UCLA International Institute

Glendale may house the most visible Armenian diaspora in the world; however, it remains among the most invisible in print. The following begins to shed light on this community by providing a brief background and demographic profile of Armenians in Glendale. The article then attempts to expand discussions of Chinese “ethnoburbs” by situating Glendale Armenians in these discussions. Despite scholars’ expansion of the concept, the ethnoburb has had limited application – largely, to international Chinese and a few other Asian immigrant communities. However, is the concept of the ethnoburb generalizable in contexts outside of Chinese immigrant settlements? In this article, I contend that the ethnoburb model is generalizable by situating Glendale’s Armenian community within this framework.

With over 30 million people moving to North America during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), governments feared that Europe was losing its most talented workers. Using new data from Ireland in the early twentieth century, I provide evidence to the contrary, showing that the sons of farmers and illiterate men were more likely to emigrate than their literate and skilled counterparts. Emigration rates were highest in poorer farming communities with stronger migrant networks. I constructed these data using new name-based techniques to follow people over time and to measure chain migration from origin communities to the United States.

As over 30 million people moved to North America during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), governments feared that Europe was being depleted of its most talented workers. I use new longitudinal data from the early twentieth century to study the geography and selectivity of migration from Ireland, the European country with the highest emigration rate. I find that Irish-speakers and the sons of farmers in poorer communities, where emigrant networks were strongest, were more likely to move to the United States. These results indicate that highly skilled workers were, in fact, underrepresented in the flow to America.