From Mott Street to East Broadway: Fuzhounese Immigrants and the Revitalization of New York’s Chinatown

Abstract Since the early 1980s, immigrants from Fuzhou, southeast China, have revitalized and expanded New York’s Chinatown in Manhattan and established satellite Chinese communities in Brooklyn and Queens. Fuzhounese entrepreneurs have transformed the ethnic enclave economy of Chinatown into the staging platform for a dynamic national ethnic restaurant economy in which East Broadway in Lower Manhattan has become the central hub for the circulation of capital, labor, goods and know-how. Despite recent revitalization, Chinatown’s future as a gateway for new labor immigrants is threatened by real estate speculation and gentrification in the Manhattan and Brooklyn Chinatown areas.