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While the bulk of primary immigration of other British minorities, notably the Caribbeans and South Asians, was completed by the 1980s, the Chinese group has shown marked growth and diversified subethnic origins since that time. Such demographic change in the Chinese population has a direct effect on their settlement patterns: We have seen residential decentralisation from London’s Chinatown; we have also seen the development of visible Chinese populations and new Chinatowns in many urban centres and suburbs. These Chinese landscapes have, in part, played a significant role in the development of the British urban system.
Previous works have focused on how Chinatown functions as a socioeconomic enclave channelling Chinese immigrants into mainstream society. Zhou (1992), for example, has reported that immigrants achieved social mobility through the enclave labour market, where they can gain an economic foothold without assimilating. This study, however, takes a fresh and more critical look at Chinatowns and various forms of Chinese landscapes as spatial products in the developmental process of the enclave economy. It seeks to explain the relationship between the decentralisation of enclave industry (economic process) and the development of new Chinatowns and Chinese settlements (spatial process). It also attempts to examine how these Chinese landscapes are spatially arranged and integrated into the larger urban system. This approach sheds new light on the characteristics of Chinatowns across Britain which have rarely been examined by geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists.