and its neighborhoods have experienced periods both of prosperity and decline,1 commerce, industry, and the physical structure of the city continue to provide immigrants with opportunities to begin new lives. With this new wave, immigrants from Asia, the Middle East, and Central and South America come to inhabit many of Milwaukee's neighborhoods, transforming not only the physical environment of the neighborhood but also their enculturated socio-spatial practices as they acculturate within a new city.2 The Hmong, refugees from Southeast Asia, are one such immigrant group.

The Hmong, like other new immigrants, hold enormous potential as catalysts for cultural change both within their own cultural group and in the receiving culture. To examine this potential, this study applies Amos Rapoport's culture-core model3 to consider cultural change within the residential environments of thirty-two households of Hmong immigrants who settled in Milwaukee between 1979 and 1999. Hmong immigrants are the focus of this study because they are one of the largest groups of immigrant homebuyers in Milwaukee's inner city. Further, these Hmong (who came from Laos as refugees from Vietnam War–era conflicts) have distinctive enculturated patterns that strongly influence their relationship to the built environment.


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Figure 1.

Map of Milwaukee with key Hmong landmarks identified.

Milwaukee, located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, presents an apt location for the study of Hmong immigrants. The 2000 U.S. Census showed that 8430 Hmong individuals, 23.3 percent of Wisconsin's Hmong population, lived in Milwaukee.4 The Hmong initially settled [End Page 58] in Milwaukee's near-south and southwest sides (south of the Menominee Valley), shown on the city map in Figure 1. Here they could access needed services, such as the Lao Family Community Center and the Sixteenth Street Health Center. At the time of this study, Hmong remaining on the south side tended to follow traditionalist religious practices (rather than converting to Christianity) and also tended to be renters.5

After initial settlement, some Hmong families entered Milwaukee's Urban Homesteading Program or other homeownership programs on the near-northwest side of Milwaukee, in the area surrounding Vliet Street between Twentieth and Fortieth streets. As a result, many Hmong homeowners live on the near-northwest side of the city, which has led to development of Hmong-owned businesses along Vliet Street in the area identified in Figure 1 as the Vliet Street Hmong enclave. The 2000 U.S. Census indicates that in the two census tracts with the greatest Hmong population in this enclave, 69.5 percent of Hmong households are homeowners, as compared to 39.0 percent of all households that are homeowners. In recent years, some Hmong have purchased homes on the far northwest side in the area identified in Figure 1 as the Northwest Hmong enclave. Here in the two census tracts with the greatest Hmong population, 72.4 percent of Hmong households are homeowners, as compared to 66.0 percent of all households that are homeowners. The map in Figure 2 illustrates that, although Hmong are dispersed across the city's census tracts, there are a few areas of concentration, on the near-south side, on the north side in the Vliet Street Hmong enclave, and the in Northwest Hmong enclave.

The Vliet Street and Northwest Hmong enclaves were the geographic target of this study because of their prevalence of Hmong home-owners. Homeownership offers inhabitants the greatest opportunity for modification of the residential environment and thus provides an optimal setting in which to observe and understand the reciprocal actions between people and environment in modifying enculturated socio-spatial patterns. The thirty-two participant households in this study comprise a broad cross-section of the Hmong cultural group.6 For...

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