Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea: Reflections and Future Directions 9781978803145
Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea provides an in-depth look at the lives of families in Korea that includ
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Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Series Foreword
Introduction
PART ONE Negotiating Identities
1 To Be Accepted as We Are: Multiple Identity Formation of Filipina Marriage Immigrants through Jasmine Lee
2 Money Matters in Immigrant Motherhood
3 Developing and Negotiating Social Identity among Korean Women with Pakistani Husbands
PART TWO Making Lives under Immigration Control
4 Precarious Family Making among Undocumented Migrant Women
5 Open Sesame: Korean Chinese Kinship Relations and Codes to Reclaim Time in South Korea
PART THREE Claiming Rights and Building Lives
6 Unbearable Weightiness of Marriage: Citizenship and Marriage in Multicultural South Korea
7 Integration, Mobility, and Well-Being after Divorce: Patterns and Strategies of Social Relationships among Intra-Asia Marriage Immigrants in South Korea
PART FOUR Meanings of Multicultural Family and Intergenerational Relationships
8 Being Labeled as a “Multicultural Family” in South Korea: The Stories of Korean Wives, Filipino Husbands, and Their Children
9 Happy Mothers, Successful Children: Marital Satisfaction and Educational Aspirations among Second-Generation Immigrant Children in South Korea
10 Second-Generation Disadvantage: Health of Adolescents from Multicultural Families in South Korea
Concluding Remarks: Going Forward
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index
Citation preview
Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea
The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts Series Editor: Péter Berta The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Context series from Rutgers University Press fills a gap in research by examining the politics of marriage and related practices, ideologies, and interpretations, and addresses the key question of how the politics of marriage has affected social, cultural, and political processes, relations, and boundaries. The series looks at the complex relationships between the politics of marriage and gender, ethnic, national, religious, racial, and class identities, and analyzes how these relationships contribute to the development and management of social and political differences, inequalities, and conflicts. Joanne Payton, Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage: Violence against Women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Rama Srinivasan, Courting Desire: Litigating for Love in North India Hui Liu, Corinne Reczek, and Lindsey Wilkinson, eds., Marriage and Health: The Well-Being of Same-Sex C ouples Sara Smith, Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold Rebecca Joubin, Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama Raksha Pande, Learning to Love: Arranged Marriages and the British Indian Diaspora Asha L. Abeyasekera, Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka Natasha Carver, Marriage, Gender, and Refugee Migration: Spousal Relationships among Muslim Somalis in the United Kingdom Yafa Shanneik and Annelies Moors, eds., Global Dynamics of Shi‘a Marriages: Religion, Gender, and Belonging Anna-Maria Walter, Intimate Connections: Love and Marriage in Pakistan’s High Mountains Viktoriya Kim, Nelia G. Balgoa, and Beverley Anne Yamamoto, The Politics of International Marriage in Japan Anne-Marie D’Aoust, ed., Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration: Constellations of Security, Citizenship, and Rights Minjeong Kim and Hyeyoung Woo, eds., Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea: Reflections and F uture Directions
Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea Reflections and Future Directions
EDITED BY M I N J E O N G K I M A N D H Y E YO U N G W O O
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, AND NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Kim, Minjeong, editor. | Woo, Hyeyoung, editor. Title: Redefining multicultural families in South K orea: reflections and f uture directions / edited by Minjeong Kim and Hyeyoung Woo. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Series: Politics of marriage and gender: global issues in local contexts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021038286 | ISBN 9781978803107 (paperback; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978803114 (hardcover; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978803121 (epub) | ISBN 9781978803138 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978803145 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Families—Korea (South) | Immigrant families—Korea (South) | Intercountry marriage—Korea (South) | Multiculturalism—Korea (South) Classification: LCC HQ682.5 .R43 2022 | DDC 306.85095195—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2 021038286 A British Cataloging-in-P ublication record for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2022 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2022 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www.r utgersuniversitypress.org Manufactured in the United States of America
For Sihu and Connor
CON T EN T S
Series Foreword
ix
PÉTER BERTA
Introduction
1
MINJEONG KIM AND HYEYOUNG WOO
PA RT ONE
Negotiating Identities
1
To Be Accepted as We Are: Multiple Identity Formation of Filipina Marriage Immigrants through Jasmine Lee
33
ILJU KIM
2
Money Matters in Immigrant Motherhood
52
JULIE S. KIM
3
Developing and Negotiating Social Identity among Korean Women with Pakistani Husbands
71
YOONKYUNG KWAK
PA RT T WO
Making Lives u nder Immigration Control 4
Precarious Family Making among Undocumented Migrant Women
91
HYUN MEE KIM AND YU SEON YU
5
Open Sesame: Korean Chinese Kinship Relations and Codes to Reclaim Time in South K orea SOHOON YI
110
v i i i Contents
PA RT THR EE
Claiming Rights and Building Lives 6
Unbearable Weightiness of Marriage: Citizenship and Marriage in Multicultural South Korea
133
NORA HUI-J UNG KIM
7
Integration, Mobility, and Well-Being after Divorce: Patterns and Strategies of Social Relationships among Intra-A sia Marriage Immigrants in South Korea
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HSIN-C HIEH CHANG
PA RT FOUR
Meanings of Multicultural Family and Intergenerational Relationships 8
Being Labeled as a “Multicultural Family” in South Korea: The Stories of Korean Wives, Filipino Husbands, and Their C hildren
175
MINJUNG KIM
9
Happy Mothers, Successful C hildren: Marital Satisfaction and Educational Aspirations among Second-Generation Immigrant Children in South Korea
194
HARRIS HYUN-S OO KIM
10
Second-Generation Disadvantage: Health of Adolescents from Multicultural Families in South Korea
216
HYEYOUNG WOO, LINDSEY WILKINSON, WONJEONG JEONG, AND SOJUNG LIM
Concluding Remarks: G oing Forward MINJEONG KIM
Acknowledgments
247
Notes on Contributors
249
Index
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SE R I E S F O R E WO R D
The politics of marriage (and divorce) is an often-used strategic tool in various social, cultural, economic, and political identity projects as well as in symbolic conflicts among ethnic, national, or religious communities. Despite its multiple strategic applicability, its pervasiveness in everyday life, and its huge significance in performing and managing identities, the politics of marriage is surprisingly underrepresented in both the international book publishing market and the social sciences. The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts is a series from Rutgers University Press examining the politics of marriage as a phenomenon embedded into and intensely interacting with much broader social, cultural, economic, and political processes and practices such as globalization and transnationalization; international migration and h uman trafficking; vertical social mobility; the creation of symbolic boundaries between ethnic populations, nations, religious denominations, or classes; family formation; and struggles for women’s and children’s rights. The series aims primarily to analyze practices, ideologies, and interpretations related to the politics of marriage and to outline the dynamics and diversity of relatedness—interplay and interdependence, for instance— between the politics of marriage and the broader processes and practices mentioned above. In other words, most books in the series devote special attention to how the politics of marriage and t hese processes and practices mutually shape and explain each other. The series concentrates on, among other t hings, the complex relationships between the politics of marriage and gender, ethnic, national, religious, racial, and class identities globally, and examines how t hese relationships contribute to the development and management of social, cultural, and political differences, inequalities, and conflicts. The series seeks to publish single-authored books and edited volumes that develop a gap-fi lling and thought-provoking critical perspective, that are well- balanced between a high degree of theoretical sophistication and empirical richness, and that cross or rethink disciplinary, methodological, or theoretical boundaries. The thematic scope of the series is intentionally left broad to encourage creative submissions that fit within the perspectives outlined above.
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Among the potential topics closely connected with the problem sensitivity of the series are “honor”-based violence; arranged (forced, child, etc.) marriage; transnational marriage markets, migration, and brokerage; intersections of marriage and religion/class/race; the politics of agency and power within marriage; reconfiguration of family; same-sex marriage/union; the politics of love, intimacy, and desire; marriage and multicultural families; the (religious, legal, etc.) politics of divorce; the c auses, forms, and consequences of polygamy in contemporary socie ties; sport marriage; refusing marriage; and so forth. Redefining Multicultural Families in South K orea is a fascinating account of how the multilevel politics of partner selection, family formation, interpersonal intimacy, and cultural brokerage and mediation work and how, from time to time, it is modified and reconceptualized in multicultural South Korean contexts. As many chapters in this volume superbly demonstrate, the relationship between the varied practices and lived experiences of multiculturalism versus South Korea’s multicultural family policies is complex and dynamic—one of the major merits of the volume is that it offers a sophisticated and illuminating investigation of why the nature of this relationship is often conflicted and tense and of how the changing dynamics and content of the interplay between t hese personal and family practices/experiences, as well as state policies, can be meticulously documented and analyzed. To emphasize that marriage migration is only one of the many possible ways of forming multicultural families, the authors pay special attention to the high diversity of contemporary immigrants (among others, to the families of undocumented migrant workers or Korean Chinese migrants) who become part of multicultural families in South K orea. In an effort to deconstruct and destigmatize the popular depiction of immigration, the chapters convincingly highlight and investigate the major challenges (economic precarity, exploitative labor conditions, racial discrimination, gender inequality, nationalist xenophobia, and restrictive immigration policies) that immigrants and their families face in their orea presents not only a brileveryday life. Redefining Multicultural Families in South K liant example of how state policies shape lived experiences and everyday practices of multiculturalism (and vice versa), but also offers a perceptive insight into the dynamics and logic of distribution of marital power between spouses living in multicultural families and into how the intrafamily politics of inequality (based on race, ethnicity, legal status, nationality, socioeconomic status, or religion) affects multicultural family members in contemporary South K orea. Péter Berta University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies / Budapest Business School, Faculty of International Management and Business
Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea
Introduction M I N J E ON G K I M A N D H Y E YO U N G WO O
When Minjeong Kim, the first co-editor of this volume, mentioned her research on damunhwa gajok (multicultural family) involving Filipinas and Korean men in rural South K orea (M. Kim 2018) to her m other, the older w oman recounted the story of her lifelong friend, Ms. Yu. Since the early 1970s, Ms. Yu had been in a relationship with a Japanese businessman based in Japan. They had a daughter together. Ms. Yu was a hyeonji-cheo (local wife)—a term used at the time to denote a Korean woman in a long-term relationship with a non-Korean man who traveled to K orea for work.1 Because the businessman was already married and had children in Japan, Ms. Yu, as a single mother, raised their “honhyeol” (mixed-blood) daughter by herself in Korea. The father provided support for their daughter and paid for her college education and participation in a study abroad program in Germany. Eventually, the daughter found a job in finance in Japan, where she met and married a professional who had emigrated from India. Ms. Yu occasionally traveled from Korea to Japan to help her daughter with child care. “It is a multicultural family,” Minjeong’s mother concluded, “but we did not have a word for families like that before.” Prior to the twenty-first century, Koreans had long constructed their identity as Han minjok (ethnic Han people or “one people”) and propagated ethnic homogeneity; thus, they would in no way have considered multiculturalism or multicultural families to characterize K orea or Koreans (Lie 2014). Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, especially following the Multicultural Family Support Act (MFSA) passed in 2008, Koreans have become quite familiar with the term damunhwa gajok (multicultural f amily). Nevertheless, the concept of multicultural f amily is often contested, and its application is far from clear. What do we mean by “multicultural family”? What makes a family multicultural? How does the Korean government define such a f amily, and how do Koreans perceive and use the term? Ms. Yu’s family is certainly multinational and multiethnic, but is the meaning of “multicultural” based solely on f amily members’ multiple nationalities? 1
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The Korean government enacted the MFSA to “support the members of multicultural families to have stable family lives and carry out their roles and responsibilities as members of society, and to contribute to improving the quality of life and facilitating their incorporation into society” (National Law Information Center 2018). This act stipulates that multicultural families consist of c ouples made up of a Korean citizen and e ither a marriage immigrant or another type of foreign- born naturalized citizen. However, by specifically identifying marriage immigrants, the MFSA prioritizes families with marriage immigrants over t hose with other types of foreign-born immigrants. Gyeolhon iminja (marriage immigrant) is a gender-neutral designation, but many Koreans presume that marriage immigrants are women from other Asian countries who marry Korean men. In princi ple, gendered programs under the MFSA were created to expand the social and legal rights of marriage immigrants in K orea, who w ere estimated to number approximately 200,000 in 2009—over 17 percent of the foreign-born population in Korea at the time (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family 2020; Statistics Korea 2020a). As a consequence of the widespread gendered understanding of multicultural families, the families of Korean w omen married to foreign-born men have been relegated to the margins of the MFSA’s reach, and families comprising exclusively foreign-born immigrants (with no Korean spouse) or t hose like that of Ms. Yu (with no legal spouse residing in Korea) have been excluded from the act altogether. The Korean government maintains this restrictive definition of multicultural families, whereas public discourse, in contrast, uses the term damunhwa (multicultural) to refer to all families that are not “pure Korean.” For example, the families of labor immigrants are also called multicultural families. The c hildren of multicultural families are commonly referred to as “multicultural c hildren,” which has replaced the older term honhyeol, now considered outdated and degrading. One could say that “multiculturalism” is the Korean counterpart of the contemporary buzzword “diversity” in the United States. A quick Internet search yields a wide assortment of phrases that include the word damunhwa; the results include, for instance, references to multicultural education, multicultural scholarship, multicultural movies, multicultural entertainers, and a multicultural orchestra. On top of that, in public discourse, the term “multicultural” is used when discussing the issues that immigrants and bi-or multiracial/ethnic Koreans face, such as discrimination, marginalization, and the need for social assistance. Despite the significant diversity in lived experiences among these families, the term “multicultural family” has become a new label applied to immigrants and their c hildren who are racially and ethnically different from native Koreans and tend to face high levels of social and economic disadvantage. In this context, Redefining Multicultural Families aims to reinvigorate scholarly discussions about families with immigrants in Korea by raising critical questions and offering new directions of inquiry. Before proceeding with this objective, we would like to introduce two important issues concerning critical discourses on
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multicultural families in Korea, as well as the limitations and possibilities of these discourses. The first issue concerns a clear delineation, or the lack thereof, between the terms “multicultural families” and “multiculturalism.” When discussed in the Korean context, “multicultural f amily policies” and “multicultural policies” have been used interchangeably because, as we describe below, the Korean government’s multicultural initiatives have operated primarily through multicultural f amily policies. Instead of reinforcing the blurry line between multiculturalism and multicultural families, this chapter juxtaposes some critical elements of multiculturalism and Korea’s application of multicultural family policies to identify gaps that have been overlooked and to address these gaps. The second issue concerns the ways in which the state’s multicultural policies are multifaceted. Sociologist Hae Yeon Choo (2016) has suggested that t hese policies are used to control and contain immigrants through selective inclusion (in the case of marriage immigrants) and exclusion (in the case of l abor migrants and undocumented migrants).2 In political scientist Timothy Lim’s (2014) more optimistic or open-ended assessment, Korea’s “multicultural turn,” despite an imperfect start, signals a move in the right direction for Korea. Although these views are seemingly contradictory, this is not an either/or issue. Rather, these developments have happened simultaneously. Now that more than ten years have passed since the 2008 MFSA was implemented with vigor and speed, the question at hand is this: How effectively has the discussion about multiculturalism and multicultural families evolved in Korea? With t hese two discursive issues in mind, the chapters in this volume reflect on the diverse realities of families with immigrants in Korea. Here, before introducing the content of the individual chapters, we reevaluate the meanings of multiculturalism and the objectives of multicultural family policies in the Korean context.
