Immigrant Place Entrepreneurs: Ethnicity and Growth Politics in Koreatown, Los Angeles

Throughout its history, Los Angeles urban politics has become the symbolic battleground for multiracial interest groups battling and coalescing over diverse claims to space. Much of the conflict has centered on the highly contested issues of land use and development–from the approval of high-rise buildings to the distribution of liquor licenses to the installment of non-English language signs. Traditional scholarship has portrayed growth politics as pitting place entrepreneurs whose key interests lay in the financial profitability of land against residents and other community stakeholders who place greater value on the social and sentimental uses of place. However, the entrance of Korean immigrant players on both sides of the land use conflict have complicated the meaning of place as the locus of financial and economic dealmaking to place as a site for ethnic community, social belonging, and political claims-making. Based on in-person interviews with Korean American place entrepreneurs and ethnic/ mainstream newspapers, this presentation discusses the rise of Korean place entrepreneurs and political brokers who are gradually reshaping the institutional landscape of Koreatown, Los Angeles. We argue that place entrepreneurs are not just a monolithic category of power elite who align along single-interest economic issues but also, a political minority group struggling for ethnic representation in land use and growth politics. Our findings are expected to enhance our understanding of the role of immigrant elites in a racially-diverse and fast-growing metropolis. 

Angie Y. Chung is Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, a 2021-2022 U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and former Visiting Professor at Yonsei and Korea University. She is author of Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth and Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics. She is currently working on a book manuscript on immigrant redevelopment politics in Koreatown and Monterey Park as a Visiting Researcher at Russell Sage Foundation. She is also conducting research on the impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans, international students, and the globalization of higher education.