Social Relations of Landed Property: Gentrification of a Polish Enclave in Brooklyn

Despite the extensive literature on ethnic enclaves in American cities, the role of landed property in ethnic enclave formation and transformation has received no attention to date. Drawing upon nearly four years of work as a tenant organizer, I address this issue by examining how the social relations of landed property have been integral to the formation, transformation, and deterioration of ethnic ties among Polish migrants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Specifically, I argue that the social relations of property among Polish migrants—what I call “enclave property†—have enabled the acquisition, maintenance, and improvement of landed property in and through the production of ethnicity. With the gentrification of the neighborhood, however, the social relations of immigrant housing that helped produce the enclave in the 1980s and 1990s have been strained, and rising property values have transformed relations of ethnicity among Polish migrants into mechanisms for property accumulation by dispossession. The upshot has been the “hollowing out†of the enclave, as Polish migrant tenants have been displaced from Greenpoint, leaving behind a co†ethnic landlord class and their wealthier American tenants.