Meanings of Multiculturalism Redefining Multicultural Families deals with the experiences of immigrants and their families in K orea, against the backdrop of the Korean government’s multicultural family policies. Many pundits and academics have viewed t hese policies as a specific application of multiculturalism in the Korean context, sometimes conflating multicultural family policies with multiculturalism. As a first step in the critical appraisal of this situation, we consider the meanings of multiculturalism as it has been previously discussed in Western countries. Multiculturalism and multicultural f amily policies are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but distinguishing them from each other is an important exercise to explore potential directions for innovative policies toward multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is a contested concept, and scholarly debates over its theoretical interpretation and actual application have revealed ontological limitations. Conventional questions about multiculturalism have concerned the recognition
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of minority communities and their cultures, which is interwoven with identity politics (Okin 1999; Taylor 1995). Questions regarding who represents “culture” often bring forward voices that have been left out, and the goal of multiculturalism is rectifying these omissions in various areas of society, such as education, history, the media, and politics (Okin 1999). Along with this politics of recognition, multiculturalism entails providing minorities with “group rights” to protect cultural expressions that differ from those of the majority. Applications of multiculturalism include the protection of religious belief and expression, the implementation of public policies and subsidies supporting diverse cultural activities and inclusive educational curricula (such as language and history), the advocacy of politi cal representation and minority rights, and the establishment of governing entities grounded in minority cultures, separate from the federal or national governing system (Okin 1999). In seeking to realize multiculturalism, one confronts the question of whether genuine multiculturalism is possible with the existence of a “communal” or “societal” culture representing a nation or state (McLennan 2001). Forsaking such a common culture is not feasible b ecause, essentially, a state cannot be culturally neutral. For instance, the selection of an official state language inevitably promotes the majority culture. As a compromise, a state’s promotion of the majority culture should be balanced with “liberal justice,” which “requires special rights recognizing and protecting the cultures of minority groups” (Joppke 2002, 247). In recent years, scholars have contended that multiculturalism has declined in Western countries (Alexander 2013; Chin 2017; Joppke 2002, 2004). For example, Christian Joppke has argued that countries such as Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, which had long promoted “explicit multiculturalism,” have gradually downscaled their efforts or retreated from multiculturalism. According to Joppke, in the 1970s and 1980s, Australia promoted the notion that multiculturalism is relevant for “all Australians,” and some progressives asserted that Australia itself equated to multiculturalism. However, a government- commissioned report in the late 1980s emphasized an “Australian identity” distinguishing the nation from other countries, with multiculturalism presented as one of the values and fea ere, the report’s author tures of this identity, alongside democracy, for example. H argued that “an Australian core,” or what is “identifiably Australian,” had to be defined separately from multiculturalism (Joppke 2004, 246). Sweden’s former multicultural policy, launched in 1975, allowed immigrants to maintain their ethnic identity without forcing them to acquire Swedish citizenship. However, beginning in the 1980s, Sweden gradually withdrew from its explicit multicultural policy, shifting its emphasis from the protection of ethnic identity to a “neutral position” toward immigrant integration (Joppke 2002). Similarly, in 1983, the Netherlands put forward a robust version of multiculturalism in their “ethnic minorities” policy, which provided each ethnic group with its own infrastructure, including ethnic schools, media, and social serv ices. Then, by the late 1990s, the country
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withdrew from the original policy, removing all references to ethnic minorities and emphasizing immigrant integration as individuals rather than as members of ethnic groups. Many economic and political factors influenced these countries’ paths, but Joppke observed the de-emphasis of ethnic group identities as a common trait in countries’ downscaling of or withdrawal from multiculturalism. Diverse ethnic and cultural identities and expressions were formerly the core element of multicultural policies, but these distinctions have been blurred through the prioritization of individual immigrants’ civic and economic integration. The difference between focusing on the group and focusing on the individual is analogous to w hether the “multiculturalism umbrella” is transparent, so that different ethnic groups remain recognizable, or opaque, rendering group identities invisible. This brief discussion of examples from Western countries is useful as a reminder that policy shifts do not necessarily follow a linear trajectory of progressive evolution from opening up to multiculturalism to further embracing it; rather, a vacillation between openness and exclusion may be observed. It also illustrates what a robust version of multiculturalism can look like, in contrast to Korea’s relatively diluted version of multiculturalism. The situation in Korea is by no means directly comparable to those seen in the Western countries mentioned above. The Korean context is characterized by late industrialization and late migration, and Timothy Lim (2014, 32) has argued that late migration “pushed [Korea] onto a multiculturalist path much sooner than may otherw ise have been expected.” Korea’s turn toward multiculturalism, which began fairly recently—around the beginning of the twenty-first century, has fascinated scholars and pundits because it was not only swift but also antithetical to the country’s nationalist ideology of danil minjok (monoethnicity) and sunsu hye eople’s minds. Since oltong (pure bloodline), which had long been ingrained in p the first decade of the twenty-first century, multiculturalism has become a ubiquitous buzzword, and the state has actively promoted a campaign to redefine Korea as a multicultural society. The two main policies associated with K orea’s multiculturalism are the 2008 MFSA and the 2009 First Basic Plan for Immigration ere created as a response to the growing population of Policy.3 Both policies w immigrants in Korea—first the MFSA, primarily addressing marriage immigrants, and then the Immigration Policy, which applied to all immigrants. We w ill look more closely at these policies later in the chapter. At this juncture, it is pertinent to raise two issues regarding Korea’s multicultural policies. The first concerns the timing of K orea’s multicultural turn. Building on the notions of late industrialization and late migration, wherein countries undergoing t hese pro cesses l ater consider the experience of countries that developed e arlier, K orea can be said to be g oing through “late multiculturalism,” taking on a “learner” role in their turn toward multiculturalism (Lim 2014), which presents its own challenges. When K orea began to receive migrants, according to Joppke and other scholars,
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Western countries had already weakened or retreated from the explicit multicultural stances they had previously taken. Although it is difficult to say whose multicultural model Korea followed, its current path appears similar to the downscaled versions of multiculturalism in which multicultural policies are add-ons to the broader immigration policy, emphasizing the incorporation of individual immigrants rather than recognizing specific ethnic group identities. Second, as K orea’s multiculturalism focuses on immigrant incorporation specifically for t hose who have arrived since the 1990s, ethnic minorities, such as hwagyo (ethnic Chinese people in Korea) and multiracial Koreans born prior to the 1990s, are not included in these policies’ purview. Presumably, this focus was based on the premise that, despite t hese groups’ ethnic and racial distinctions, they are linguistically and culturally similar to the majority population. This narrow application of multiculturalism is concomitant with the policy exclusion of native minorities and the lack of policy measures addressing racial and ethnic discrimination. More importantly, the limited scope of multiculturalism covered by the Korean state does not reflect immigrants’ multiculturalist demands and identity-based mobilization. Immigrant workers and marriage immigrants in K orea have established voluntary associations and organized grassroots activism since these groups began to arrive in Korea (Kim and Kim 2021; Lim 2014). Labor migrants have challenged restrictive migration laws and demanded better treatment and opportunities, and marriage immigrants have spoken out about domestic violence. T hese immigrants have voiced criticism of the Korean state’s assimilationist policies, deep-seated ethnonationalist ideology, and racism. They have come together with co-ethnics to celebrate their shared identity, but they have also worked with other groups of immigrants, envisioning a multicultural Korea. Nevertheless, these immigrants have not been invited to participate in the state’s multiculturalism policy planning; instead, they have been marginalized, e ither solely as recipients or as fully excluded populations living on the fringes of Korean society. An impor tant question h ere is how the policy direction of the government can be aligned with the immigrants’ movement to realize a multicultural K orea. Before describing the contours of contemporary immigration in Korea and discussing the government’s multicultural family policies in more detail, we provide an overview of K orea’s ethnoscape in the latter half of the twentieth c entury. This is admittedly a rather shallow look at the complex processes involved, but, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the Korean context, we felt it would be useful to include this snapshot of ethnic and racial diversity in K orea beyond the limited scope of Korea’s multiculturalism (and beyond the focus of our volume). H ere, we highlight three groups: biracial Koreans and hwagyo—arguably two of the most identifiable ethnic minority groups in Korea—and white immigrants whose presence became more public in the 1990s and who have been treated much more favorably compared with other ethnic and racial minorities.
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Precursors of Contemporary Multicultural Families In the neighborhood where the second co-editor of this volume, Hyeyoung Woo, spent her childhood, lived a woman whose sister, Ms. Nam, worked at the United States military base in Moonsan, near the demilitarized zone dividing North and South K orea. In the 1980s, one of the privileges for Koreans working at U.S. bases was easy access to tax-free American items referred to locally as PX (post exchange) goods. These items (canned food, cigarettes, liquor, and candy) w ere highly sought a fter because of their superior quality as authentic imports, so many base employees would obtain goods not only for themselves but also for others. Hyeyoung once went to Ms. Nam’s home to pick up PX goods that her mother was expecting. As she approached her destination, Hyeyoung noticed several young multiracial children playing in the alleyways. Hyeyoung had known that Ms. Nam was married to an American soldier and that they had a child together. Hyeyoung also learned from Ms. Nam that these c hildren playing in the alleyways also had Korean mothers and white or black fathers, who were assumed to be American soldiers. Yet, Hyeyoung was surprised to stumble upon a residential area for t hese interracial families, tucked away from mainstream Korean society. John Lie (2014, 15) has contended that, in late twentieth-century K orea, where “the belief in monoethnic and monocultural Korea was hegemonic,” ethnic minorities and biracial Koreans were oppressed not necessarily by the state’s physical violence but by the state’s exertion of symbolic power through “enunciating its vision of monoethnic nationalism and enacting a state policy to realize that goal.” The ideological construction of Korean society as one nation denied the historical reality of a multiethnic Korea, as well as the legitimate societal membership of diverse ethnic and racial minorities. Following the Korean War (1950–1953), the Korean/non-A sian biracial population grew out of the U.S. military presence, which facilitated most encounters between Korean w omen and American men. There were also off-base opportunities for Korean w omen and American men to meet, involving, for example, Korean women college students or American missionaries, but the majority of women who had c hildren with non-A sian men—especially in cases where the Korean m others and their c hildren remained in K orea—were from low-income families and w ere socially ostracized because of discrimination against biracial people (Yuh 2002). A 2006 newspaper article reported that 83 percent of mixed-race c hildren of Korean and American parentage in K orea were raised by single mothers (Nadia Kim 2014). Under the nationalist ideology of danil minjok and the patriarchal system in K orea, biracial Koreans w ere seen as the embodiment of v iolated moral, social, and sexual norms. The public enjoyed the performances of biracial entertainers, especially popular singers such as Insooni, Park Il-joon, and Yun Soo Il. In everyday life, however, biracial Koreans w ere called pejorative names, such as tuigi (originally a term for animals of mixed species), and w ere subject to institutional discrimination (Gage 2014). For example, u nder universal conscription, biracial Korean men
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were automatically disqualified from mandatory military serv ice b ecause of their physical differences (H. Kim 2016).4 Individual Koreans may have viewed those with mixed Korean/other Asian ethnicity as more racially similar to Koreans, compared with Korean/non-A sian biracial p eople, whose appearance often makes them stand out. This does not mean, however, that t hese non-Korean East Asian ethnic minorities w ere embraced or treated equally. For example, hwagyo have long been recognized as an ethnic minority in K orea, with established enclaves in Seoul and Incheon (Shin 2016). The monoethnic nationalism of the 1970s led to the hwagyo people’s displacement from central Seoul, and exclusionist policies limiting hwagyo ownership of property and businesses forced many of them out of the country (Shin 2016). In the 1990s, “new faces” began to appear in Korean public media, including immigrant professionals (often white people) and labor migrants (mostly from Asian countries). Different from non-Korean East Asian ethnic minorities and biracial p eople, whose presence was largely born out of political contexts and historical conditions, these new faces were newcomers whose move to Korea was propelled by the wave of segyehwa (globalization). Several white naturalized Koreans originally from Europe and the United States became popular in the media. Lee Charm (from Germany, previously known as Lee Han-woo), who later even served as president of the Korea Tourism Organization from 2009 to 2013; Ida Daussy (from France); and Robert Holley (from the United States), referred to as “Koreans with blue eyes,” captivated Korean television viewers’ attention with their fluent Korean language skills and quick wit (Oh 1997). All three were married to Koreans, which gave them legitimacy in the eyes of the Korean public. For Koreans, who were riding a high point of economic development, middle-class professional white immigrants from more developed countries openly expressing their affection for and loyalty to Koreans and Korea appealed to their nationalist pride at this time, which turned out to be the eve of the 1997 economic crisis. In the same decade, Korea opened its doors to migrants from less developed countries in Asia, resulting in a rapid increase in the foreign-born population. About 40,000 foreign-born p eople lived in Korea in 1980, and this number continually increased, as shown in figure I.1, reaching approximately 100,000 in 1990, 500,000 in 2000, 1,000,000 in 2007, and 2,000,000 in 2016 (4% of the total population) (Statistics Korea 2020a). The changes in the governmental policies and the expansion of transnational ties and businesses can explain the relatively large number of recent migrants arriving in K orea en masse. In this regard, recent migrants differ from the nonnormative individuals and families described above, such as biracial Koreans born in K orea, hwagyo whose ancestors migrated from China generations ago, or white immigrants who set their courses individually. More importantly, as t hese recent migrants make up the majority of immigrants in Korea, they are at (in the case of marriage migrants) or adjacent to (in the case of labor migrants) the center of contemporary multicultural family discourse in the country.
