Sydney as ‘Sinoburbia’: Patterns of diversification across emerging Chinese ethnoburbs

Abstract

‘Chinese Sydney’ has shifted away from its inner-city Chinatown towards new residential suburban concentrations with varied histories of progressive diversification. In some of these suburbs, where 40% or more of residents report Chinese heritage, older generations of diaspora Chinese intermingle with a substantial recent wave of China-born middle-class professionals – often distinguished as the ‘new Chinese’. This paper situates the localised, internal diversities of the modern arrival city within the geo-political conditions, urban development strategies and migration patterns that shape Sydney’s Chinese ethnoburbs (or ‘Sinoburbs’). Drawing on demographic analysis, site mapping of local infrastructure and site observations, we trace changing demographics and patterns of suburban development within three different case study suburbs. In doing so, we elucidate some emerging lines of inquiry that challenge the extant focus in both enclave and ethnoburb models of urban ethnic concentration and suggest a number of new interventions to future research on emerging Sinoburbia localities both in Australia and elsewhere.