Asia Comes to Main Street and May Learn to Speak Spanish: Globalization in a Poor Neighborhood in Worcester

This paper considers how and why an Asian enclave of small businesses has appeared in a poor neighborhood characterized by Puerto Rican and other Latino immigration in the post-industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. We begin by examining the role of the US in the world system, and argue that the US hegemonic role and specific political economic aspects of global capitalism (ie. deindustrialization) account for some of the migration stream. Next, using socioeconomic and historical data, interviews, and observations, we outline the history of Worcester’s economy and immigration patterns. We demonstrate that the increasing economic inequality leaves few promising employment options for newcomers to Worcester. Drawing on existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurs and ethnic enclaves, we argue that some aspects of the literature appear to shed light on the Vietnamese enterprises which have so visibly appeared (e.g., ethnic niches), while others, (e.g., middle-man minority theory) are not now reflected in local conflict. We conclude by considering the prospects for immigrants to this neighborhood in light of its political economic context

Resourcing Scholar-Activism: Collaboration, Transformation, and the Production of Knowledge

In this article we offer a set of resources for scholar-activists to reflect on and guide their practice. We begin by suggesting that research questions should be triangulated to consider not only their scholarly merit but the intellectual and political projects the findings will advance and the research questions of interest to community and social movement collaborators

Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism

Drawing on an analysis of an ongoing collaboration with rural peasant movements in Bangladesh, we explore the possibility of forging solidarity through practices of scholar-activism. In so doing, we consider the practice of reflexivity, reconsider forms of solidarity, and draw on the concept of convergence spaces as a way to envision sites of possibility. We mobilize the notion of situated solidarities to propose an alternative form of reflexive practice in scholarship. We then posit that there are six ‘practices’ that provide a useful schematic for thinking through the opportunities for the construction of these solidaritie

Gendered, material, and partial knowledges: a feminist critique of neighborhood-level indicator systems

As researchers and community-based organizations increasingly move toward a more ‘holistic approach’ to addressing urban problems, the use of neighborhood-level social indicator systems as a tool to inform resident activism is becoming common practice. In this paper, I use a feminist theoretical framework to critically assess the epistemology and methodology of current practices in the use and development of neighborhood-level indicator systems. Using the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership as a framework, I critique the practices of using quantitative, spatial statistics to ‘democratize information’ within the feminist theoretical debates surrounding the production of knowledge, the use of quantitative methods, difference across gender, essentialism versus antiessentialism, and the discursive production of gender. In so doing, I demonstrate the importance of a feminist theoretical and practical perspective in informing the future development of urban neighborhood-level indicator systems.

Asia Comes to Main Street and May Learn to Speak Spanish: Globalization in a Poor Neighborhood in Worcester

This paper considers how and why an Asian enclave of small businesses has appeared in a poor neighborhood characterized by Puerto Rican and other Latino immigration in the post-industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. We begin by examining the role of the US in the world system, and argue that the US hegemonic role and specific political economic aspects of global capitalism (ie. deindustrialization) account for some of the migration stream. Next, using socio-economic and historical data, interviews, and observations, we outline the history of Worcesters economy and immigration patterns. We demonstrate that the increasing economic inequality leaves few promising employment options for newcomers to Worcester. Drawing on existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurs and ethnic enclaves, we argue that some aspects of the literature appear to shed light on the Vietnamese enterprises which have so visibly appeared (e.g., ethnic niches), while others, (e.g., middle-man minority theory) are not now reflected in local conflict. We conclude by considering the prospects for immigrants to this neighborhood in light of its political economic context

States of Just Transition: realizing climate justice through and against the state

Possibilities for engendering sustainable and just futures are foundering in part because key resources are managed by elites through ‘top down’ environmental governance and management, and knowledge production regimes, largely committed to retaining the status quo, fail to pursue new ways of managing resource consumption and distribution. In this paper, we argue for an alternative climate justice agenda that is enabled through grassroots mobilisation in collaboration with state action. To do this we consider the state as a continued terrain of possibility for positive social, economic and environmental change, noting the imperative of historically attentive state-enabled redistribution along persistent axes of difference. In articulating an alternative understanding of the state, we emphasise the importance of social movements capable of cultivating networked militant particularisms that can be channeled through and beyond state governance processes. In order to ground these ideas, we provide two brief case studies, tracking food sovereignty and energy remunicipalization initiatives