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theses

This dissertation investigates how 25 2nd generation Dominican-Americans with high socio-economic status experience the gentrification of the ethnic enclave of Washington Heights. It describes their lived experiences, the connection between Washington Heights and their transnational hyphenated identities, and what it means when the place that was the source of that identity changes. For these individuals, Washington Heights is not only a place; it is also the reality of being Dominican-American in the United States. Their hyphenated identity cannot be experienced in the Dominican Republic, nor in the integrated spaces they navigate as individuals from a higher socio-economic status (institutions of higher learning, places of work, travels, etc.), but only in the enclave of Washington Heights. If the places and people that make Washington Heights home change through gentrification, this 2nd generation group experiences more than nostalgic loss, it experiences a sense of cultural displacement.
The cultures that make up both sides of their hyphenated identity are not discrete social positions; they overlap to create a complex intersection of a synthesized hyphenated identity (Itzigsohn, 2009; Wolf, 2002). It is through this identity that they make sense of gentrification, which then leads them to feel torn between appreciating the changes in the area while perceiving the same changes as a threat to their community, and in turn to their identity. These conflicting feelings are established by multiple and heterogeneous understandings and meanings of what it means to be Dominican, American, and mainly Dominican-American (Wolf, 2002). This dissertation describes how 25 2nd generation Dominican-Americans experience the gentrification processes that are unfolding in Washington Heights and how their responses are related to their transnational hyphenated identities.

ETD_9887

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-p2h0-9539

ETD doctoral

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