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25,000,000 20,000,000 15,000,000 10,000,000 5,000,000 0 1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
Foreign residents Foreign short-term residents
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
Foreign long-term residents Undocumented
FIGUR E I.1 Trends in foreign residents in South K orea (1998–2018).
Source: Statistics Korea 2020a. Notes: Foreign long-term residents are t hose who have stayed at least ninety days since their arrival in South Korea and are registered as foreign residents. Foreign short-term residents are t hose who have stayed fewer than ninety days and thus have not registered as foreign residents. Undocumented refers to t hose who have stayed more than ninety days without registering as foreign residents.
Labor and Marriage Migration to South Korea In the early 1990s, increased wages and rising levels of educational attainment among Koreans left more than two hundred thousand low-skilled jobs unfilled; the Korean government, under pressure from the owners of small-and medium-sized businesses in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, implemented the Industrial Trainee Program, which brought in foreign-born workers from other countries, mostly in Asia (A. Kim 2009; N. H. Kim 2008; Seol and Skrentny 2009). Through this program, foreign-born workers could be employed in K orea during a one-year training period, followed by an optional one-year extension. However, for many labor migrants, a one-or two-year stay was not sufficient to make money while learning new skills as a trainee. T hese l abor migrants often needed to earn enough to repay the cost of their migration, including brokers’ fees, and to bring a good amount of money home with them when they returned to their home country a fter completing the trainee program. B ecause Korea was geographically distant from many of these migrant workers’ home countries and the trip was too costly for a circular migration pattern to be feasible, many overstayed their visas and became undocumented. This resulted in an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants in Korea, who were estimated to make up almost 80 percent of all foreign-born workers in K orea in 2002 (Seol and Skrentny 2009). In 2003, in an effort to control the number of undocumented immigrants, the Korean government devised the Employment Permit System, under which migrant
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trainees were eligible to apply for a work permit a fter successfully completing their training program. This work permit allowed them to work for two years in one of four sectors (manufacturing, construction, agriculture, or fisheries); afterward, they w ere required to return to their home country for an “employment restriction period” of at least six months before they could be employed again in Korea (Lee and Skrentny 2014). The Korean government used both aggressive crackdowns and amnesty measures (e.g., suspending fines and offering voluntary repatriation) to control the undocumented population. These measures, which led to the number of undocumented migrants decreasing to about 21 percent of all migrant workers in Korea by 2007, were clearly intended to discourage low-skilled workers from settling in K orea (Lee and Skrentny 2014). When discussing immigration in Korea, it is important to mention ethnic Koreans from China, who make up the largest group among all foreign-born people in Korea. Ethnic Koreans from China are often referred as joseonjok from Yeonbyeon (Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China), and the large number orea may have resulted from preferential treatment for of joseonjok migrants in K this group over other labor migrants. Korea initially opened its doors to joseonjok in the late 1980s to allow them to visit family members in Korea. Then, after 1992, when China and Korea formally established diplomatic relations, a large number of joseonjok sought economic opportunities in Korea (Freeman 2011). Soon after the 1997 economic crisis, the Korean government restricted the entry of joseonjok (and koryeoin—ethnic Koreans from the former Soviet Union), but strong ethnonationalist sentiment and the persistent demand for low-skilled workers later compelled the government to create a special program for joseonjok workers. This 2004 program allowed these ethnic Koreans to work in the serv ice sector (e.g., in restaurants, in hotels, or as domestic workers) and stay for up to three years (instead of two years); a 2007 policy change increased the maximum stay to five years (A. Kim 2009). Many migrant workers who came to K orea through the Industrial Trainee Program were men. Some of these men were married and came to K orea with their spouses, but many were unmarried. The arrival of a large number of unmarried men contributed to an increase in intermarriage between Korean women and l abor migrant men. Until the early 1990s, international marriage occurred primarily between Korean w omen and non-Korean men. Korean men rarely married non- Korean women, not only b ecause they had few opportunities to meet non-Korean women, but also because they were discouraged from intermarriage because of familial expectations to maintain their ethno-patriarchal lineage. In 1990, for example, only 619 Korean men married foreign-born w omen, whereas 4,091 Korean women married foreign-born men (see figure I.2). The number of international marriages among Korean women and foreign-born men then increased from 3,129 in 1995 to 11,637 in 2005. This change was modest, relative to the increase in the number of Korean men marrying foreign-born w omen, from 619 (13.1% of all international marriages) in 1990 to 30,719 (72.5% of all international marriages) in
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45,000 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000
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12 20
10 20
08
06
04
20
20
20
02 20
00
98
20
96
19
19
94 19
92 19
19
90
0
International marriage Foreign-born wives Foreign-born husbands FIGUR E I.2 Trends in international marriages in South K orea (1990–2018).
Source: Statistics Korea 2019.
2005. China, the largest sending country for labor migrants, emerged as a new major sending country for the foreign-born husbands of Korean women; the United States and Japan followed as the second and third largest sending countries of foreign-b orn husbands. A notable change in international marriages occurring in the 1990s was that foreign-b orn spouses increasingly came from developing countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, to which most Koreans were unaccustomed. As seen in figure I.2, the number of international marriages among Korean men (10,365) surpassed that among Korean w omen (3,129) in 1995. This reversal was mainly driven by the influx of marriage immigrant w omen from China and Southeast Asia. The change may also have led to a relaxing of attitudes regarding international marriage among the Korean population, which had expanded in response to imbalanced sex ratios in rural areas. Beginning in the 1990s, when the problem of an excess of rural bachelors became widely known, local governments and religious organizations turned to China and the Philippines for arranged marriages (Freeman 2011; M. Kim 2018). This phenomenon did not remain confined to rural areas. Commercial matchmaking agencies soon opened across the country for men deemed unappealing in the domestic marriage market—m iddle-aged divorced men, men with disabilities, and men with low incomes. At the peak in 2005, marriages between a Korean man and a foreign-born woman accounted for one in three marriages in rural areas and one in ten marriages in K orea as a w hole (M. Kim 2014).
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The Korean government has approached the two strands of newcomers—labor immigrants and marriage immigrants—differently, looking favorably on marriage immigrant w omen, who are viewed as part of the Korean family through the patriarchal nationalist lens (H. Kim 2007; M. Kim 2013). Next we briefly considers how community serv ices for the families of labor migrants were developed into the MFSA, which was initially created exclusively for marriage immigrants, followed by a critique of the MFSA, in conjunction with Korea’s Basic Plan for Immigration Policy.
Development of Multicultural Family Support Policy in K orea Restrictive governmental policies were not the only challenge labor mi grants faced around the turn of the c entury. These workers w ere also subject to atrocious workplace conditions, including low pay, verbal and physical abuse, and safety risks. The fact that many migrant workers were undocumented made them more vulnerable to abusive treatment by employers. In 2000, a special calendar produced by a group led by migrant workers attracted media attention. This calendar featured twelve photographs, one for each month, of Nepalese migrants to K orea who had serious injuries from industrial accidents, such as amputated arms and skin burns. The calendar was designed to inform the public about the horrifying consequences of the lack of protection for migrant workers and the extreme hardships endured by l abor migrants. This was but one example of the awareness-raising efforts that w ere carried out by migrant workers. Beginning in the 1990s, migrant workers organized sit-ins and street protests to challenge the lack of safety measures in workplaces and the repressive immigration regulations (Lee 2003; Lim 2014). They even created Migrant Workers Television, a media channel of communication for immigrants. However, the Korean government was unyielding, rarely acknowledging migrant workers’ membership in Korea. The majority of the Korean public was indifferent to migrant workers’ struggles, while community-based or faith-based nongovernmental organizations worked with migrant workers to secure their labor rights. Some of these organizations also provided labor migrants with assistance for their families. The Women Migrant Workers’ House, the first private organization for w omen labor migrants, initially focused on providing w omen labor migrants with translation services and educational assistance with maternity care (Women Migrants Humanrights Center 2005). This organization, established in 2000, also supported couples consisting of Filipino migrant husbands and Korean wives. The organization was later renamed the Women Migrants Humanrights Center of K orea, and it soon expanded its programs to include Korean language and cultural education, marriage counseling, and education on preventing sexual violence and harassment. By 2005, it extended its programs to marriage immigrant w omen. In a country that had never seen a broad political movement advocating for the rights of racial or ethnic minorities, the Korean government’s promotion of
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multiculturalism was unprecedented in terms of both direction and scale. In April 2006, the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration implemented the first major policy on marriage immigrants and their families, the Plan for Supporting the Social Integration of Women Marriage Immigrants and Families. This policy involved a dozen governmental units including several ministries, such as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Social Welfare and Health (Lee 2008). The plan reflected extensive development in this area between 2005 and 2008. Nora Hui-Jung Kim (2014) showed that the number of news articles published in K orea mentioning the word “multicultural” increased from 235 in the period from 1990 to 1999 to 15,317 in 2005 alone and to 36,778 in 2008 alone (N. H. Kim 2014, 60). Public discussions about marriage immigrants intensified on the issues of domestic violence, “fake” marriage, and marriage brokers. Television portrayals of marriage immigrants became more frequent, with the launch of Love in Asia (2005–2015), a reality show about the families of marriage immigrants (Ahn 2018). Frenzied reports of Super Bowl XL Most Valuable Player Award recipient Hines Ward’s 2006 visit to K orea drew attention to biracial Koreans and to how they w ere neglected in the marriage immigrant–focused public discourse on multicultural families (Nadia Kim 2014). The 2006 Plan for Women Marriage Immigrants and Families served as a blueprint for the 2008 MFSA, which codified state support for multicultural families and initiated public campaigns to redefine K orea as a multicultural society. Multicultural family support centers (MFSC; damunhwa gajok jiwon senteo), agencies established by the MFSA, operate throughout Korea, providing serv ices in five areas: Korean language and culture educational services, interpretation and translation, childcare, c hildren’s education, and employment and entrepreneurship. There is a notable similarity between these offerings and the programs provided by the community-based organi zations developed for women labor migrants. It is especially ironic, then, that, although the MFSA was modeled on the serv ices and assistance initially provided for the families of l abor migrants by community-based organi zations, it excluded such families and was targeted instead toward women marriage immigrants, who emerged as the main group considered in the Korean government’s multicultural policies.
