We diverge from this traditional approach and add to the body of literature an analysis of the interrelatedness between the broader concept of panethnicity and a more narrow delineation of ethnicity, that of ancestral origins, with respect to residential patterns. Much of the current literature on racial and ethnic residential patterns in the US either applies a broad panethnic approach and excludes a more refined ethnic definition or examines the location of a selected number of ethnic groups to the exclusion of panethnic categories. We evaluate the role of panethnic groupings within the urban context for determining ethnic residential outcomes. Through an empirical test of the layering of ethnicity in residential patterns, our study begins to offer some theoretical backing to work on panethnic boundary maintenance and identity as well as refine our theoretical understanding of racial and ethnic residential segregation by not treating race and ethnicity as mutually exclusive but intertwined. Shared structural positions as a result of occupational or geographic concentration have been highlighted as conditions that can lead to the formation of ethnic and panethnic identities and boundaries ( Lopez and Espiritu 1990 Sanders 2002) but few studies have systematically addressed whether ethnic group interaction is actually structured in these assumed ways. This is one of the objectives of this paper. This overlap of panethnicity and ethnicity has been demonstrated in the work on identities ( Itzigsohn and Dore-Cabral 2000 Kibria 2002 Min and Kim 2000 Waters 1990), but it has yet to be theoretically and empirically demonstrated in the structural conditions that have been argued to give rise to it. That is, ethnic boundaries persist despite interaction between groups and as a result of it ( Barth 1969). Moreover, ethno-national boundaries continue to remain meaningful for groups sharing a panethnic marker, being facilitated by continuing immigration streams as well as by contact between ethnic groups that serve to underscore their differences as much as their commonalities. For the panethnic group, boundaries expand beyond national origins to encompass a range of groups perceived to share some structural or cultural traits ( Lopez and Espiritu 1990 Trottier 1981) but do not cross ethno-national lines. The appeal in the notion of panethnicity lies in the recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity within its boundaries. In the United States, panethnicity as a concept has only recently become established in the sociological literature. As the ethnic and generational mix of a society shifts or expands, so too might the position of boundaries that define larger ethnic clusters.
Increasing ethnic and racial diversity brings about the opportunity for the remaking of ethnic boundaries and for new ethnic categorizations through the dynamic interplay of ethnic integration and host society reception.
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