(RE-)Creating the Community: South Asian Transnationalism on Chicago's Devon Avenue

Abstract

As one of the largest South Asian business districts in North America, Chicago's Devon Avenue is reproduced through the transnational connections of South Asian migrants. These ties encompass the diaspora as well as the more commonly theorized links between "home" and "host" societies. Based on fieldwork consisting of interviews and participant observation on Devon Avenue, this study considers how Devon Avenue functions as a transnational site, and therefore suggests the ways in which it reconceptualizes national and urban spaces. An examination of the transnational linkages that produced Devon Avenue, alongside its promotion as an "international marketplace" and the daily interactions among merchants, laborers, and residents, also considers the ways in which expressions of difference are marked by multiplicity and contingency.

Keywords:

• migrant neighborhoods
• transnationalism
• South Asia
• Chicago
• migrant identities