By Kiljoong Kim

A little hole-in-the wall restaurant called Ginza, located on the 1st floor of Tokyo Hotel in downtown Chicago is a small haven for many weary Japanese salarymen visiting Chicago, a home away from home. The same sentiment can be found for Chicagoans at a Cubs bar named Lulu’s in Kona, or a Bears bar called Bruno’s in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
With a great deal of mobility for jobs and schools, many people no longer live in their places of birth. Though more than two-thirds (66.8%) of Illinois residents were born in the state, and it is unknown how many have moved overseas, more than 4.4 million Illinois natives have traveled afar and settled across the country. And these Illinois natives in other states show that moving isn’t simply about jobs and schools.

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Posted on May 20, 2009

By Kiljoong Kim

The American Dream of the past century involved becoming middle class by moving to the suburbs with a house, garage, dog, children, and sense of safety with good school system. In fact, many scholars and policy analysts still make the city versus suburbs comparison with the underlying assumption that the city is poor and congested while suburbs are affluent and spacious. But just as many cities offer a great deal of economic and demographic diversity, not all suburbs are alike.
The most visible change in many municipalities is the composition of their residents. By and large, many towns are aging rapidly. For examples, while Blue Island’s total population grew only by 3.8 percent in seven years, those between 50 and 64 grew by 55.2 percent; Burbank’s growth of 5.3 percent is magnified for those between 60- and 64-year-olds, which grew by 55.3 percent, and Calumet City’s 6.7 percent growth included sizable growth of those over 80 years old (43 percent).

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Posted on February 9, 2009

By Kiljoong Kim

The United States as a whole gained more than 25 million people since the last decennial Census in 2000. The historical trend continued in 2007 where eastern states lost and western states gained population. Chicago, as the third largest city in the country, has experienced mostly moderate but some drastic changes.
Contrary to 2000 when Chicago gained population (2,895,964) for the first time in several decades, the city lost 5.5 percent (2,737,996) of its residents as of 2007. Though Cook County’s loss was not as dramatic (1.7 percent), considering rapid increases experienced in what was once considered outlying counties like Will and McHenry in recent years, ever-expanding suburbanization further away from Chicago may be very much alive. In this ever-changing place, the composition of people and housing stocks are good indicators of the ways in which the city is perceived and utilized.

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Posted on September 30, 2008

By Kiljoong Kim

Recently, a demographer filed a report for a Chicago suburban school district about its future enrollment projections. In it, he remarked that although the white population will remain as the dominant racial group in the district, the Hispanic population is projected to grow dramatically by 2011. This is to say there is a category of people characteristically and, to an extent, visibly different from white people just as we distinguish blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. But according to the United States Census Bureau, Hispanic Origin is not a racial category. In fact, the Bureau’s document specifically states that “the Hispanic percent should not be added to percentages for racial categories.” So why do so many people, including some experts, have such a hard time defining and understanding who Hispanics are?
The Census currently asks if you are of Hispanic Origin, to which one can answer yes or no. Based on this answer, combined with an answer on racial category, Hispanics can be subdivided into blacks, whites, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Some Other Race, just as non-Hispanics are presented with the same set of categories. This arbitrary exercise attempts to recognize the diversity of Hispanic populations using an American context of race. Hispanic Origin most typically refers to those from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Central or South America. But this group also includes Spaniards and Filipinos who speak Spanish. Having lived under the racial dichotomy of black and white for most of its history, U.S. society has struggled with groups that do not fit into those two categories. Now that the percentage of Hispanics (14.8% in 2006) exceeds that of blacks (12.4%) as the largest racial/ethnic minority, it is time to be aware of proper classifications.

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Posted on March 10, 2008

By Kiljoong Kim

A family of three including a four-year-old child moves from Rogers Park in the city’s Far North Side to Hammond, Indiana; a move from a two-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom house with a large backyard. The Puerto Rican father and Korean mother do not know exactly know what to expect in a place like Hammond, but they do know that the area will not offer the degree of diversity or access to Lake Michigan as Rogers Park had offered to their four-year-old son. Given the rising cost of rent, however, they decide that their best shot at homeownership is outside of Chicago. Despite crossing county and state lines, though, some would consider their move within proximity of the metropolitan area.
Many researchers and policymakers have emphasized the importance of regionalism for the past couple of decades. Regionalism means to consider Chicago as a metropolitan area beyond its city limits and to include its surrounding counties when it comes to planning and development. But what makes up this larger area?
Increasingly, the answer is Indiana.

