ABSTRACT
For working-and middle-class Korean Americans, partner preferences are a result of residential, spatial, and social propinquity, leading to vastly different dating patterns between the two groups. The middle-class Korean Americans in New York prefer coethnic partners because they are socially networked to coethnics and are familiar with the cultural norms, experiences, and sensibilities of Korean Americans, the majority of whom are middle class. By contrast, for the working-class Korean Americans, their class status creates social and geographic distance between them and their more privileged coethnic counterparts. Because they have grown up in more racially and ethnically diverse, working-class neighborhoods, working-class Korean Americans feel closer to other working-class minorities, such as blacks and Latinos, than to middle-class Koreans or Asian Americans. Thus, when issues of marriage are involved, the concerns and values that stem from their socioeconomic background override their ethnicity or race.
