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The London Context
In the course of conducting this study, a substantial part of the discussion is devoted to London’s Chinatown. There are three reasons for this: First, London’s Chinatown is by far the largest in Europe. It is known that the increase in and diversity of the Chinese population in the enclave has a direct effect on its spatial structure and economic functions. It is, however, not yet known whether the case of London has established a model for other Chinatowns to follow, particularly Manchester and Birmingham. But for the moment, the findings of this study are expected to provide an interesting contrast to Chinatowns in other metropolitan cities, and in a broader context, to yield numerous implications for Chinatowns in Europe, despite the substantial differences that exist among them.
The second reason is that London’s Chinatown is one of the oldest in Britain. Since the late 19th century, the enclave Chinese settlement at London’s Limehouse Causeway, and subsequently Gerrard Street, has been an important site through which immigrants floundered and prospered, and through which white society’s concepts about the Chinese are constituted and reproduced. Today, this port of entry has hosted successive first- and second-generation immigrant entrepreneurs and workers, permitting empirical examination of intergenerational change.
The third and final reason is that London’s Chinatown has experienced rapid decentralisation and transformation. With residential quarters having sprawled out into the adjacent neighbourhoods and new Chinatowns having developed in the suburbs and other cities, the old Chinatown is no longer a residential enclave where one would expect the highest concentration of the Chinese population. Rather, it is a national financial and business centre for the British Chinese population linking together all regional and local Chinatowns and small Chinese settlements via a hierarchical structure.