World Citizens - DePaul University

DEPAUL,
CHICAGO
and the
WORLD
As contemporary metropolises
strive to establish their credentials
as global or “world-class” cities—
by offering financial incentives to induce corporate relocations,
by hosting mega-events such as the Olympic Games,
or simply by inserting the words “international” or “world”
somewhere in the name of their local airport—we sometimes
forget that many of America’s urban centers have long been
international. Consider, for instance, Chicago’s demographic
profile in 1910, when nearly 80 percent of its population had been
born outside the United States, or had at least one parent who had
immigrated to the U.S. Or glance at historian Arnold Lewis’ wonderful
book “An Early Encounter with Tomorrow” (University of Illinois
Press, 2001), which documents the reactions of late-19th-century
European visitors to marvels such as the Columbian Exposition,
the Union Stockyards and the skyscraper-sprouting Loop.
We also often forget that depending on your perspective—
a corporate office suite overlooking the booming west Loop, or
along Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park, international Chicago
has distinctly different meanings. In the first instance, Chicago
is an important global metropolis due to its preeminence in
commodities and futures trading, as an advanced business services
node, and still—after so many decades—as a transportation hub.
Devon Avenue, in turn, is a beachhead for aspiring Indian and
Pakistani entrepreneurs, a “community center” for an occupationally
diverse and regionally dispersed South Asian immigrant population
and exotic “night out” for countless Chicagoans who have never
glimpsed the Atlantic or the Pacific, much less the Indian Ocean.
Yet, if all politics is local, perhaps the same can be said of
globalization. And at its local level, metropolitan Chicago and its
many communities have been on a 50-year globalization tear. In
the last half-century Chicago has, in effect, shifted from an international
to a truly global city, especially at the socio-cultural level.
Whether riding the CTA, shopping at IKEA, picking up coffee
at Dunkin’ Donuts or exploring the flavors of a recently arrived
ethnic cuisine, encountering the human dimension of Chicago’s
globalization is unavoidable. Our city was an immigrant capital at
the turn of the last century, and at the dawn of a new millennium
it remains an immigrant capital. But contemporary Chicago is a
global immigrant capital. We are no longer simply talking about
European immigrants, as diverse in language and culture as they
may have been. Now you can name the country—any of the
193 in the world—and some or many of its sons and daughters
live in Chicago. The human face of immigrant Chicago is now
Argentine, Thai, Lebanese and Eritrean.
18 f e a t u r e
by Larry Bennett and John Koval