Critique of Korea’s Multicultural Family Policies At the peak of public attention to marriage immigrants and of the state’s efforts on behalf of this group, a “multicultural boom” could also be seen in Korean academia. Numerous t heses, dissertations, and scholarly articles about multicultural families or families with marriage immigrants were published. Academic journals dedicated to topics of multiculturalism were launched—such as the Journal of Multicultural Contents Studies (Damunhwa Kontencheu Yeongu, in 2002) and the Journal of Multicultural Society (Damunhwa Sahoi Yeongu, in 2008)—and several universities established research centers specializing in “multicultural studies.” A wide
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range of academic disciplines—anthropology, economics, education, h uman development, law, political science, psychology, public policy and administration, sociology, and social work—contributed to the burgeoning research efforts on multicultural discussions, often taking one of two approaches. Scholars taking the first approach have been part of state multicultural family projects investigating marriage immigrants’ experiences and the conditions of multicultural families. T hese researchers have collected and analyzed data to identify new immigrants’ needs and presented policy recommendations within the multicultural apparatus. Scholars taking the second approach have engaged in critical debates over concerns and questions about the meanings of “multiculturalism” and w hether the intentions of the state’s multicultural efforts are genuine. Korea’s multiculturalism has been a top-down project—initiated not by ethnic minorities or immigrants, but instead developed by the government and led by Koreans. Without question, some of the actors involved have engaged in multiculturalism efforts with the genuinely empathetic and humanistic intention of helping immigrants forge a better life in K orea (M. Kim 2018). This is especially the case for individuals who became involved in this work in response to marriage immigrants speaking out about the many human rights violations they faced, including domestic violence, being given false information about their future spouses by marriage brokers, and other unjust treatment (e.g., having their passports taken away to prevent them from leaving a troubled marriage). Many Koreans have also held, and worked t oward, a vision of a multicultural f uture for K orea. However, some Korean policymakers and government officers have justified the multicultural policies with nationalist pride and paternalism (M. Kim 2018). The Korean media has claimed that migrants come to K orea to pursue “Korean dreams” and that K orea could not simply ignore their hardships. Scholars have also pointed out that K orea has faced pressure from the international community, and the government is highly conscious of the country’s standing on the global stage. For example, a 2007 report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that Korea “adopt measures to prohibit and eliminate all forms of discrimination against foreigners, including migrant workers and c hildren born from inter-ethnic unions” (Lim 2014, 46). Ultimately, it was for both ideological and practical reasons that the Korean government implemented the 2008 MFSA and the 2009 Basic Plan for Immigration Policy, which together form K orea’s multicultural policy. Since the inception of these policies, critics have pointed out that the policies are grounded in K orea’s patriarchal nationalism (H. Kim 2007, 2011). All types of new immigrants have a pressing need for social adaptation programs that provide assistance with learning the Korean language and culture, but marriage immigrants have emerged as the main beneficiaries of Korea’s multicultural family policies, which seek to help immigrant w omen fulfill their domestic responsibilities, learn to communicate with their parents-in-law or better serve them, and raise their c hildren properly as Koreans (M. Kim 2013). T hese needs w ere used to justify
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the initial 2006 Plan for Women Marriage Immigrants and Families and then to support the MFSA. It is also important to note that the Korean government’s exclusive attention to marriage immigrants was bolstered by the argument that marriage immigrants could offset the long-term decline in marriage among Koreans and the low fertility rate, which has been below 1.3 since 2001 (Statistics K orea 2020b). Thus, part of the impetus for implementing a national policy to support marriage immigrants was the prospect that they could help bring about positive outcomes to pro-natalist policy efforts. In contrast to the close attention paid to marriage immigrants, labor migrants, whose lives had long been in limbo, found their societal position unchanged, and multiracial Koreans, who had long been neglected by the Korean government and Korean society, w ere bewildered by their exclusion from policies explicitly claiming to target the multicultural family (Nadia Kim 2014). Some have also criticized the MFSA for promoting and facilitating cultural assimilation, due to its emphasis on social adaptation (M. Kim 2013; Watson 2012). Despite the Korean government’s expressed vision of making K orea a multicultural society, t here is evidence that Korean government agents want to avoid letting the social incorporation of marriage immigrants disrupt the perceived coherence of the Korean nation (M. Kim 2018). To be fair, the MFSA has created initiatives and programs to address these critical assessments. One objective of the MFSA, which is overseen by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, is “to prevent societal discrimination and bias against multicultural families by offering education and promoting multiculturalism” (National Law Information Center 2018). Efforts to achieve this objective include broadcasting promotional materials, training government employees and teachers on multiculturalism, and providing multicultural education in public schools so that “members of the public can understand and respect cultural diversity and be better informed about multicultural families” (National Law Information Center 2018). Other available programs include educational opportunities for Korean husbands to learn about their spouse’s country of origin and culture, support for bilingual education for “multicultural c hildren,” and the provision of public services in different languages. Furthermore, the MFSA assists marriage immigrants to form and operate associations. To educate Koreans about cultural diversity and tolerance of different cultures, marriage immigrants participate as educators, performers, and ambassadors of their own cultures. Although it is not specifically about multicultural families, the Basic Plan for Immigration Policy includes some measures intended to promote multiculturalism. This policy considers various groups of immigrants—professionals, international students, labor migrants, refugees, and marriage immigrants—a nd its multicultural policies are meant to complement the MFSA. For instance, the 2018 Third Basic Plan for Immigration Policy, in addition to “improving perceptions on immigrants and enhancing the understanding of cultural diversity” and advocating for “immigrants’ h uman rights and discrimination prevention,” aims to promote
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immigrant participation in different areas (Ministry of Justice 2018). One way it does this is by encouraging local governmental units to gather immigrants’ opinions in their planning for use in developing immigration policy with civil society. The policy also proposes the expansion of immigrants’ participation in their local communities. Although t hese measures indicate a move in the right direction, the vague language on cultural diversity reveals a hands-off approach to cultivating ethnic identity. These policies echo the withdrawn, scaled-down version of multiculturalism that focuses on individual immigrants’ incorporation into mainstream society (Joppke 2004). Further, the policies do not differentiate community-based groups organized and run by immigrants or ethnic minorities from those operated by native Koreans, which ignores the unique position and potential of the former type of group. According to one study (Kim and Kim 2021), some local MFSCs have ruled out the affiliation of groups organized for one specific ethnic group because they did not represent multiple ethnicities. This limited interpretation and application of multiculturalism contribute to the binary construction of multicultural families/immigrants versus Koreans. Despite its attention to immigrants’ human rights and the prevention of discrimination, the Third Basic Plan of Immigration Policy exhibits diverging directions for the immigration of professionals and nonprofessionals. On the policy’s very first page, it declares the aim to enhance the infrastructure to attract outstanding professional talent and to support the settlement of professionals who come to K orea. However, regarding nonprofessional immigrants, the policy seeks to reinforce methods of preventing settlement. This neoliberal approach calls to mind another issue that is very relevant to immigrants’ lives: economic inequality. Migrants are generally relegated to positions in the low-socioeconomic-status population, as is the case for the many labor migrants who are brought in to fill jobs that Koreans avoid b ecause of low wages and status and for the marriage immigrant women, who are often brought to marry men experiencing long-term economic hardship and struggle. Even if marriage immigrants work, the jobs available to them are mostly nonprofessional positions that do not offer realistic opportunities for economic mobility. On their own, state-led multicultural policies are insufficient to achieve a multicultural society. The Basic Plan for Immigration Policy proposes promoting volunteerism among marriage immigrants to encourage their involvement in the local community. This soft nudge for the participation of marriage immigrants, in lieu of firm encouragement with robust support, might be out of consideration for their domestic responsibilities, but this stance also hints at the fact that marriage immigrants are likely to be relegated to inferior positions that do not warrant proper compensation. Thus, immigrants’ counter-discourses and actions that critique, challenge, and drive these policies forward are essential. Economic stability is not necessarily a precondition for ethnic minorities to or ga nize and participate in identity- based events or to mobilize against the state’s conception of multiculturalism. Nonetheless,
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in reality, immigrants with long working hours and multiple responsibilities are forced to carefully consider how much of their time and resources they can devote to community organizing and w hether they should take on leadership roles (Kim and Kim 2021). The second decade of the twenty-first century presented Korean society with new challenges, such as a decline in international marriage, the need for the integration of multicultural children, and the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia. First, the percentage of all marriages in Korea accounted for by international marriages steadily decreased, from 10.5 percent in 2010 to 7 percent in 2015. This change may be attributed to recent policy shifts toward a more restrictive approach to marriage migration. For example, since 2014, applicants for a resident-through- marriage visa have been required to pass a Korean-language proficiency test. Further, the Korean husbands of these applicants are now required to meet minimum financial requirements, proving an annual income above ₩14.8 million ($14,000) (Kwak 2014). Second, although international marriages have declined, the number of children in multicultural families has increased. For example, in 2012, less than 2 percent of children in K orea had at least one foreign-born parent, but this increased to almost 5 percent by 2020. Moreover, in some areas where female marriage immigrants are particularly common, more than one in five schoolchildren are from multicultural families (Korean Educational Statistics Service 2020). Given that female marriage immigrants marry at young ages compared with native Korean women, whose total fertility rate is extremely low, we expect the proportion of children from multicultural families to continue to increase, at least for some time. The children of multicultural families in Korea are likely to experience new challenges that have not been observed in the past, and the importance of gaining a better understanding about their lives is clear. Finally, anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural sentiment has grown in K orea. In the previous decade, this kind of xenophobia percolated primarily in online communities, where individuals expressed anxiety regarding social welfare provisions for migrants or immigrant-committed crimes and accused the state of reverse discrimination, favoring immigrants over Koreans. The arrival of approximately five hundred Yemeni refugees in Jeju Island in 2018 unleashed Koreans’ pent-up “border anxiety” (Haas 2018). Citing Islamophobic stereot ypes of Muslim terrorists and one-dimensional generalizations of Islam as ultra-patriarchal, demonstrators took to the streets to protest against asylum seekers. Unfortunately, Korea’s late multiculturalism and learner status do not seem to help when Europe is grappling with its own Islamophobia (Chin 2017). It remains to be seen how K orea w ill respond to immigration issues, specifically concerning Muslim immigrants, amid the rise of a new conservative movement grounded in anti-communist, anti- LGBTQ, and anti-Muslim beliefs (Yang 2020). Building on the critiques outlined in this section, this volume contends that redefining what is meant by “multicultural families” is necessary to recalibrate the
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course of K orea’s multicultural f amily policies, which appear to be at a standstill, continuing to serve mainly as social adaptation programs for newcomers and to educate the public about cultural diversity, rather than forging the meaningful inclusion of immigrants in different areas of society and envisioning a new K orea.
Redefining Multicultural Families Aside from the definition laid out in the policy documents, Koreans generally understand “multicultural f amily” as a f amily in which the spouses are from two different cultural backgrounds. One can ask, then, whether this criterion is sufficient for viewing a family as “multicultural.” Additional questions involve asking how such a f amily can contribute to creating and shaping a multicultural society and, when they do, in what ways this society manifests. The social hierarchy between native Koreans and immigrants has remained unchanged, with the leadership and decision making still firmly in Koreans’ hands, even in local MFSCs where the MFSA is practiced. Thus, one cannot assume that the presence of multicultural families alone w ill somehow move Korean society closer to being multicultural. As an effort to explore innovative steps and directions toward realizing this vision of a multicultural Korea, we propose redefining multicultural families by considering alternative ways to view them. When reconsidering multicultural families, it is useful to bear in mind that the family is an important site of power. Although the family is often portrayed as a collective unit of affection and care, power is generally not distributed equally among its members (see, e.g., Blumstein and Schwartz 1983; Hurh and Kim 1984). Examples include the gender hierarchy embedded in patriarchal systems and the power differences between parents and c hildren (Hochschild and Machung 2012). In intermarried families, other forms of inequality on the basis of race, ethnicity, legal status, nationality, socioeconomic status, or religion may compound and complicate these power imbalances. Their nonnormative position may allow the members of these families to forge new arrangements (Kim et al. 1991; Lim 1997). How a multicultural family identifies and represents itself is an important mea sure of how the power imbalances within a family are reified or modified. How the immigrant wife’s cultural identity is maintained, expressed, and passed down to the children, compared with the native Korean husband’s cultural identity, which is aligned with the national identity, may be key elements in gauging the role of multicultural families in making a multicultural Korea (M. Kim 2014). Unequal power can also be conferred in the processes of making and maintaining a f amily. State recognition of a person’s ability to form a f amily is not guaranteed. For instance, although increasing numbers of countries recognize same-sex marriage, many—sanctioned by heteronormative privilege—do not. Similarly, legal status can be a barrier to normative family formation. When the increasing number of people are on the move, even those in legally sanctioned relationships are sometimes forced to maintain their families transnationally, thus deviating from
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the norm (Dreby 2010). In K orea, l abor migrants and refugees are often perceived as individual migrants and only as a part of a family in their country of origin. Their family formation in Korea has been outside the multicultural family discourse, thus excluding them from K orea’s multicultural f amily policies. With t hese issues in mind, Redefining Multicultural Families aims to move con temporary discourses of multicultural families forward by examining the diverse configurations of families with immigrants and exploring nuanced portrayals of their lives in Korea. To this aim, we redefine multicultural families in two ways. First, we expand the scope of “multicultural families” by including families of diverse contemporary immigrants who crossed the border during and a fter the 1990s. It is necessary to destabilize the automatic association of multicultural families with marriage immigrants. Yet, it would be impossible to comprehensively represent all types of families in Korea that could be viewed as multicultural. Still, for this goal of broadening the scope, the volume includes research on the families of Korean w omen with immigrant husbands, the families of undocumented migrant workers, and the families of joseonjok (Korean Chinese) migrants. Second, we take a discursive turn, viewing migrants as settlers or first- generation immigrants in Korea whose post-migration lives have evolved and whose membership in Korean society has matured. To a certain extent, with this conceptualization, we aim to disrupt the negative connotation of the “multicultural family” label. Certainly, immigrants in K orea face serious challenges, such as economic precarity, exploitative labor conditions, racial discrimination, gender inequality, nationalist xenophobia, and restrictive immigration policies. It is important to examine these challenges critically. It is also crucial to analyze the ideological, cultural, and institutional limitations in the multicultural policies and practices that were intended to help multicultural families but that, in reality, contribute to the subordination of these families. Equally necessary is identifying possibilities in discourses on multicultural families and reclaiming the concept of multicultural f amily in a way that reflects immigrants’ lived realities. The emphasis on social adaptation programs (such as Korean-language skills) and focus on native/foreigner distinctions (such as cultural differences) in multicultural policies and discourses maintain the view of marriage immigrants and l abor migrants as newcomers or sojourners. Going beyond determining w hether and what kind of public assistance is needed, research should focus on identifying the institutional and structural barriers that prevent t hese migrants from fully exercising the social, political, and economic rights to which they are entitled. The empirical chapters in this volume examine how immigrants construct new identities through their interactions with Koreans and with co-ethnic migrants, find a need for and reflect on political representation, identify ways of creating and managing alternative family ties and relations, and fight for their rights through the court system. Some marriage immigrants are now divorcees who are building their lives in Korea, and many multicultural children have grown into young adults. They may not always be on the winning side of the b attle, given that they are grappling with
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perpetual class inequality, deep-seated patriarchal nationalism, and the understudied challenges of racial politics. Nonetheless, shifting the focus of inquiry is a critical step t oward redefining multicultural families, proposing new policy directions, and identifying strategies in practice. The contributors to this volume are scholars in social science disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, and public policy. Each chapter is based on original research addressing various topics related to multicultural families in con temporary Korea. The chapters also cover different methodological approaches: six chapters are based on fieldwork and in-depth interviews, one on content analysis, two on the quantitative analysis of large-scale survey data, and one on a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. In addition to screening work submitted in response to a call for abstracts, the editors endeavored to showcase the research of scholars whose work has not previously been introduced outside Korea b ecause of language barriers. In February 2019, the contributors to this volume participated in a one-day workshop at San Diego State University that was organized with generous support from the Academy of Korean Studies. All contributors and discussants participating in this workshop acknowledged that critiques of K orea’s multicultural family policies were sorely needed to enable policy advancements, and all appreciated the discursive turns proposed for the volume, which includes groups of immigrants that are often excluded from discussions of multicultural families and views them as settlers rather than newcomers.
Part and Chapter Structure To advance and deepen our understanding of families with immigrants in Korea, ten original chapters in this volume examine the issues and implications around four themes: (1) negotiating identities; (2) making lives u nder immigration control; (3) claiming rights and building lives; and (4) the meanings of multicultural family and intergenerational relationships.