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Posted on October 23, 2007

By Kiljoong Kim

To most of us, concepts like globalization and global citizenship seem so far removed from our daily lives that they seemingly have no impact. In fact, we hardly consider the possibility that such concepts can determine our friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Most of us also think of immigrants in very simple terms: Mexicans from Mexico, Poles from Poland, Asian Indians from India, etc. In most cases, immigrants do come from where they were born. But there are also others who have roamed the earth before arriving in our state. Some have settled in Illinois upon their travels and some are simply passing by.
Historically, people often moved for political and economic reasons. Many have fled Cuba, Bosnia, or a number of African nations to seek political asylum. And many have left the Philippines, India, Poland, and many other nations seeking economic opportunities. Today we travel with far greater frequency and over far greater distances than ever before. After 1965, when the Immigration and Naturalization Act was passed, Asian Indians who used to live in England during colonization and Koreans who were in Germany seeking coal mining and nursing opportunities moved to United States. In fact, in the 1970s, a third of Korean immigrants into the Chicago area came from Germany.

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Posted on January 8, 2007

By Kiljoong Kim

In August 2005, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell posed the question, “Where do poor white people live?” While the question may sound simple, it leads to complex issues about race, class, and how we think about social space. For many decades, being poor in a metropolitan area has been synonymous with being black, just as being poor in a rural areas has mostly meant being white. Of course, this cannot be wholly true. Poor blacks live in the country, too. Rich blacks live in the city. Rich whites live in the country. Mitchell’s question is perhaps the most obscure of these combinations: Where do poor white people in the Chicago area live?

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Posted on September 11, 2006

By Kiljoong Kim

This nation’s battle with racial and ethnic tension has been well documented through political measures, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Act to the Naturalization and Immigration Act. While most of us have observed and interpreted this history as a struggle, a series of tumultuous circumstances, and have seen race as a dividing force, others have explored beyond their own identity and managed to interact with people outside their own races. In fact, some even managed to marry and have children as results of their interactions. However, despite the increasing complexity of our society, we have not thought of a good way to recognize those people who do not necessarily fit into conventional categories of race.
For a long time, if a person had 1/16 of blood that was black, that person was considered black. Even today, Halle Berry was labeled as the first black actress to win the Best Actress in Oscars though her mother is white. We routinely consider Sen. Barack Obama as black though he is a product of a white mother and a black father. Prior to 2000, even the United States Census Bureau couldn’t figure out how to adequately deal with people who did not fall neatly into existing categories. The decennial census in 2000 was the first time people were allowed to identify themselves with more than one racial category.

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Posted on June 25, 2006

By Kiljoong Kim

In 1980, 69 percent of Illinois residents were born in Illinois.
The next highest place of birth among Illinois residents was Missouri, accounting for 2.4 percent (279,025 people) of our state’s population.
By 1990, Missouri fell out of the top spot as the largest provider of Illinois residents born elsewhere. It was replaced by Mexico.

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Posted on May 1, 2006

By Kiljoong Kim

With Jesse Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez rattling around the outskirts of the next mayoral race, and a city council packed with women, African Americans, and at least one openly gay man, you might think that diversity has found its place in Chicago’s political arena. Indeed, African Americans and Hispanics in particular have joined the great parade of minority groups before them who have worked their way up, at least to some degree, from outsider status into the halls of power.
But there is a glaring absence from this picture of diverse representation, a missing piece of the puzzle rarely if ever considered among the political practitioners, the political pundits, and the political press. It is this simple fact: There are no Asian-American aldermen here.
Curious, isn’t it? Especially for a growing part of the population which, as a group, is in seemingly good economic shape. Yet, in the case of Chicago’s Asian Americans, money doesn’t equal power.
Why not?
Let’s take a look at the numbers.

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Posted on March 13, 2006