Margins in the Middle: Mapping ethnic enclaves

Ethnic enclaves serve as segregated ghettos, negotiated spaces, tourist attractions, and vibrant shopping and residential districts for many of Los Angeles’s diverse communities. The enclaves are products of both historical racial discrimination and self-segregation driven by mutual, ethnically-specific interests. Enclaves serve as negotiated spaces by offering social services and familiar sorts of businesses where transactions are conducted in familiar languages and manners. Increasingly, ethnic enclaves are also tourist attractions where cultural festivals, restaurants, and other experiences exist in part to appeal to visitors from the larger culture. As part of the process of exploring these neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Eric Brightwell paints and draws maps of them. Included in this article are hand-drawn and painted maps of Historic Filipinotown, The Byzantine-Latino Quarter, Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Armenia, The Far Eastside, Little Seoul, Little Arabia, and Little India.