Negotiating Identities Recognizing and supporting ethnic cultures and identities are critical features of explicit multiculturalism, and understanding ethnic identity is an integral part of understanding immigrant experiences (Phinney et al. 2001). Ethnic identity is closely related to culture and to the nationality of the sending country, but it is constructed and negotiated in the immigrant incorporation process rather than being static and fixed. The construction of ethnic identity is shaped largely by two aspects: immigrants’ attitudes and attributes, and their reception in the receiving society (Phinney et al. 2001; Portes and Rumbaut 2006). In other words, individual immigrants can show varying degrees of desire and practices to retain their ethnic identity, and this variation is associated with how accepting or hostile the receiving society is. For immigrants, ethnic identity is not the only identity; they
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find and negotiate multiple identities based on, for example, legal status, gender, religion, race, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation. The three chapters in part I extend our understanding of multicultural families in Korea by engaging with important discussions on immigrants’ identities. Chapter 1, by Ilju Kim, examines Filipina marriage immigrants’ perceptions of Jasmine Lee, the first Filipina Korean congresswoman. In this chapter, Kim deals with an important yet understudied aspect of multiculturalism—the political representation of an ethnic minority. In particular, she sheds light on marriage immigrants’ participation in the Korean legislative process, political desires, and claims-making. In doing so, she offers a nuanced analysis of the multilayered identities that Filipina immigrants construct as Filipino nationals, members of multicultural families, and ethnic minority members of the working class. Simultaneously, her findings show how the rise of Jasmine Lee was a product of top-down multicultural efforts propelled by Korean feminists and suggest the need for a pathway from ethnic minority–led mobilization to minority political representation in Korean politics. In chapter 2, Julie Kim extends the familiar association between marriage immigrants and motherhood. In the past few decades, an educational fervor in Korea has brought on social, cultural, economic, and demographic changes, and engendered a particular form of relational work wherein maternal care is expressed through intensive parenting and investment in children’s education. Kim shows how immigrant m others are not exempt from this type of mothering, as they learn the prescribed economic practices that prioritize c hildren’s education. Kim’s findings reveal that, while immigrant mothers strive to provide for their c hildren just like other mothers in Korea, they also have to negotiate their immigrant identity. Immigrant m others offset disadvantages that come from their immigrant status by mobilizing resources accumulated from networks for co-ethnic m others or other marriage immigrants. They also identify ways to c ounter the perceived link between being an immigrant and low socioeconomic status. Chapter 3, by YoonKyung Kwak, differs from the previous two chapters in that the families Kwak examines include Korean wives and immigrant husbands who are Muslim, an emerging population that is rarely included in multicultural f amily discourses. H ere Kwak focuses on Korean w omen’s perspectives and examines how Korean women came to construct a collective identity as wives of Muslim husbands as they deal with the impact of Islamophobia attributable to their marriages to Muslim immigrants. In K orea, where Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment are growing and becoming more publicly expressed, Korean wives experience frustration regarding the conflict between their Muslim husbands’ religious integrity and their Korean families’ discontent with Pakistani immigrants, illustrating an uphill battle confronted by Muslim immigrants and their Korean families in Korean society. These three chapters highlight how discussions on immigrant identities are evolving in K orea. Examining how immigrants and their spouses construct and
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negotiate their multiple identities is crucial for understanding the sources of immigrants’ political discontent and consciousness and their strategies to mobilize their resources. This type of analysis could enable us to recognize immigrants’ political rights, aspirations for class mobility, and desire to embody religious and cultural identities, which shape dynamic contours of multicultural families.
Making Lives under Immigration Control Recent scholarly work on undocumented immigrants has focused on strategies for economic survival, and on curtailed political rights and limited access to social programs (Abrego 2011; Gonzales and Raphael 2017). We offer two observations on the current discourses on undocumented p eople. The first involves the perennial balancing act between structural power and individual agency: On the one hand, recent literature brings to light the instability and vulnerability in undocumented immigrants’ lives as well as the fear and stigma they experience under restrictive policies. On the other hand, t hese studies demonstrate how undocumented immigrants manage to work and live in a society that refuses to recognize their standing. The second observation is that, with a focus on policy issues affecting people’s movement, f amily making among undocumented immigrants has been relatively understudied (see, however, Enriquez 2017). How immigrants with unstable legal status manage family lives under hostile state surveillance and control is a vital area to examine, and the two chapters in part II set out to do this. Chapter 4, by Hyun Mee Kim and Yu Seon Yu, extends our understanding of the undocumented population in K orea by examining how migrant w omen’s precarious legal status shapes their family-making experience, such as cohabitation, marriage, and child-rearing. Kim and Yu show that t hese w omen, in addition to having a legal status outside the law, also lead nonnormative lives in other ways. Given that people who are undocumented are subject to regular crackdowns and under threat of deportation, illegality casts a sense of urgency on their perceptions of time in Korea. This urgency compels them to rearrange their lives to be centered around work so as to save money efficiently and to deviate from traditional, normative family values and practices and to adopt flexible gender and sexual roles. In chapter 5, Sohoon Yi critically examines the multigenerational experiences orea. T hese families are not undocumented, but Yi demof joseonjok families in K onstrates how immigration policies for joseonjok migrants have been designed to prevent them from having easy access to permanent residency. Ironically, the joseonjok can move to Korea through kinship-based migration, but family unit migration is not available, creating heterogeneous migration timelines for individual f amily members. To maintain their lawful status amid changing policies and family members’ varying migration timing, joseonjok migrants rely on migration businesses to carry out “bureaucratic performances” (e.g., crossing borders to reset their time in Korea or “visa-jumping”). Yi reminds us that, compared with the situation for overseas Koreans in the United States or Europe, the policies for joseon orea, a jok migrants are more restrictive (Seol and Skrentny 2009). As such, in K
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sharp differentiation is felt, with joseonjok migrants being perceived as labor migrants—culturally and demographically separate from Koreans—rather than co- ethnics. Yi’s unique look at intergenerational relationships among transnational families also shows how gender adds different types of care work for joseonjok migrant women. Chapters 4 and 5 both deal with populations that, strictly speaking, are out ecause they did not form families with native Koreside the scope of the MFSA b ans. If multicultural families are at the margins of Korean society, these families of labor migrants can be said to be at the margins of that margin. Bringing their stories into the discussion of multicultural families in Korea is imperative to better understand the current realities of immigrant families and develop an inclusive vision of multicultural families.
Claiming Rights and Building Lives In part III, we return to marriage immigrants. Marriage immigrants are granted a path to naturalization and social programs under the MFSA. This selective inclusion is conditional, as the Korean government and public expect marriage immigrants to fulfill the roles of obedient wife, m other, and daughter-in-law. However, what happens when these women end their marriages to Korean husbands? Can they still be viewed as part of multicultural families as laid out by the Korean government? In chapter 6, Nora Hui-Jung Kim’s provocative look into court cases involving marriage immigrants provides a glimpse into how the Korean state scrutinizes and regulates the conduct of marriage immigrants even a fter they divorce their Korean husbands. Building on classical feminist works, Kim analyzes the intersection of the gender power imbalance in heterosexual marriage with immigrant wives’ subordinate position as immigrants. For marriage immigrants, “vulnerability by marriage” is compounded by their legal dependence on their husbands. Yet, the Korean state’s concern about “vulnerability of marriage”—easier entry into and exit out of marriage—stems not only from individual freedom to marry but also from the vulnerability of the border through fraudulent motives of marriage immigrants. The analysis of these court cases reveals that the Korean court harshly regulates marriage immigrants who depart from the Korean-centered f amily and marry non- Korean, often co-ethnic, spouses. Despite its focus on the vulnerabilities that marriage immigrants experience, the chapter also intimates how marriage immigrants bring their cases to the court to claim their rights in the country where they have been building their lives. In chapter 7, Hsin-Chieh Chang takes a different approach to understanding divorced marriage immigrants’ experiences in Korea, presenting the results of a mixed-methods study. Chang begins with a question about how social relationships impact marriage immigrants’ divorce and post-divorce integration processes. First, using quantitative analysis, she shows that support networks with Koreans and frequent contact with natal family members contribute significantly to migrant
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divorcees’ well-being, measured with self-rated health and life satisfaction. Interestingly, her findings show that co-ethnic support networks are less relevant. Chang then presents two divorced Vietnamese women’s experiences in K orea to counter the dominant narratives that portray divorced marriage immigrants simply as victims. She identifies various strategies available to some marriage immigrants, including inviting natal f amily members to K orea, and actively participating in vocational training and civic engagement. Through these two cases, Chang exemplifies how divorced immigrant women may negotiate with their marital families to their advantage and how native citizens—including parents-in-law—can be a source of support in marriage immigrants’ lives after divorce. The diverging portrayals of marriage immigrants’ post-divorce lives suggest how complex immigrants’ lives are. Nonetheless, certain expectations for marriage immigrants cut across their varied stories—those who fit the sacrificial (victim) narrative or the gendered image of the obedient wife or daughter-in-law are favored in terms of access to MFSA programs and social relationships with Koreans. Neither of the women in the qualitative section of Chang’s study remarried. In chapter 6, however, Kim reveals that marriage immigrants who remarry non-Koreans, including their co-ethnics, may face harsher outcomes, including becoming stateless or having their Korean citizenship rescinded. Fundamentally here, the complex lived experiences of divorced immigrant women illustrate the diverse realities and configurations of multicultural families in Korea.
Meanings of Multicultural Family and Intergenerational Relationships Finally, part IV of the volume further pushes the boundaries of common perceptions of and scholarly work on multicultural families in two meaningful ways. First, the three chapters broaden the scope of multicultural families by looking at c ouples consisting of native Korean wives and non-Korean husbands and utilizing the data that is more inclusive of all the first-generation immigrants and their offspring. The broader look can better reflect the current demographic profile of immigrants in K orea. Second, all t hese chapters look into the second-generation immigrants in Korea with consideration of family and social contexts to better situate their lives in current Korea. As mentioned above, the proportion of second-generation immigrants in K orea w ill likely increase in the coming years. This attention to second-generation immigrants and intergenerational relationships reflects this edited volume’s outlook to view immigrant experiences as g oing beyond the first-generation newcomers, and the chapters here are largely in line with these impending notions. In an attempt to draw our attention to “another” multicultural family, chapter 8, by Minjung Kim, illustrates the stories of three native Korean women married to Filipino men, as well as the stories of their children. Kim describes how these families of Korean women and Filipino men are in a contradictory situation in which they are defined as multicultural families in the policy but are not actually included in practice. Based on interview data spanning more than fifteen years,
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this chapter shows some of the unique barriers t hese native Korean woman–Filipino man couples have encountered in K orea by examining the uneasy relationships that the members of this “other” multicultural family have with multicultural family policies. Kim argues that K orea’s MFSA is immigrant integration policy grounded in familialism that is meant to serve families with immigrants as a whole, but Korean w omen, Filipino husbands, and their c hildren in her study had differing experiences with the policy based on their gender, ethnicity, and generation. Chapter 9, by Harris Hyun-soo Kim, focuses on educational aspirations among second-generation immigrant c hildren. In particular, this chapter explores the extent to which marital satisfaction reported by foreign-born mothers influences the f uture educational goals of their children. For this study, Kim utilized data from the 2012 National Survey of Multicultural Families, which is based on a large sample of first-generation immigrants and their spouses and c hildren living in K orea. Using two-level random effects regression models, this chapter shows that mother’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with educational aspirations for children, even a fter adjusting for individual-and family-level covariates, highlighting the importance of parents’ marital quality for their c hildren, as well as for themselves. The last chapter of this volume takes a comprehensive look at the health of second-generation immigrant adolescents (those age 12–17 years with at least one foreign-born parent). Using data from multiple rounds of the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted from 2011 to 2016, Hyeyoung Woo, Lindsey Wilkinson, Wonjeong Jeong, and Sojung Lim investigate various health outcomes among adolescents from multicultural families compared with those from monocultural families. The findings show that second-generation immigrant adolescents are disadvantaged on all examined health and well-being measures, relative to their nonimmigrant counterparts. This chapter presents the first study to address disparities in a wide range of health outcomes in relation to immigration status using a nationally representative sample of adolescents in Korea, and we hope that the findings help provide this younger generation with appropriate attention and the support they deserve. It is an open question w hether and through what processes immigrants with different pathways and second-generation immigrants w ill become a part of the Korean society. However, we believe that the findings presented offer some directions for moving forward as Korea continues to evolve into an ever more diverse society. NOTES
1. This term is also used to describe the second partner (or mistress) of Korean men who work away from the conjugal f amily home. 2. In this volume, we consciously use “immigrants” for those who cross a border with the intention to settle in the receiving country, distinguishing the term from “migrants,”
