“I am like a deaf, dumb and blind person”: Mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, Queens, New York City

Highlight

• Everyday mobility patterns among recent Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, NYC

• Intentionality determines the difference between mobility and accessibility.

• The interrelationships between place and mobility

• Transportation equity lies broadly in immigration policy and community development.

Abstract

This paper contributes to research on daily mobility experience of (im)migrants in cities and expands the conceptualizations of mobility by examining intentionality and its relations to locality. Through place-based research on mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, Queens, New York City, this paper explores: 1) mobility patterns of recent (im)migrants in an urban setting; 2) the constraints, resources and their coping strategies for everyday mobility; and 3) the dialectal relationship between voluntary and involuntary immobility, and between mobility and ethnic communities. This study reveals that immobility is not always the result of inaccessibility, but structural barriers in the broader society such as socioeconomic inequality and racial discrimination. Involuntary immobility encourages overdependence on locality. With its high place accessibility, Flushing provides (im)migrants with a plethora of ethnic mobile resources, as well as social networks and community resources. The relative immobility among Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing is compensated by the flows and movements of people, goods and information both at the local and transnational scale. The contrast between insider-ness and outsider-ness further enhances their attachment to the local community and discourages them from moving. Thus, locality mitigates involuntary immobility but paradoxically nurtures voluntary immobility that hinders the transfer of potential mobility to actual mobility, and physical mobility to social mobility. Without considering locality, stillness is easily mistaken for immobility; without considering intentionality, accessibility is easily equated to mobility. Therefore, solutions to transportation equity do not lie solely in transportation accessibility itself, but more broadly in individual capability, immigration policy, labor market equality and community development.

Introduction

This paper attempts to complicate the conceptualization of mobility by interrogating its relations to locality and intentionality. Accessibility suggests the relationship between people and destinations, whereas mobility suggests the relationship between self and others, as well as between people and themselves. Mobility is relational (Cass et al., 2005, Urry, 2007, Urry, 2012), contextual (Kaufmann et al., 2004, Adey, 2006, Schwanen, 2006) and humanistic (Adey, 2010, Cresswell, 2010, Cresswell, 2011, Jensen, 2011). However, mobility is easily taken for granted as accessibility—the ability to reach destinations. Accordingly, it is measured by time and distance of trips, facilitated by the accessibility to transport resources such as car ownership and public transportation system. Highly mobile people are defined as those who travel the furthest and most frequently, whereas the spatial mismatch hypothesis reveals immobility among disadvantaged population groups, due to the decentralization of employment and a subsequent lower number of work-related trips (Kain, 1968, Liu and Painter, 2011). However, the ability to travel only tells a partial story of mobility, what is equally important but less discussed is the intentionality to move. This paper proposes the concept of voluntary immobility to examine the dialectal relationships between locality and mobility. Locality mitigates involuntary immobility by providing accessibility (Barnes, 2003, Coutard et al., 2004, Liu and Painter, 2011, Motte-Baumvol and Nassi, 2012). But paradoxically, it also cultivates voluntary immobility that deters the transformation of potential mobility into actual mobility and leads to possible social exclusion. If not considering locality, proximity can be mistaken as immobility; if not considering intentionality, accessibility can be mistaken as mobility. The failure to recognize the difference between mobility and accessibility further leads to a narrowly focused transportation policy that targets public transportation and automobility (Fol et al., 2007, Lucas, 2012).

The extensive literature on mobility, migration and ethnic clusters mostly focus on the socioeconomic mobility, but few research has directly engaged with everyday physical mobility. Ample evidence has indicated that lack of accessibility to transport resources is the major mobility constraint confronted by ethnic minority population groups (Blumenberg and Evans, 2007, Blumenberg and Shiki, 2007, Donahue and Rodier, 2008, Chatman and Klein, 2009, Lo et al., 2011, Bose, 2014). This paper complicates this observation, as it argues that the immobility is not always due to lack of accessibility, but a result of structural barriers to resources in the broader society which lead to overdependence on local resources. While social networks and informal transport modes are major coping strategies for increasing immigrants' accessibility (Valenzuela et al., 2005, Chatman and Klein, 2009, Blumenberg and Smart, 2014, Lovejoy and Handy, 2011), further examinations on interrelations between ethnic concentrations and mobility are largely lacking, particularly explorations of the intentionality of mobility. Drawing on a case study among recent Chinese (im)migrants¹ living in Flushing, Queens in New York City, this paper contributes to a place-based approach to everyday mobility patterns of (im)migrants in urban settings, by exploring the following questions: 1) What are mobility and immobility patterns of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing?; 2) What are their constraints, resources and coping strategies for mobility?; 3) How do ethnic clusters and its mobile resources affect people's travel motivation and behavior? This paper also provides insights into the (im)migrants' daily mobility as an embodied experience from a bottom-up perspective as they carry national, racial and cultural identity while interacting with the urban environment.

This paper begins with a review of two veins of relevant literature: the first on immigrant mobility, ethnic clusters and transportation equity, and the second on the contextual understandings of mobility. The paper then introduces the study area, data collection and methods. The next section presents the mobility patterns and constraints among Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, followed by the section that discusses how ethnic clusters affect people's travel behavior and intentions. The mobility constraints of the people, combined with the accessibility of place, nurture the voluntary immobility that hinders social engagement beyond the community. Finally, this paper will conclude with a presentation and discussion of the major results.