Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Our study contributes to the existing debates surrounding gentrification and displacement of Latino immigrants and African-Americans in two critical ways. First, current work on gentrification widely peripheralizes the study of race and ethnicity as active and semiotic tools in mediating these processes. Second, the extant literature on gentrification in Chicago recognizes racialized discourses, histories of racial disinvestment, and racial income disparities, but has not directly addressed how race and ethnicity fuel the valuation regimes that enable gentrification. Our study fills this lacuna by mapping racial and ethnic change, property parcel values, and visual scan data on material improvement in relation to ethnographic observations and interviews. Finally, we examine the interrelations of race, ethnicity and gentrification by using a comparative focus on three distinct areas in Chicago—Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, and Pilsen—communities of historical significance to African-American residents, and Puerto Rican, and Mexican immigrants respectively, that have suffered significant displacements over the last fifteen years.