The West Coast has not only received the bulk of Asian American migration, but also has established increasingly strong commercial ties in the postwar era with sometimes burgeoning Asian states. The “Pacific Rim” incorporates California, Oregon, Washington (the Pacific Northwest), Alaska and Hawai’i into a broader global vision of business and culture for the twenty-first century. The title is also applied to fusion cuisine and design styles mixing Asian elements with a jazzy California style as well as local ingredients. By contrast, “Atlantic culture and society” is generally confined to academic studies of the interchanges constituted by colonialism and slavery and their aftermath (although NATO—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—evokes other historic ties).

Meanwhile, Texas may be called the “third coast” while Miami is sometimes recognized as the capital of the Caribbean. All of these terms project ideological expectations that may not affect the consciousness of local, non-immigrant populations.