Street Smarts: Geography Class Maps D.C.’s Immigrant Identity

October 7, 2025

Authored by:

John DiConsiglio

From the Little Ethiopia neighborhood in northwest to the Eden Center Vietnamese enclave in Falls Church, the Washington, D.C., region is a tapestry of immigrant communities and cultures.

The city's diversity footprint leads from the Salvadoran circles of Columbia Heights to the Chinese localities of Rockville, Maryland. A quick metro ride can carry a traveler from the Fiesta DC celebration on Pennsylvania Avenue to the Mid-Autumn Festival at the Chinese American Museum on 16th Street.

And for George Washington University Professor of Geography and International Affairs Elizabeth Chacko, who has lived in the District for nearly 30 years, that cross-cultural map makes Washington her ideal destination-as a resident and a geographer.

"I can't think of anywhere I'd want to live other than D.C.," she said. "It's so diverse. I feel at home. There are people who look like me, there are people who don't look like me. We all travel together."

That's the passion for people and places that Chacko relays to her students in her Migrants in the City Dean's Seminar. Like all Dean's Seminars within the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Chacko's class lets first-year students take an in-depth look into topics relevant to the issues of our time. Her class examines immigrants' relationships with their city-as ethnic neighborhoods grow, entrepreneurs emerge, and cultural identities take root.

"In this class, we look at the mutual influence of immigrants and urban landscapes-how they interact and change each other," Chacko noted.

In her Dean's Seminar, Chacko teaches first-year students like Sofia Barahona (left) and Jazlene Ramos to think like urban geographers.

Throughout the course, Chacko sends her students out of the classroom and into the streets-breaking free of the "Foggy Bottom bubble," as she puts it. Early in the semester, students explored ethnic identity and gentrification in D.C.'s Chinatown. Their final project includes photo essays documenting immigrant communities throughout the DMV region. Each lesson, Chacko said, teaches them how to look at their surroundings like urban geographers. "Place is very important for geographers," she said.

For first-year journalism and mass communications major Drew Kervick, the class serves as both a lens into immigrant experiences and an introduction to the D.C. area. He enrolled in the class seeking "a more formal education around the topic of immigration…given how large a discussion issue it has become in the world of American politics," he said. At the same time, the class "was a good way to immerse myself in this new city that I was moving to."

Straight to the suburbs

Unlike New York or San Francisco, for example, which have centuries-old immigrant traditions, Washington has only experienced wide-spread migration for about 50 years, Chacko said. But what it lacks in a lengthy history, it makes up for in diversity.

In 2023, the city was home to 95,400 foreign-born residents-about 14% of the population and near the national average. The total immigrant population in the metropolitan area equals about 1.3 million, with most of the growth in the suburbs.

"Newer immigrants do not live in the central cities," Chacko noted, pointing to factors like gentrification, high rents and urban development in downtown locales. "Today, immigrants are moving directly to the suburbs." Ironically, she said, that migration flow has helped shift the tenor of once virulently anti-immigrant counties in Maryland and Virginia as ethnic groups exert influence over local economies and politics.

"I am an immigrant, and I haven't faced overt racism. But because I study immigration, I know what some people face," Chacko said. "Hopefully I can open our students' eyes to those indignities."

Indeed, political science major Bradley Fowler said he found connections between the stories of D.C.'s diverse populations and his own suburban New Jersey upbringing, despite not identifying as a city dweller or an immigrant. "While many of the experiences we study in class differ from my own, the discussions about discrimination and racism resonate with me, as these are challenges that many people of color, myself included, have faced," he said.

The new Chinatown

For the Chinatown project, students ventured into the small, historic downtown area framed by the Qing-dynasty style Friendship Arch.

The current Chinatown-along H and I Streets between 5th and 8th Streets NW-is the city's second Chinese district after residents were forcibly removed from a 1920s Federal Triangle location to create space for the National Mall. Even today, only about 300 Chinese people live in downtown Chinatown-from its peak population of thousands in the 1970s-as larger Chinese communities settled in suburban areas like Rockville. Chacko tasks her students with finding physical elements that single the neighborhood's geographic boundaries-like places of worship, stores and restaurants and signage along Metro stations and sidewalks.

Looking closely, Kervick said he found evidence of the shrinking ethnic population-like the scarcity of Chinese-owned businesses instead of chains stores and restaurants displaying Mandarin characters. "My main takeaway was how quickly ethnic enclaves can be swallowed up by outside forces especially economically," he said. "Besides the archway there was not much that made it incredibly distinct from the rest of the city."

Throughout the semester, the class also compares D.C.'s immigrant landscapes to other cities' ethnic boroughs-like the Russian and Ukrainian sections of New York's Brighton Beach, Cuban population centers in Miami and the little Mogadishu neighborhood in Minneapolis. Chacko also encourages students to share their own personal backgrounds and histories.

"Being able to not just learn about geography concepts, but also real stories of the people around me is fascinating," said biology major Dylan Mach. The class discussions offered "real-world, first-hand perspectives that connect directly to what we're learning."

Indeed, while the class learns how migration shapes the city's neighborhoods, Chacko also hopes students will hone their geography skills and think critically about urban spaces.

"Geography is about the relationship between people and place," she said. "What better way to actually understand that relationship than by observing and understanding how theory fits into the empirical example of a city-wide case study?"