Immigration and Migration and the Making of a Modern American City

Film/TV Background

The main lens through which students will explore globalization and immigration is fiction film. The films in this unit are deliberately chosen to expose students to a perspective that challenges the traditional view of immigration history to which students have been exposed such as in the Pittsburgh Public School 9 ^th grade Civics curriculum. This view is also the foundation of Hollywood film representations of immigration history: the view that delineates a linear progression toward fulfilling the American dream of upward social mobility. Blockbuster films like West Side Story, The Godfather, Gangs of New York, and Titanic are examples of this perspective. Indeed, in order to make this point about the linear view of immigration concrete, students will view clips of these films and will have them in mind as they analyze El Norte and Dirty Pretty Things.

Students will read a chapter of Eric Avila's book, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight. It examines the history of popular culture films produced about one of the global cities, L.A. In this book, students will discover how popular culture films typically depicted African Americans, Chinese, and Mexicans as the racial "other"— symbolizing moral danger to white males who dared to step out of their safe, white suburban homes into the postwar "noir" city ²⁷ This cultural portrayal occurred in the context of spatial segregation of whites into white suburbs and other groups to reservations of inner-city, racialized poverty. This process occurred first in suburban southern California, and somewhat later in London. ²⁸ Avila contends that white Americans preferred a landscape that epitomized homogeneity and predictability. This space was in contrast to heterosocial, unpredictable and often dangerous cultural experiences of industrial urbanism. It is these values that underlay the new spatial culture of suburbia: enclosed theme parks that directed the movement and gaze of its public; self-contained housing subdivisions planned in disciplined grid systems; and freeways that channeled the flow of traffic along a uniform line of movement above and beyond the inner city. ²⁹ Interestingly, L.A.'s later development compared to that of older cities such as New York and Chicago, accommodated the automobile and allowed for this increased physical separation and isolation. This is strikingly evident in El Norte, in the scene of Rosa and Nacha discussing the lack of Anglos in the neighborhood. Rosa sees only Spanish signs, Latin American people and "no gringos". Nacha replies "Lord! You don't think Gringo want to live with Mexicans do you? They've gone to their own nice suburbs". ³⁰

Do these broad-stroke characterizations of post World War II urban spatial development in the latest stage of post-industrial globalization apply to other global cities? To address this, students will be introduced to the insights of Saskia Sassen's The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. She views the global city as both the site of and the context for the globalization process. These processes include industrialization, deindustrialization and postindustrialization. Sassen examines social "forms" or class and the spatial organization of cities that resulted from these changes in global capitalism. For instance, Sassen points out the shift from post World War II social structures that were characterized by an expansion of the middle class, formal labor markets that offered advancement, job security, fringe benefits and greater levels of unionization to modern social forms. These modern social forms are small scale, and less standardized with casual employment that accompanied the decline in heavy manufacturing and the move to a service economy.

Sassen notes that the spatial organization of global cities, such as New York and London, has changed. New land uses developed and became gentrified. High-income residential and commercial development occurred as these cities became the receiving sites of some of the most expensive, high-tech, specialized labor on the globe. Alongside this high-end development that housed bankers, financiers and medical professionals, grew spatially concentrated housing and spaces of poverty and physical decay. Eventually the inner cities of London, New York, and Los Angeles received post war immigration from Asia, Caribbean and Latin America. ³¹

Nancy Abelmann details this transformation for L.A. in Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, noting that LA became a node in the global economy when deindustrialization occurred in the 1980's precipitated by the closing of the largest manufacturing center in the U.S. of steel, and declines in the auto industry. Meanwhile garment, bio-medical and computer manufacturing increasingly utilized a large pool of low-wage, non-union labor of Asians and Central Americans. In addition, Asian companies established plants utilizing this immigrant labor force to establish footholds in the U.S. economy. L.A. then, has a dual economy, one that is global, high tech, and financial accompanied by manual, menial laborers who serve this sector. Abelmann notes that class and income inequality is maintained through residential segregation. She points to Korean Americans leaving Koreatown in the city center to live in Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills. Broadly speaking, ethnic enclaves of all groups consist of those who prosper and leave while the poor remain. ³²

To sum up, in these global cities, immigrants filled the demands of the lower end of the dual labor market that comprise low-wage, labor-intensive work, including maintenance, cleaning, construction, day nannies and industrial, sweatshop homework. ³³ Students will consider whether globalization processes including gentrification and the development of a dual labor market are evident in the fictional films.

Students will also be introduced to film analysis techniques including exploring how lighting, sound, special effects, characters and symbols are employed in each of the films. Students will employ a model for analyzing film. The model is a viewing technique called "Visual Thinking Strategy" (VTS): What is going on in this picture or scene? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? ³⁴Additional questions for each film source include: What is the relationship of the characters to the urban environment that helps to narrate the story? What living/survival strategies are evident? What does the film tell us about immigrant family life, economic role, class position, gender roles, attitudes toward diversity of receiving population, as well as the ideology of the filmmaker? In what ways do symbols help point out important themes?

