American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages the New Immigration

6. Bringing the City Back In Cities as Contexts for Immigrant Incorporation

Many years ago I published an article titled “Is the Ethnic Community Inevitable?” (Brettell 1981). This article, which compared first-generation Portuguese immigrants in Paris, France, with those in Toronto, Canada (places where I had carried out ethnographic field research), was sparked by my unease in applying theory that had been developed to explain the settlement and incorporation of immigrants in North American cities to the European context, at least a particular European context as I saw it at the time I was studying it. I wrote of this discomfort as follows: When I arrived in Toronto to conduct my research, I brought with me all the baggage of traditional participantobservation anthropology. I looked for an ethnic neighborhood , and my search was rewarded by the Kensington Market area in downtown Toronto. In Kensington, Portuguese stores, a Portuguese church, Portuguese restaurants , and Portuguese families are all clustered together. I had found my “Little Portugal” just as Herbert Gans and William Foote Whyte had found their “Little Italies” and 163 6 Bringing the City Back In Cities as Contexts for Immigrant Incorporation Caroline B. Brettell 163 others their “Chinatowns and Cabbagetowns.” But when I arrived in Paris, I found no “Little Portugal” which had carved out its own social niche within the great French metropolis. Not only was I forced to adopt new methods of research,1 but I also had to revise my entire theoretical perspective on immigration and on the patterns of settlement of foreigners in cities. It was necessary to come to terms with the urban structures themselves as they influence the lives of newcomers. It was also necessary to view the formation of a “community,” be it a geographical community or one based on social networks, as a strategy appropriate in some situations and inappropriate in others. Individuals choose to associate or identify themselves with one another. What factors make such a choice advantageous? What institutions make it possible or likely? (Brettell 1981:1) Having made this observation, I then endeavored to delineate distinct urban forms as these relate to variables such as the history and geographical patterns of growth, the place of any city vis-à-vis the nation of which it is a part, the degree of industrialization, the location of labor markets, the nature of housing, and the social composition of city residents. I contrasted the horizontal stratifications of Toronto, as a grid city, with the vertical stratification patterns of some parts of Paris within the peripherique highway that circumambulates the city and creates a boundary between the urban core and the surrounding Region Parisienne.2 I compared the employment patterns of Portuguese immigrants in these two cities with the structural differences outlined, focusing on the residence patterns these generated. Portuguese newcomers to Toronto settled in the houses immediately surrounding Kensington. Many Portuguese families in Paris lived in concierge lodgings or sixth- floor maid’s rooms scattered across the eighteen arrondissements of the central city. This dispersal was fundamentally linked to patterns of female employment. I also contrasted the pluralistic multiculturalism of Canadian immigration policy, which promotes and nurtures ethnic distinctiveness, with the more assimilationist emphasis on “becoming French” that characterized French immigration policy. Broadly speaking, French Caroline B. Brettell 164 policy promoted residential dispersal and was linked to an expressed fear of the emergence of “ghettos à l’americaine.” At the time, the French were making every effort to avoid concentrating families of similar national background in public housing projects being built in the Parisian suburbs. The article addressed the institutional foundations of ethnic communities as well, arguing that community implies a set of organizations within which social interaction can occur or with which group membership can be identified. I was thinking particularly of voluntary associations , such as clubs, churches, special schools, and commercial establishments. At that time, I noted, “the restaurants, small stores, and travel agencies that are ethnic domains in America remain French in France as a result of a law prohibiting non-French citizens from opening and operating such establishments, and as a result of the traditionally heavy concentration of the French themselves in the tertiary sector of the French economy and society” (Brettell 1981:12). I drew attention to the fully Portuguese parishes in Toronto and contrasted them with the Portuguese-language masses held in side chapels of Parisian churches. National histories of religion were, in other words, equally important to consider. All of this led...