Revaluing the Enclave: Second-Generation Ethnic Entrepreneurs in Gentrifying New York and Paris

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Ethnic Enclaves

Abstract

How do second-generation ethnic entrepreneurs intervene in historically marginalized enclaves undergoing gentrification? This paper examines the commercial transformation of long-standing Black immigrant neighborhoods in New York and Paris to argue that the revaluation of enclave space reshapes both urban landscapes and generational trajectories. Rather than treating incorporation and neighborhood change as separate processes, this paper analyzes how they intersect in moments of redevelopment.

Drawing on comparative ethnographic research in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) and la Goutte d’Or (Paris), this study focuses on second-generation Caribbean and African entrepreneurs whose businesses explicitly draw on diasporic food, fashion, and lifestyle cultures. These neighborhoods were built and sustained by earlier immigrant generations under conditions of racialization and disinvestment. As they become sites of renewed capital investment and middle-class consumption, the second generation inherits enclave-embedded social networks, commercial locations, and cultural knowledge at a moment of spatial revaluation. Positioned between inherited enclave capital and mainstream cultural fluency, they translate diasporic traditions into branded forms legible to new urban publics.

The comparison highlights how different governance regimes mediate this process. In Paris, municipal redevelopment initiatives selectively promote stylized forms of African commerce as part of neighborhood “diversification,” while in Brooklyn market-driven change produces more rapid and conflictual commercial turnover. Across both contexts, second-generation entrepreneurs navigate tensions around authenticity, belonging, and ownership, participating in the symbolic and material remaking of contested urban space. This paper argues that gentrification generates a spatialized second-generation advantage: the revaluation of enclave neighborhoods creates new, though uneven, possibilities for ethnic entrepreneurship while simultaneously narrowing space for traditional low-cost commerce. Incorporation thus unfolds through the transformation of racialized urban space and the ongoing production of place.

Author

• Maura McGee, Queens College-CUNY