Course Material and Media Outline

A summary of the ways in which the course material connect students to the major themes outlined in "Historical Background" and "Film/TV Background" follows:

El Norte, produced in 1983 by Gregory Nava is a ground-breaking story of a brother and sister, Enrique and Rosa, who are indigenous Mayan (who make up 8.6% of the population) peasants who flee persecution at home in Guatemala resulting from the Guatemalan Civil War and journey north through Mexico to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life. ³⁵ The personal travails of immigrants crossing the militarized border to America had never been shown in the movies with "such urgent realism". ³⁶ The setting for the film includes a motel where Enrique and Rosa live and are guided by Monty, the motel manager. The jobs the siblings obtain run the gamut of typical low-wage service sector work, including day laborer, restaurant work, garment manufacturing and domestic service. The dilemmas faced by each of them as a result of their unauthorized immigration status include INS raids of work places and the inability to access health care. Separate gender roles are also articulated in this film.

Dirty Pretty Things is a 2002 film that explores the exploitation of undocumented immigrants to England. The site of contact for many of the characters is a London hotel where Nigerian, Okwe has found night work to accompany his day job as a taxi driver and a Turkish Muslim woman, Senay, works as a cleaner. The film is a thriller that throws these two into the midst of an illegal human organ harvesting operation run by the hotel's manager. ³⁷ The fact that the setting for this film is also a hotel is just one of many points of comparison to El Norte. Indeed, students will be encouraged to consider the symbolic value of the motel/hotel space. How is this transient space connected to the transient state of unauthorized migrants?

The key point for students in their analysis of the films is how immigrant labor is connected to economic production. The ubiquitous nature of garment manufacturing and service jobs such as taxi driving, cleaning and restaurant work is represented. In addition, both films and the Call the Midwife television episode clearly articulate the exploitative nature of the relationship between unauthorized immigrants and their employers. The 30 cents per piece offered to Rosa in the garment factory and the abuse of employees who fear being turned in to the authorities are examples of this relationship and are dramatically depicted. What will be highlighted for students though is the hopeful sense that immigrants bring to the receiving countries and the degree of agency they have over their work lives. In both films the characters, while operating within constrained choices, do exercise some choice, either by moving to new employment, improving work skills or by fighting back against abusive employers. Rosa for instance, goes into business with Nacha to clean houses and Senay leaves her job as a hotel maid after a raid by British authorities to work in a garment factory. Both Enrique and Rosa take English classes. Other similarities between the films include depictions of immigrant anxiety over health care, and the authorities' discovery of overstayed visas.

Modern Family is a television situation comedy that purports to depict contemporary diverse American families in Los Angeles, but actually represents mainstream American culture, including traditional gender roles. The main female characters do not work outside the home, for instance. Just as important, are the stereotyped views of immigrants depicted in the show. There is, for example, an unforgettable scene in which Jay, the wealthy Anglo main character, pictures his wife's Columbian family members overrunning the airport terminal and even worse staying with him at his home. The students will watch episode 501 from Season 5 called "Suddenly Last Summer". The main focus of the episode for students will be Manny's trip to visit relatives in Columbia. It was aired on September 25, 2013. ³⁸

Call the Midwife is a BBC period drama series set in a desperately poor working class East End London in the 1950's. Students will view Episode 7 from Series 2. It offers a view into immigration from British colonial possessions, such as Jamaica. This episode depicts a pregnant Jamaican immigrant who struggles to deal with racial abuse from her working-class English neighbors. The episode also more generally explores the experience and struggle of black people from Commonwealth counties in the period that, Sassen points out, saw dramatic increases in immigration from the global south to the global north. These challenges included not only racist treatment from the white receiving population but also segregated housing, and limited low wage job opportunities. ³⁹ It was aired March 3, 2013.

In addition to film analysis, students will also read about film theory, in order to have a structure for the evaluation of the films. Excerpts from Gordon Gray's book, Cinema: A Visual Anthropology will be provided. For Gray, understanding how cinema works and how it has affected so many people over long periods of time is important. Gray outlines various models for analyzing film including "National Cinema", the Marxist- influenced Frankfurt school and "Third Cinema". Filmmakers such as Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino argued that "first cinema" from Hollywood included technology, formal qualities of filmmaking and even exhibition spaces had become the universal standard throughout the world. Next European or "second cinema" rejected Hollywood conventions but still was centered on individual expression, the auteur. At best, "second cinema" testified to social injustice. "Third cinema" attempted to create oppositional cinema that contributed to liberation and to cultural revolution movements that were taking place in the Third World in the 1960's and 1970's. Their aim was to create international, class-based, politicized films. ⁴⁰

Students will evaluate the selected fictional films using viewing techniques and questions specific to film, using "visual thinking strategies" in addition to these film models outlined above. As a result, students will not only deepen their understanding of the complexity of the immigrant experience, but will develop a critical sense/picture of how late 20 ^th and early 21 ^st century people viewed immigration. What will be highlighted for students is the way in which film as a global force either disseminates American ideology and ethos, and consumer mass culture or exposes and resists it.

While the unit's core is this film analysis, the exploration of globalization is augmented by student examination of primary sources. These sources include photos and oral interviews from immigrant children in England, and in the U.S. Art works such as "Continental Drift" by Wendy Osher that portray the global assembly line of garment manufacturing will also be examined. ⁴¹ Indeed, students will come full circle and will end their study by considering how globalization, immigration and migration from the point of view of their own local city. Globalization, immigration and migration is not just an issue for big cities like New York, Chicago, or L.A. For instance, students in Pittsburgh will research how the demise of manufacturing and the advent of high-end employment has brought about the Eds and Meds transformation of Pittsburgh in the 1980's and 1990's and how these processes have impacted goods production, labor markets, consumption and ideas about immigration and migration across borders. They will utilize oral interviews with recent immigrants to Pittsburgh available on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette's website, Odysseys, completed in June 2014.