Did the chinese and Indian communities in Toronto grow side by side with each other? (real estate, rental)
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Did the chinese and indian communities in Toronto grow side by side with each other? I cannot help but notice that it seems the chinese communities and indian communities seem to be adjacent or in the same area like Missisauga, or Scarborough. Was this always the case? Is this done by design? Or was one community in place already, and then the other came later because having another minority already established kind of makes the place more desirable for other minorities?
Although it's not entirely true they live side by side.
First of all, the South Asians don’t live side by side, from what I can tell, the main South Asian ethnic groups have their own clusters. Pakistanis in NW Mississauga, Sikhs in Brampton, Malton and Rexdale, Tamils in East Scarborough and SE Markham, Bangladeshis in Crescent Town and SW Scarborough with various smaller clusters in older rental highrises. There actually seems to be relatively little mixing of these various South Asian groups.
The main Chinese enclaves is around NW Scarborough, Markham, east Richmond Hill and east North York. There are also a fair bit of Chinese in the East Credit area of Mississauga, and adjacent areas near Hurontario. Very few Chinese in Brampton though despite the huge South Asian (much of them Sikh/Punjabi) community.
I think a lot of this has to do with when the various immigrant groups came to Canada. A few decades ago, they would have moved into the inner city neighbourhoods, but more recently those have become more expensive. Increasingly, they move into the rental highrises in the inner suburbs, or if they can afford it, a single family home.
However, in more mature suburban neighbourhoods, the housing turn-over is low enough that it's difficult for immigrant groups to establish an enclave. With newly built suburbs though, it's much easier. Miliken was being built around the time a lot of Chinese and South Asians were looking for SFHs to buy, and it was also more affordable that other suburbs, with relatively modest homes. On the other hand, a lot of the new homes being built in Vaughan or Oakville are quite expensive. Mississauga, Brampton, SE Markham, and NW Scarborough were more affordable to the Asian middle class. Whitby, Newmarket and Milton are probably considered a bit too far from Toronto and it's major job centres (including the suburban job centres). There's really only a couple neighbourhoods built after 1980 where the average SFH costs less than $700,000 that don't have a large number of Asians.
You do have the Chinese dominated part of Scarborough and the more Tamil dominated neighbourhoods of Scarborough adjacent to each other, with some mixing of the two around the boundaries of these enclaves, but the hearts of these enclaves have mostly just one of these two ethnic groups.
In Chinese dominant areas such as parts of Scarborough, Markham, you find very few Indians. On the other hand, the Chinese will be very reluctant to live in Brampton for example.
I know for a fact that in terms of real estate, the middle class Chinese will deliberately avoid areas with large number of south Asian population. Not sure if Indians will deliberately avoid living in Chinese neighbourhood though.
If there are certain less desirable areas where you see a lot of Chinese AND Indian, that's only because that happens to be the area they can afford. It is definitely not their intention to cohabitate.
True but those are pretty big places, each with hundreds of thousands of people. Canada generally has larger municipalities (in terms of land area, and as a result, often population) compared to the US. Mississauga is generally more mixed ethnically that many other suburbs. I've included South Asian, Chinese and White %, and any other group over 5%, everything else gets lumped in other/mixed.
Census Tract 576.51, a more mixed area of Brampton, still very few Chinese though. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Bra...2d31667cc38677
36.2% South Asian
23.5% Black
21.1% White
8.1% Filipino
1.3% Chinese
9.9% other/mixed
Census Tract 516.46, still relatively mixed part of Mississauga but with fewer Chinese https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Bra...2d31667cc38677
33.0% South Asian
21.0% White
10.6% Chinese
8.8% Filipino
7.6% Arab
6.5% Black
12.5% Other/mixed
Census Tract 530.01, part of the Malton neighbourhood of Mississauga, the area where South Asians (and Blacks) outnumber Chinese the most (afaik), adjacent areas of Toronto are largely South Asian and Black, and adjacent areas of Brampton are largely South Asian. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Bra...2d31667cc38677
39.9% South Asian
27.2% Black
18.1% White
1.3% Chinese
13.0% Other/mixed
378.17 in the neighbourhood of Malvern in Scarborough, home to a significant Tamil community https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Bra...2d31667cc38677
38.6% South Asian
24.4% Black
14.2% White
13.7% Filipino
2.3% Chinese
5.9% other/mixed
367.01 in Scarborough, this is a small Gujarati enclave (mainly the highrises I think?) https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Oak...ca43dc29268b68
60.1% South Asian
19.2% White
7.9% Black
6.3% West Asian
2.2% Chinese
4.1% Other/mixed
401.19, Markham side of the heavily Chinese enclave of Milliken, I think this is the most heavily Chinese Census Tract in Markham, which is not too surprising since it contains Pacific Mall. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Oak...ca43dc29268b68
75.0% Chinese
7.0% White
6.1% South Asian
11.4% Other/mixed
400.18, part of the transition zone between the South Asian and Chinese enclaves in Markham. The transitional area in Markham is wider and less well defined than in Scarborough*. I guess if you're looking for a neighbourhood with a lot of South Asians and Chinese, this is it. The main South Asian group is Tamils, but there are other South Asians too. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Mid...0497c72f61972e
43.2% South Asian
37.9% Chinese
1.8% White
13.6% Other/mixed
*The Chinese enclave of Scarborough has pretty clear boundaries, Markham Road to the East, 401 to the south, with the exception of Scarborough Town Centre south of the 401.
Yeah, they don't really live next to each other at all. I'd also add that while the Chinese American and Chinese Canadian populations are much more similar socioeconomically than the South Asian communities in the US and Canada. In Canada, the community is more working class and Punjabi, Sikh and Muslim while in the US, outside of NYC, it's pretty dominated by well-off Indian Hindus.
Last edited by King of Kensington; 07-24-2014 at 10:29 PM..
Should also add that in Vancouver, the Chinese and Indian (mostly Sikh) don't live near each other either. The Chinese live mostly in the city of Vancouver and the adjacent suburbs of Richmond and Burnaby. The Indian population is much further from the core, in the outer suburbs of Surrey and to a lesser extent Delta and also live in large numbers in the satellite city of Abbotsford.
In the SF Bay Area you tend to see Indians cluster in different areas than Chinese, though both try to live in the place with the best schools. Because the Bay Area chinese population is older and larger than the indian population, you tend to see chinese in a wider variety of neighborhoods (both poorer and wealthier). I've also noticed that once a neighrborhood hits a critical mass of Chinese (maybe 20%), it starts looking like a little Chinatown. Indians tend to spread out more evenly in middle class areas, and not cluster. Indians don't seek to live among chinese people, though they're aware that a high presence of Chinese means the schools are good (which is good for property values).
Yeah, they don't really live next to each other at all. I'd also add that while the Chinese American and Chinese Canadian populations are much more similar socioeconomically than the South Asian communities in the US and Canada. In Canada, the community is more working class and Punjabi, Sikh and Muslim while in the US, outside of NYC, it's pretty dominated by well-off Indian Hindus.
It is probably because most Indians in the US went there for higher education, often for MS and PhD degrees while most in Canada come here as skilled workers. So the Indians in the US tend to be more wealthy and better educated (it doesn't require a master's degree to qualify as skilled workers).
I agree with what you're saying except the wealthy part. Most Indians that come to the US are from middle class backgrounds in India who are striving to move up the economic ladder, and they know that moving up the economic ladder in the Western World requires an education. Wealthy Indians tend to stay in India, mostly because being wealthy in India tends to correlate highly with your ability to using politics, connections, bribes, shady business practices, etc. to get ahead, which doesn't translate well across cultures.
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