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who cross a border with the intention to later return to the country of origin. Of course, individual lives are complex and unpredictable. Some people end up living in the receiving country although they desire to return, whereas o thers cannot stay although they want to do so. Regardless of this distinction, both groups deserve respect and human rights in any country where they live and work. This note stemmed mainly from the tendency to habitually call foreign-born settlers “migrants,” and it is to recognize the need for a long-term outlook in discussing the issues concerning immigrants and their families, which is one of the edited volume’s objectives. 3. The Korean name for the Basic Plan for Immigration Policy is Oigukin Jeongchaek (Foreigner Policy). The policy document explains that it was named in this way to avoid confusion with the Emigration Policy for Koreans Overseas. This policy directly addresses immigration, covering the control of the border and immigration, naturalization, and immigrant incorporation for foreign-born residents in Korea. 4. This restriction was removed in the first decade of the twenty-first century through a series of reforms (H. Kim 2016). REFERENCES
Abrego, Leisy J. 2011. “Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First-and 1.5-Generation Immigrants.” Law & Society Review 45 (2): 337–370. Ahn, Ji-Hyun. 2018. Mixed-Race Politics and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in South Korean Media. New York: Palgrave. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2013. “Struggling Over the Mode of Incorporation: Backlash against Multiculturalism in Europe.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (4): 531–556. Blumstein, Philip, and Pepper Schwartz. 1983. American Couples. New York: William Morrow. Chin, Rita. 2017. The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Choo, Hae Yeon. 2016. Decentering Citizenship: Gender, L abor, and Mig rant Rights in South K orea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dreby, Joanna. 2010. Divided by Borders: Mexican Mig rants and Their C hildren. Berkeley: University of California Press. Enriquez, Laura E. 2017. “Gendering Illegality: Undocumented Young Adults’ Negotiation of the Family Formation Process.” American Behavioral Scientist 61 (10): 1153–1171. Freeman, Caren. 2011. Making and Faking Kinship: Marriage and Labor Migration between China and South K orea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gage, Sue-Je L. 2014. “Almost Korean: Korean Amerasians in an Era of Multiculturalism.” In Multiethnic K orea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South Korea, edited by John Lie, 244–276. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Gonzales, Roberto G., and Steven Raphael. 2017. “Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 3 (4): 1–17. Haas, Benjamin. 2018. “Influx of Refugees from Yemen Divides South Korean Resort Island.” The Guardian, July 11. https://w ww.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/1 2/refugees-f rom -yemen-d ivides-south-korean-resort-island-of-jeju. Hochschild, Arlie Russell, with Anne Machung. 2012. The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin Books. Hurh, Won Moo, and Kwang Chung Kim. 1984. Korean Immigrants in America: A Structural Analysis of Ethnic Confinement and Adhesive Adaptions. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
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Joppke, Christian. 2002. “Multicultural Citizenship.” In Handbook of Citizenship Studies, edited by Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner, 245–259. London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ———. 2004. “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy.” The British Journal of Sociology 55 (2): 237–257. Kim, Andrew Eungi. 2009. “Global Migration and South K orea: Foreign Workers, Foreign Brides and the Making of a Multicultural Society.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32 (1): 70–92. Kim, Hyun Mee. 2007. “The State and Migration Women: Diverging Hopes in the Making of ‘Multicultural Families’ in Contemporary Korea.” Korea Journal 47 (4): 100–122. ——— . 2011. “The Emergence of the ‘Multicultural Family’ and the Genderized Citizenship in South Korea.” In Contested Citizenship in East Asia: Developmental Politics, National Unity, and Globalization, edited by Kyung-Sup Chang and Bryan S. Turner, 203–217. New York: Routledge. ——— . 2016. “Can ‘Multicultural Soldiers’ Serve the Nation? The Social Debate about the Military Serv ice Management of Mixed-Race Draftees in South Korea.” In Multiculturalism in East Asia: A Transnational Exploration of Japan, South K orea and Taiwan, edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Hyun Mee Kim, and Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, 127–140. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Kim, Ilju, and Minjeong Kim. 2021. “Paths to Civic Engagement: Opportunity Structures and Marriage Immigrants’ Associational Lives in South Korea.” Journal of Asian Sociology 50 (1): 247–271. Kim, Kwang Chung, Shin Kim, and Woon Moo Hurh. 1991. “Filial Piety and Intergenerational Relationship in Korean Immigrant Families.” International Journal of Aging & Human Development 33 (3): 233–245. Kim, Minjeong. 2013. “Citizenship Projects for Marriage Migrants in South K orea: Intersecting Motherhood with Ethnicity and Class.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 20 (4): 455–481. ——— . 2014. “Can the Union of Patriarchy and Multiculturalism Work?: Family Dynamics in Filipina-Korean Rural Households.” In Multiethnic K orea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South K orea, edited by John Lie, 277–298. Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. ———. 2018. Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and “Multiculturalism” in Rural South K orea. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kim, Nadia. 2014. “Race-ing t oward the Real South K orea: The Cases of Black-Korean Nationals and African Migrants.” In Multiethnic K orea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South K orea, edited by John Lie, 211–243. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Kim, Nora Hui-Jung. 2008. “Korean Immigration Policy Changes and the Political Liberals’ Dilemma.” International Migration Review 42 (3): 576–596. ———. 2014. “Korea: Multiethnic or Multicultural?” In Multiethnic Korea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South K orea, edited by John Lie, 58–78. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Korean Educational Statistics Ser v ice. 2020. Damunhwa Hagsaeng Biyool (Proportions of C hildren from Multicultural Families). https://kess.kedi.r e.k r/mobile/stats/s chool? menu Cd= 0 101&cd= 5 034&sur vSeq= 2 020&itemCode = 0 1&menuId= m _ 0 10105&uppCd1 =010105&uppCd2= 010105&flag=A (in Korean). Accessed on December 8, 2020. Kwak, Jeyup S. 2014. “South K orea Tightens Rules on Marriages to Foreigners.” Wall Street Journal, February 7. Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2003. “Gender, Migration and Civil Activism in South Korea.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 12 (1/2): 127–153.
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——— . 2008. “International Marriage and the State in South Korea: Focusing on Governmental Policy.” Citizenship Studies 12 (1): 107–123. Lee, Jack Jin Gary, and John D. Skrentny. 2014. “Korean Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective.” In Multiethnic Korea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South Korea, edited by John Lie, 301–329. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Lie, John, ed. 2014. Multiethnic K orea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Cont emporary South Korea. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Lim, In-Sook. 1997. “Korean Immigrant W omen’s Challenge to Gender Inequality at Home: The Interplay of Economic Resources, Gender and Family.” Gender & Society 11 (1): 31–51. Lim, Timothy C. 2014. “Late Migration, Discourse, and the Politics of Multiculturalism in South Korea.” In Multiethnic K orea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Con temporary South K orea, edited by John Lie, 31–57. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. McLennan, Gregor. 2001. “Problematic Multiculturalism.” Sociology 35 (4): 985–989. Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. 2020. Damunhwa Gajok Tonggae (Multicultural Families Statistics). Seoul: Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. http://w ww.mogef.go.k r /mp/pcd/mp_pcd_s001d.do?mid=p lc503&bbtSn=704742 (in Korean). Accessed on December 16, 2020. Ministry of Justice. 2018. Je 3 Cha Oigukin Jeongchaek Gibon Gyehyeok (Third Basic Plan for Immigration Policy). Seoul, Korea: Ministry of Justice. http://v iewer.moj.go.k r/s kin/doc.h tml ?rs=/ result/bbs/164&fn=1546651731436101 (in Korean). Accessed December 21, 2019. National Law Information Center. 2018. Damunhwa Gajok Jiwonbeop (Multicultural F amily Support Act). Seoul, K orea: K orea Ministry of Government Legislation. http://w ww.law.go.k r /%EB%B2%95%EB%A0%B9/%EB%8B%A4%EB%AC%B8%ED%99%94%EA%B0%80%EC%A1%B1 %EC%A7%80%EC%9B%90%EB%B2%95 (in Korean). Accessed December 21, 2019. Oh, Gwang-soo. 1997. “Galsurok Ingi, ‘Paran-nuneui Hangukin’ ” (Koreans with Blue Eyes Gaining Popularity). Kyunghyang Shinmun, September 27 (in Korean). Okin, Susan Miller. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Phinney, Jean S., Gabriel Horenczyk, Karmela Liebkind, and Paul Vedder. 2001. “Ethnic Identity, Immigration, and Well-Being: An Interactional Perspective.” Journal of Social Issues 57 (3): 493–510. Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait, 3rd Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Seol, Dong-Hoon, and John D. Skrentny. 2009. “Ethnic Return Migration and Hierarchical Nationhood: Korean Chinese Foreign Workers in South K orea.” Ethnicities 9 (2): 147–174. Shin, Hyunjoon. 2016. “Hwagyo under the Multiculturalism in South Korea: Residual Chinese or Emerging Transcultural Subject?” In Multiculturalism in East Asia: A Transnational Exploration of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Hyun Mee Kim, and Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, 185–202. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Statistics Korea. 2019. Damunhwa Ingu Tongye (Multicultural Population Statistics). http:// kostat .go .k r /p ortal / k orea / k or _ n w /3 /i ndex .b oard ?bmode= d ownload&bSeq= & aSeq =378480&ord=1 (in Korean). Accessed on December 8, 2020. ———. 2020a. “Foreign-Born Residents.” Nation Indicators. http://w ww.index.go.k r/potal/main /EachDtlPageDetail.d o? idx_cd=2 756 (in Korean). Accessed January 7, 2020. ———. 2020b. Ingoo Donghyang Josa (Population Statistics). http://kosis.k r/statHtml/statHtml .do?o rgId=101&tblId=DT_ 1 B8000F&conn_path=I 3 (in Korean). Accessed December 8, 2020.
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Taylor, Charles. 1995. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism, edited by Amy Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Watson, Ian. 2012. “Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South K orea.” Asian Politics & Policy 4 (2): 233–258. Women Migrants Humanrights Center. 2005. Saengmyung, Pyeongdeung, Pyeonghwareul Ijuyeosunghwa Hamkke (Life, Equality, and Peace with Mi grant W omen). Seoul: Women Migrants Humanrights Center (in Korean). Yang, Myungji. 2020. “Defending ‘Liberal Democracy’? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets against the 2016–17 Candlelight Protests.” Mobilization: An International Journal 25 (3): 365–382. Yuh, Ji-Yeon. 2002. Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America. New York: New York University Press.
PA RT ON E
Negotiating Identities
1 To Be Accepted as We Are Multiple Identity Formation of Filipina Marriage Immigrants through Jasmine Lee ILJU KIM
In 2012, about two decades a fter marriage immigrants began to arrive in rural villages of Korea, a naturalized immigrant was first elected to the Korean national congress. Jasmine Lee, the Philippine-born Korean congresswoman, completed her only term in 2016, but she arose as an important symbolic figure of a multicultural Korea. When asked about their thoughts regarding Lee’s presence in congress midway through her term, Mio and JeeAnn, two Filipina marriage immigrants in their mid-30s, provided contrasting accounts:1 I’m very proud of her. She’s representing all Filipinos in Korea. As a member of the congress, people will know she’s a Filipina. So great. [Koreans will know] Filipinos are g reat. She is a symbol of how great Filipinas are, how strong we are, and how powerf ul [we are]. (Mio, 34 years old) Jasmine Lee was in the election, so those who [had] acquired Korean citizenship voted [for her]. . . . We now think we shouldn’t have voted [for her]. She’s not helping us. She is also a damunhwa [multicultural],2 but she posted on the Internet that she’s helping illegals. T here are so many people who are having difficulty among us damunhwa, but why she’s not helping? (JeeAnn, 37 years old)
Mio, a mother of three who works as an English teacher at a private academy, did not hesitate to express the strong ethnic pride she felt in the congresswoman as a Filipina. In contrast, JeeAnn, who was also a mother of three but had occasional side jobs with no regular employment, articulated strong discontent with the congresswoman, arguing that Lee had failed to pay attention to people like herself in multicultural families. The two Filipinas each brought a different conception of “us” they expected the congresswoman—who shared their gender, country of origin, and marriage migration background—to represent. As I met
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more Filipina marriage immigrants and asked them the same question, I found that Lee’s presence in congress evoked multiple collective identities among these women. Rather than simply perceiving the congresswoman as representing the “multicultural family,” as her party officially promoted, through Lee, the Filipina immigrant women perceived themselves as political subjects of diverse identities and desires. Since multicultural discourse and related policies came into vogue in the first decade of the twenty-first century, political parties have attempted multiple times to put forward marriage immigrants as candidates for various levels of elected office. The first such attempt was made by the Creative Korea Party (CKP; Changjohangukdang), which was then a newly established small political party with a centrist orientation. At a press conference in the National Assembly, the leader of the CKP announced the recruitment of Judith Alegre Fernandez, a Filipina marriage immigrant who had become a naturalized Korean citizen, as a candidate for proportional representation3 for the 2008 general election “to address the issue of rapidly increasing multicultural families” (Lee 2008). Fernandez was not elected, but the attempt captured the attention of the media. News headlines emphasized that she was the first political candidate of non-Korean ancestry in modern Korean history (Im 2008). Other major parties followed suit in subsequent elections, with Jasmine Lee being elected to Korea’s National Assembly in 2012, becoming the first ethnically non- Korean lawmaker in the country. Lee belonged to the G rand National Party (GNP; Hannaradang), the ruling conservative party at the time. During the campaign, the party made it clear that Lee was nominated as a representative of “multicultural families,” which the GNP considered as a minority group requiring special representation. Despite wide public attention to these attempts by the parties and the election of a marriage immigrant congresswoman, little is known about how marriage immigrants themselves perceived these developments. This omission is not accidental. As Choo (2016, 95) has demonstrated, migrants in K orea are constructed as “cross-ethnic subjects” in the public sphere, lumped into the categories of e ither “migrant workers” or “marriage immigrants,” with little complexity considered within these designations. Likewise, under the category of “multicultural families,” the varied identities of marriage immigrants, especially which do not necessarily map onto those of women in the Korean family (i.e., mother, wife, and daughter- in-law), are often rendered invisible in the public discourse. These narrow understandings led the parties to conveniently assume that a single marriage immigrant politician can represent the entire group of multicultural families. In this chapter, I question such taken-for-granted homogeneity by analyzing data I collected by interviewing Filipina marriage immigrants regarding their views of Jasmine Lee. The analysis of women’s narratives surrounding Lee’s presence in congress reveals Filipina marriage immigrants’ multiple and contingent identities, as well as their corresponding desires for political representation.
