Immigration and Migration and the Making of a Modern American City

Rationale

This unit will serve to open discussion of what globalization is and how globalization impacts students' lives. Everything from the clothing they wear, foods they eat, the growing diversity of Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, to the future job market as well as recent current events is connected to globalization. Students will be encouraged to think about how cities, the crossroads and the meeting points for human societies, are the sites of crucial processes of production, interaction and consumption, the key features of globalization. Cities are not static entities, however. Some cities have risen and fallen in importance over time. Pittsburgh, of course, is a prime example of this process of ebb and flow in globalization. My students are well aware of the migrants that came from all over the world to work in heavy manufacturing in Pittsburgh, during its heyday in the late 19 ^th and 20 ^th centuries. The ancestors of my students were immigrants from Germany, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Italy and Greece, as well as African Americans from the Great Migration who labored in iron and glass factories (PPG), in food processing (H.J. Heinz), and in the aluminum (ALCOA) and steel mills (U.S. Steel). Then, in the early 1980's, Pittsburgh experienced the wrenching effects of deindustrialization when all but one of the steel mills closed. ⁵

At what stage is Pittsburgh in this process of globalization? Students know that Pittsburgh is now an "Eds and Meds" town with the city's economy dominated by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), and the universities, particularly the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. In other words, Pittsburgh is squarely located in the most recent phase of globalization, where the economy is focused on high tech, science, medicine and services. ⁶ Students will be encouraged to consider the extent to which this recent shift in Pittsburgh's economy has affected immigration and migration to Pittsburgh.

Another point of connection for students to globalization is recent news of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America crossing into the U.S. through Mexico. The fact that these immigrants are young people should particularly resonate with them. Indeed El Norte's two main characters, two teenage immigrants from Guatemala, represent a prior wave of U.S.-bound immigrants from Central America that occurred 30 years ago. Why did they come in the 1980's? Why are they coming now? What are the conditions in their home countries? Are these conditions different from those in the 1980's? What is the response of the U.S.? Are these new arrivals part of a continuing pattern of human migration in the western hemisphere? How can globalization be understood in historical, economic, political and social terms? Clearly, the current debate in American society on immigration will serve as a catalyst for discussion.

Film analysis was chosen as the vehicle or "way in" for student examination of globalization for several reasons. First, the study of film can provide students with significant insight into areas of society of a different time and place that might otherwise be difficult to access. Second, film has the ability to move people. It is a powerful medium in global terms, rapidly circulating ideas that are consumed around the world. Students will determine the ways in which fiction films articulate, identify and express the everyday life of immigrants and the receiving populations portrayed in the global cities of L.A. and London. They will also examine the ideas and prejudices of a particular time and place such as those communicated by the filmmakers. ⁷This focus on bottom up social history and cultural history will fit particularly well with student interest in popular culture.