Dear RSF:

Please join us next Wednesday, May 24, at 11 for Visiting Researcher Angie Y. Chung’s presentation, ““Immigrant Growth Machines: Urban Growth Politics in Koreatown & Monterey Park.”

Chung is Professor of Sociology at University of Albany, where she’s been since 2003. She holds a PhD and an MA in Sociology from University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in Sociology from Yale University. Chung is currently working on a co-authored title with Sookhee Oh, Immigrant Growth Machines: Urban Growth Politics in Koreatown & Monterey Park (Russell Sage, forthcoming). Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth (Rutgers University Press, 2016) was featured at the 2018 author-meets critic session at American Sociological Association. Her first book, Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics (Stanford, 2007) won an Honorable Mention, Social Science Book Award at the Association for Asian American Studies.

At RSF she is working on Immigrant Growth Machines. It examines the rise of immigrant growth coalitions among ethnic entrepreneurs, political leaders, financiers, and auxiliary players who shape land use and redevelopment processes in globalizing cities. Based on fieldwork and interviews in Koreatown and Monterey Park, California, Chung focuses on how Korean and Chinese immigrant leaders have promoted their economic growth agenda in Los Angeles amidst suburbanization, political barriers, and economic recessions. She is demonstrating how the pace and direction of immigrant growth politics depends on the ability of ethnic elites and their co-ethnic slow-growth challengers to capitalize on political openings and blockages within local political systems.