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Minority Political Representation One of the most salient concerns in multiculturalism involves minority represen tations in politics (see the introduction to this volume). Surely, studies on immigrant and minority political representation in general have largely agreed on the positive attitudinal and behavioral effects of descriptive representation—having minority politicians who share descriptive characteristics such as gender, race/ ethnicity, and nationality with the constituents they represent. Specifically, these studies have argued that t hose who are represented experience enhanced politi cal interest and efficacy, less political alienation, and more engagement in politics (Banducci et al. 2004; Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Fridkin and Kenney 2014; High- Pippert and Comer 1998; Mansbridge 1999; Pantoja and Segura 2003; Rocha et al. 2010). According to these studies, the primary mechanism linking the presence of minority politicians to the heightened political engagement of those they represent is “a contextual cue of likely policy responsiveness,” which encourages minorities to feel that their engagement has intrinsic value (Bobo and Gilliam 1990, 387). Relatedly, scholars found that minority repre sen ta tion increases minority groups’ knowledge about and contact with the representative, leading them to believe that they have a say in government (Banducci et al. 2004). This body of work has also described the “communicative advantages” of descriptive representation for some constituents in terms of identifying with the representative (Mansbridge 1999, 642), ere on substantive representation— which might be absent if the sole focus w maximizing the substantive interests of minority groups through changes in policy and procedure. Still unclear in the descriptive representation literat ure is which aspects of minority life minority constituents expect their representatives to represent. Feminist citizenship scholars have long posited that one’s political membership is mediated by various collective affiliations that exist at the intersections of class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality, among other f actors (Young 1989; Yuval-Davis 1999, 2006). Considering these varied identities and political desires, it is almost impossible to make an a priori argument that a certain minority politician can represent minority constituents as a w hole. In a similar vein, some studies on the effects of minority descriptive repre sentation on constituents’ political attitudes and behaviors have demonstrated that these effects cannot be considered universal, given the significant diversity within minority groups. B ecause some studies have found little evidence of an indepen dent positive effect of descriptive representation on constituents’ feelings of politi cal efficacy (see Lawless 2004), more recent studies increasingly pay attention to specific conditions, such as constituents’ ideological orientation (Griffin and Keane 2006) and party congruence between representatives and their constituents (Reingold and Harrell 2010). However, b ecause most of these studies have relied on quantitative data, they are unable to capture nuanced understandings of descriptive repre sen ta tion with regard to minority constituents’ diverse positions and
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contingent identities. In particular, there has been a lack of exploration of how representation is perceived in relation to the daily challenges and hardships faced by minority constituents. In an attempt to reach a more nuanced understanding of how minority citizens perceive descriptive representation, this study stresses the importance of the varied collective identities that minority constituents develop and construct in imagining themselves as political subjects. In the following section, I describe the context in which Jasmine Lee emerged in Korean politics as a congresswoman. Then, a fter describing the study methods, I analyze Filipina marriage immigrants’ responses to Lee’s presence in congress, focusing on t hese w omen’s diverse collective identities and the implications for Filipinas’ national-level representation.
The Political Context and Jasmine Lee Jasmine Lee’s political c areer in K orea, beyond being a mere reflection of a new demographic reality, resulted from various political forces and interests. Political scientists have suggested that a prominent social agenda during elections can affect candidate nomination processes by influencing criteria for candidate eligibility and selection (Matland 2005; Rule 1981). For example, when welfare issues, which voters associate with female candidates, become prominent, political parties are more likely to recruit female candidates (Rule 1981, 65). In Korea, calls for marriage immigrant w omen politicians w ere first heard toward the end of the 2000s, when the public discourse of K orea as a multicultural society began to emerge. Following the CKP’s first attempt in 2008, political parties in Korea began to bring immigrants into their candidate pools, mainly for proportional representative seats. Both the GNP and the Participation Party (Gungminchamyeodang), then a recently formed small progressive party, put forward marriage immigrant women from Mongolia as proportional representative candidates in the 2010 local election. In the same election, the Liberty Forward Party (Jayuseonjindang), a minor conservative party, also selected three Chinese Korean women as the number one candidates for proportional representation seats on district assemblies in areas with large Chinese Korean populations. In the following local election, a marriage immigrant w oman from Kyrgyzstan was given the second position on the party list of the Democratic Party of Korea (Deobureominjudang), a major liberal party. Because the smaller parties failed to secure enough votes for their proportional representatives, these post-2010 attempts have resulted in a total of three elected marriage immigrant officials from two major parties, including Jasmine Lee. It is noteworthy that it was the conservative party, the GNP, rather than the liberal party, that produced the first foreign-born marriage immigrant politicians— at both local and national levels—given that the liberal party is generally considered to be more interested in policies supporting minority rights, compared with the conservative party. According to multicultural education scholar MiOk Kang, this situation did not happen by chance. In her 2014 book, Kang investigated the
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rise of the conservative political influence behind what scholars have dubbed the “multicultural explosion” (Kang 2014; Kim 2012, 104). Analyzing conservative scholarly works, reports of conservative think tanks, and media coverage, Kang (2014) argued that a top-down multicultural policy exclusively targeting “multicultural families” has been the core agenda of the conservative government since 2008, when the GNP became the ruling party upon the election of Lee Myung-bak as president of K orea. She maintained that the policy’s narrow focus on multicultural families, excluding migrant workers and other migrants, was supported by vari ous conservative actors who sought to further their own agendas.4 Kang (2014) concluded that conservatives, including the GNP, tactically deployed the discourse of embracing the marginalized to hijack the supposedly liberal agenda and attract multicultural families’ votes. In fact, both politicians and civic organizations began to try to capitalize on the potentially substantial political influence of “multicultural voters” including immigrants and their families (Koo 2010). Putting aside the question of conservatives’ genuine interest in multiculturalism, however, there is no doubt that the proactive recruitment of marriage immigrant candidates by the major conservative party drove the emergence of the first foreign-born marriage immigrant politicians. In addition to political parties, nongovernmental organi zations (NGOs) advocating for the rights of immigrants operated behind the scenes, connecting politi cal parties and immigrants. Unlike e arlier NGO efforts that generally assumed immigrants to be the recipients of programs and policies, emerging attempts have focused on creating social consensus about the need for marriage immigrants’ direct political representation and on connecting potential candidates with politi cal parties. In 2008, the Center for Korean W omen and Politics (CKWP), a w omen’s movement organization that initially focused on implementing a gender quota system and realizing the political education of women (Kim 2004), launched an education and training project for marriage immigrant women. This project, in which Lee actively participated, aimed to produce the first marriage immigrant w oman politicians for the 2010 local election. Several newspapers introduced the project in the context of the multicultural background of Barack Obama, then president- elect of the United States, but also with gendered nuance, describing the project’s mission as “promot[ing] m others who lead multicultural families to enter politics in K orea” (Jung 2008). To complete this mission, the CKWP recommended some of its project participants to political parties as potential candidates for the local election. The GNP took up the idea and announced the nomination of two marriage immigrant candidates as proportional representatives for local legislature seats: Jasmine Lee in Seoul and Ra Lee in Gyeonggi—the province with the largest foreign-born population outside Seoul. Ra Lee, a marriage immigrant from Mongolia, was then elected to the Gyeonggi provincial legislature.5 Her nomination and election garnered media attention, as she became the first member of the provincial assembly with marriage migration background (Shim 2010). However, when Jasmine Lee was not
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given the number one position in the party list, she withdrew and decided to wait for the right time. CKWP president Kim Eun-Joo explained to me that the GNP’s nomination committee members w ere favorably disposed to Jasmine Lee during the vetting for the 2010 election: “Her language ability and family background were all very well received. When we gave up the nomination [in 2010], one of the vetting members said that there might be a better opportunity in the coming parliamentary election since having a broader constituency as a congresswoman representing the damunhwa would give her a better chance.” In press interviews, Lee repeatedly spoke of a political desire to make Korean society a better place for the c hildren of multicultural families. Before participating in the CKWP’s project, however, Lee had never dreamed of becoming a politician (Park 2012). A fter coming to Korea from the Philippines with her husband in 1995, she mostly stayed home raising her two c hildren. In 2006, a fter she appeared in a singing competition for foreign-born wives, her c areer as a telev ision personality took off. Lee was cast in several telev ision programs, including Love in Asia, the first Korean reality show dedicated to marriage immigrants. When launching its project in 2008, the CKWP reached out to Love in Asia to recruit participants, which sparked Lee’s interest in Korean politics. Lee was also active in participating in a self-help group of marriage immigrants, which she organized with marriage immigrants who appeared on Love in Asia. A fter withdrawing from the electoral race in 2010, Lee r ose to fame in the hit movie Punch (Wandeugi), which attracted more than five million moviegoers in 2011.6 She also worked as a contractual civil servant at Seoul City Hall in the same year, supporting foreign-born residents in the city. In the 2012 parliamentary election, Lee was given a prime position on the GNP’s proportional representative list. During her term, Jasmine Lee proposed forty-two bills, including several attempts to revise the Multicultural Family Support Act to broaden the definition of multicultural families to include refugees, toughen local governments’ supervision of commercial marriage brokers, and mandate multicultural education for teachers in educational institutions, for example. Near the end of her term, she proposed launching a policy planning committee that would coordinate and direct all immigrant-related policies. This bill, entitled Basic Law for Immigrant Society (Iminsahoegibonbeoban), aimed to take a more integrated approach to immigrant policy, which had been implemented by different ministries, with a g reat deal of overlap. These bills reflect Lee’s critical evaluation of the Korean government’s multicultural policy. In interviews with the media, she has often criticized the current policy for reinforcing distinctions between multicultural families and general citizens and for giving rise to anti-multicultural sentiment (Koh 2016). Lee has also been open about expressing her identity as a person from the Philippines. When Lee was a chief author of a resolution submitted to the National Assembly in November 2012 on support for the Philippines to assist with typhoon damage, comments such as “Is her constituency the Philippines?” w ere common among Internet communities (Kim 2013).
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Ultimately, few of Lee’s bills passed.7 In recent interviews with the media, Lee has mentioned the frustration she felt regarding her party’s lack of interest in immigrant issues during her term (Kim 2019). She also talked about the difficulties she experienced in gaining support for her immigrant-related bills because congress members, irrespective of their party membership, feared that they would become involved in controversy if they supported these initiatives. In the 2020 general election, Lee ran for office again, this time vying for the proportional representation seat of the Justice Party (Jeonguidang), a small progressive party, but she was unsuccessful. Whether Lee will be able to continue her political career in the future remains to be seen, but the legislative outcomes of the first foreign-born congresswoman seem to be modest at best. Nevertheless, her presence in congress presents a rare opportunity for exploring the political desires of marriage immigrants.
Methods The data for this study were drawn from a larger multisited field research project on marriage immigrants’ political integration in K orea. This project was conducted in urban and rural areas of K orea in 2014, halfway through Jasmine Lee’s four-year term. Several follow-up interviews with key informants continued through 2018. In total, in-depth interviews were conducted with eighty-nine Filipina marriage immigrants from 2014 through 2018. In the interviews, I began by asking the participants to recount their overall migration history and to describe the process of adapting to Korean society. I then explored how women responded to Lee’s repre sentation by asking what they thought of her. Most welcomed the opportunity to speak, and many were also curious about what I thought of the congresswoman. In this study, I focus on forty-eight participants whose accounts regarding the congresswoman’s representation went beyond merely commenting on Lee’s personal ability (e.g., “She’s smart”). The interviews lasted from one to five hours (two hours on average); all interviews and conversations were conducted in a mix of Korean and English. During the analysis, I paid attention to the emerging themes of how the study participants’ views were shaped by their identities and daily interactions with family and community members. In addition, my interviews with Korean NGO activists and marriage immigrants from countries other than the Philippines w ere considered for the analysis. The mean age of the participants was 39 years, with an age range of 25 to 59. The average time since arrival in Korea was about twelve years. Eight participants were divorced or widowed. Most participants (thirty-five of the forty-eight women) had completed a college education in the Philippines.
Multiple Collective Identities During the interviews, most participants immediately mentioned the shared ethnic/national origin between themselves and the congresswoman. Every participant
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TA BLE 1.1
Participants’ Collective Identities Evoked by Jasmine Lee
Total 48
Multicultural
Underprivileged
Filipino
family
foreigner
18
17
13
was familiar with Lee’s name and remarked “She’s a Filipina” soon after beginning to discuss her. This common identification, however, soon diverged into a varied thers sense of belonging and imagined collectivities. Some identified with Lee. O saw a chasm between their identities and what they perceived her to represent. Their accounts revealed the women’s emerging collective identities largely in three categories: as Filipinas, as members of a multicultural f amily, and as underprivileged foreigners. eight participants who discussed Lee’s repre sen ta tion in Each of the forty- depth is assigned to the category that best characterizes their views (see t able 1.1). In presenting these identities as distinct classifications, I do not wish to imply that they w ere mutually exclusive identity categories for the participants. Rather, I use these conceptual categories to examine the different ideas of “we” that the women imagined when thinking of themselves as a group represented by Lee (or not).
Complex Realities of Living as Filipinos More than one-third of the participants conveyed a strong sense of ethnic pride in and for the congresswoman, as illustrated in Mio’s comments at the start of this chapter. T hese women believed that Lee holding a position of power would teach Koreans, in the words of Mio, “how great Filipinas are.” According to Mansbridge (1999, 649), the descriptive representation of a particular social group that has been excluded from participating in politics can change the social meaning of the “not able to (fit to) rule” label ascribed to the group in a way that affects all members of the group. In line with Mansbridge’s argument, Filipinas who had experienced discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and/or gender in their daily lives were keen to point out perceived changes brought about by Lee’s presence in the governing assembly. The feelings of social enhancement and ethnic pride that t hese participants expressed exist against the backdrop of the perceived lower position of the Philippines and of Filipinos in the global economy that is pervasive among Koreans. The presence of Jasmine Lee in the National Assembly, participants believed, had changed the inferior position and corresponding social status attached to Filipinos in Korean society. Cherry, who had lived in a rural province since
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marrying eighteen years before, situated Lee’s election in the context of the widespread discourse of ethnic and national hierarchy. She believed the election contributed significantly to changing Korean people’s perceptions about Filipinos: The Philippines is very poor compared with Korea. So they [Koreans] look at us as nothing, compared with those marriage immigrants from Italy [or] America; they look at them as very high. . . . No m atter how smart we are, we’re viewed as dumb b ecause our country d oesn’t have money. . . . I’m very thankful to Jasmine Lee because she raised how w e’re viewed in the society. . . . We’re very lucky b ecause people got to know about the Philippines because of a Filipina who became a congresswoman. Americans are also on the [Korean] television but none of them are lawmakers. That’s why we’re very proud. P eople will think that “Filipinos are poor but they are smart.”
Emphasizing the difference between becoming famous telev ision personalities, which Americans had been capable of, and becoming a lawmaker, Cherry believed that the presence of a Filipino politician challenged the denigrated position of the Philippines and of Filipinos in Korean society. Cherry clearly recalled a brief conversation she had had with a taxi driver when she took a taxi to the embassy in Seoul: “The taxi driver asked me where I’m from. When I said Philippines, he said ‘Filipinos are g reat. They are even in congress.’ I felt so good.” Although t hese women’s strong collective ethnic identity regarding the congresswoman was expressed using the term “pride,” as Cherry’s comments illustrate, this identity was often deeply embedded in the frustrating experience of constantly being “othered” and belittled in their daily interactions with Koreans. During her term, Lee was constantly the focus of public censure; in addition to the controversy over her bills, she was criticized, for example, for eating snacks before a parliamentary session began (Park 2015; Shinyoon 2015). Reflecting on hateful comments she read about the congresswoman on the Internet, Malaya, a 43-year-old leader of a Filipina voluntary association in her rural county, drew a parallel between the congresswoman’s hardships and the almost unchanging realities she had experienced and observed during the sixteen years since her arrival in her county: “There are many racists in Korea. Whenever t here’s news about foreigners [like Jasmine Lee], vicious replies follow right away. . . . I feel like we’re moving too slow and now is still not the time for multicultural society. . . . Jasmine Lee came out [in public] and stays active no matter [whether] others criticize her or not; she’s doing what she wants. It’s just so incredible. I heard that she is r eally good at what she’s d oing, someone who deserves respect.” Malaya empathized and identified with the congresswoman, whom she saw as often experiencing racial discrimination and excessive criticism for being an outsider. In speaking about the discriminatory incidents she herself had faced as a contractual worker for the county government, a public position she considered similar to Lee’s, Malaya expressed admiration for the congresswoman’s determination and
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resilience in her political position. For Malaya and others, this shared sense of hardship awakened a sense of ethnic pride about Lee serving in the National Assembly. The strong ethnic identity of some of the interviewed women, however, was also expressed by criticizing the congresswoman for downplaying her ethnic roots in public settings. Confronting constant othering, t hese w omen oriented themselves strongly toward their country of origin in response to their negative integration experience in Korea. This reactive transnationalism (Itzigsohn and Giorguli-Saucedo 2002, 2005) appeared to be reinforced by witnessing Lee, who was in the top echelons of Korean society as a congresswoman, still being the subject of racist comments. In this context, some participants found the congresswoman’s public emphasis on her Koreanness objectionable. Mahalia, a 35-year-old m other of two who had immigrated to Korea seven years earlier, said she “wasn’t so amused” to read that, in an interview, the congresswoman had answered “never” when asked whether she had planned to return to the Philippines someday. As a dual citizenship holder with plans to retire in the Philippines, Mahalia questioned the congresswoman’s answer: “How come you don’t want to go back to your country? You’ll never be anyone e lse that’s not Filipino. . . . I’m only Korean in papers. Koreans w ill never accept me as Korean. I’ll always be Filipino in their eyes.” In response to the constant friction with her in-laws, who demanded that she “adopt Korean practices” in child-rearing, Mahalia had stopped trying to learn Korean to avoid friction by not understanding what her in-laws said. For Mahalia, despite being l egal citizens of both countries, identifying as Korean, as the congresswoman did in the interview Mahalia discussed, was incompatible with being a proud Filipina, given the inherent conflict she felt between t hese two identities. The interviewed women who believed that the congresswoman represented “the voice of the Filipino” positively assessed her volunteering and charity work oriented t oward the Philippines. They mainly discussed Lee’s non-legislative activities, such as sending computers to schools and helping Filipino single mothers raising Korean Filipino c hildren in the Philippines. T hose who believed that Lee represented a more inclusive group than only Filipinos, however, saw the same activities as undesirable.
When Identities Clash: Multicultural Family versus Filipino For another group of participants, Jasmine Lee’s presence in congress promoted and symbolized their position in Korean society as members of a multicultural family. For example, Marie, a 46-year-old mother of three, thought that Lee urged Koreans to accept multicultural families: “We’re proud; I’m very proud of them [Jasmine Lee and Ra Lee] because even though they belong to the multicultural families, still they had the chance to be elected by the p eople. . . . I think it’s a starting point where we can really introduce the multicultural families to open up the eyes of the Korean p eople to accept us as we are.” According to Marie, Lee’s election signaled a general responsiveness in Korean society toward marriage immigrants
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and their families, indicating a departure from the norms of ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Marie believed that this perceived positive change then served as a source of confidence for her and other marriage immigrants. As a devoted Unification Church8 member and a leader of multiple voluntary associations of marriage immigrants in her community, Marie thought that her own active engagement in “building the community of multicultural families” over the past two decades was effectively pushing for change in Korean society. Because these women believed that Lee won her position as a representative of multicultural families, they expected her to represent them as such. They viewed her legislative activities as being legitimate when they targeted the multicultural family, which was often confined to a narrow group of internationally married couples with Korean husbands and foreign-born wives (see chapter 8 in this volume). They were critical of Lee when her activities deviated from their expectations. For example, Perla, a 59-year-old leader of a Filipina voluntary association in her city, raised her voice when recalling her association’s failed attempt to put forward the agenda of adding a “racism awareness curriculum” in schools through the congresswoman. Perla expected Lee to try to change the school curriculum to address racism in schools, a common concern among association members whose children w ere often bullied in school, following the association’s demand. When Perla learned that Lee was helping Korean Filipino c hildren in the Philippines, she lamented, “If y ou’re a lawmaker, you should first do it within your constituents . . . we’re the direct constituents . . . not Filipinos living in the Philippines.” In Perla’s mind, Lee needed to draw a clear line between Filipinos living in K orea and t hose in the Philippines in terms of her representation. The disagreement over priorities was particularly apparent in the context of one of Lee’s most well-k nown legislative activities. The participants frequently discussed her attempt to propose a bill guaranteeing access to basic rights, such as education and health care, to undocumented migrant children. The Basic Bill for Guaranteeing the Rights of Children of Migrants had originally been brought to the National Assembly during the legislative session preceding Lee’s term, but the bill expired before being approved. When the network of twenty-three migrant- related Korean NGOs and institutions that had advanced the bill since 2009 contacted lawmakers about resubmitting it, Lee responded the most positively and proactively. In April 2014, Lee led public hearings on the bill at the National Assembly, which drew wide media and public attention. When the bill was finally resubmitted with Lee as one of the chief authors, it faced especially fierce controversy regarding w hether the law would eventually be used to legalize undocumented migrants.9 Some participants saw the bill as prioritizing undocumented migrant c hildren over multicultural children—the children of international marriages—and considered this problematic. Judy, a mother of two daughters and a former president and member of multiple Filipino/a voluntary associations in her city, expressed concern when asked about Jasmine Lee:
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I also care very much about them [undocumented migrant children] because they’re undocumented children. But for me, it’s not proper because those children’s parents know that their children w ill be undocumented. If they really think about their children’s education, they’re going to send them to the Philippines. I think if the law is accepted by the government, t here w ill be more undocumented parents making families here in Korea. And then I think it’s okay for t hose children to go to school. . . . But I think it’s very unfair. There are lots of c hildren here in K orea to concentrate [on]. How about, why don’t they just concentrate on immigrant children? You know, immigrant children h ere in this city. I think the focus should be on those children’s education because it’s very lacking. (emphasis added)
Here, the distinction between immigrant c hildren—meaning the children of legal immigrants or multicultural families— and the c hildren of undocumented migrant workers was clear in Judy’s mind. Although Judy was sympathetic to the undocumented children and their parents she knew as fellow Filipinos in her Filipino/a associations, she believed that the legitimate target of the congresswoman’s legislative activities should have been the c hildren of l egal immigrants. Describing the difficulties that multicultural families often face in educating their c hildren because the mothers often do not have Korean-language ability, she emphasized that efforts to address t hese c hildren’s challenges should be prioritized. Ten years before I met her for the research project, Judy had divorced her Korean husband a fter eight years of marriage. At that time, she had to send her children, then seven and eight years old, to live with her sister in the Philippines, who agreed to provide them with care and education so that Judy could concentrate on earning money in K orea. The c hildren of international marriages are often sent to the m other’s country of origin because of a lack of support for child-rearing in K orea, and this infant or youth diaspora phenomenon has been observed among working marriage immigrants (Heooh 2009). Judy’s belief that Lee’s priority should be on the children of legal immigrants was based not only on her personal experience, but also on her accumulated knowledge from actively engaging in Filipino voluntary associations in her city. Her participation in collective discussions about the difficulties many immigrant mothers face, such as the inability to help their children with their schoolwork because of the language barrier, contributed to her critical view of Lee’s proposed bill. In fairness to the congresswoman, it should be noted that Lee held or participated in several meetings and policy forums at which government officials, NGO activists, experts, and multicultural c hildren themselves participated and discussed policy measures to improve the education of multicultural children. Further, Lee submitted eight bills that focused on the welfare of children and young adults, which would ultimately affect multicultural c hildren. Several bills, for example, w ere about protecting runaway teenagers and abused children. However, participants who considered Lee to represent multicultural families asserted that, if the congresswoman
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was g oing to target a specific group of c hildren, that target should be the c hildren of multicultural families, not those of undocumented families.
Feelings of Disconnection as Underprivileged Foreigners According to the 2012 National Survey on Multicultural Families, about 80 percent of families with Filipina marriage immigrants earned less than four million Korean won (approximately 3,485 United States dollars) monthly, which was the average household income in Korea at the time.10 When the participants strongly identified as part of an underprivileged social group, they expressed doubt as often as hope regarding whether Lee would be able to understand and represent the situation of the wider group of disadvantaged foreigners. In particular, considering the perceived socioeconomic privilege of Lee’s marital family and her experience with a dissimilar channel of marriage migration reminded them of their economically marginalized position, evoking a sense of disconnection. Mariah was among the participants who wanted Lee to represent their situation as underprivileged marriage immigrants. However, as a single mother of three and the recipient of national basic livelihood guarantees (welfare assistance; gichosaenghwalbojang-sugeupja), Mariah questioned w hether Lee would be able to represent those whose economic situations were worse than her own. B ecause Mariah held leadership positions in various Filipina and multiethnic voluntary associations, she was familiar with many cases of divorce and single motherhood among marriage immigrants. Mariah differentiated the socioeconomic position of the wider population of marriage immigrants from that of the congresswoman: Jasmine also had difficulty like us, but what was different about her was that her parents-in-law were rich and her husband treated her very nicely. What was even better was that her husband d idn’t marry her through a [commercial marriage] broker, but they were a love marriage. That’s the reason why she succeeded. I’m sorry for the loss of her husband but . . . In her case, she experienced many good things. She didn’t experience something really harsh. The person who received only good things is different from the ones who experienced difficulties. (emphasis added)
As Mariah pointed out, Lee’s marriage and f amily life, which are widely known thanks to her celebrity status as a telev ision personality and actress, seemed privileged to some Filipinas. Articles about Lee in the media often emphasized the love story between her and her late Korean husband, which began before commercial international marriage agencies flourished in Korea (Kang 2010). Public accounts of her family life also indicated no economic difficulties. The imagined higher socioeconomic status of her husband’s family, along with Lee’s marriage—which Mariah referred to as a love marriage rather than one mediated through a commercial agency or the Unification Church—led Mariah to doubt that Lee would be able to represent the substantive interests of the wider population of marriage immigrants, in which she included herself.
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The participants’ collective identity as an underprivileged social group was also often grounded in their precarious employment situation. Marriage immigrants are primarily integrated into the l abor market as manual laborers and low- skilled serv ice workers, and they generally have little job security (MOGEF 2016). Gwen, a single m other of one, in her late 30s, juggled one full-time night shift job and three part-time day jobs while taking care of her 13-year-old son with the help of her former mother-in-law: We d on’t feel the changes since she [Jasmine Lee] was t here. T here’s a lot of Filipino w omen in K orea who are working hard in Korean government or in private agencies, [but] it was not recognized by anybody [because] we’re [just] working as a contractual. . . . I think Jasmine has hardly noticed that. . . . She reached the goal that nobody can usually get, but she has to look back where she was before . . . because if we have [stable jobs], we can give good f utures to our families and t here is no reason for us to be treated as multicultural or foreigner.
Gwen’s full-time position at a government institution assisting marriage immigrants was based on a yearly contract. When Gwen experienced how even a full- time job at a factory can suddenly disappear when the cell phone factory where she formerly worked relocated to China a few years before the interview, she attempted to secure a job in English teaching or in another social serv ice area. For Gwen and others who had trouble finding stable jobs, their socioeconomic status had a direct bearing on their children’s future because their identities as mothers and as non-regular workers were closely intertwined (see chapter 2 in this volume). These w omen further questioned the “real motives” of Lee and the GNP and emphasized that the congresswoman should better understand and rep ere in precarious work resent the needs of marriage immigrants, most of whom w arrangements. The perception of shared experience between representatives and the represented, scholars have argued, is at the core of why minority descriptive represen tation is inevitably linked to substantive representation (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1998). This shared experience, which is perceived to be different from that of the majority, suggests that minority politicians are the best equipped to represent the voice of the minority. However, for the participants in this study who identified as underprivileged immigrants, Jasmine Lee was perceived e ither to not share their experience or to have moved past it. Recent studies on women’s political repre sentation have contended that descriptive representation that is not connected to those who are represented, or that lacks processes of dynamic collective claims- making for marginalized groups, cannot guarantee substantive representation (Celis et al. 2008; Weldon 2002). Correspondingly, Filipinas like Gwen questioned the assumption of the representational link between individual minority politicians and minority group perspectives.
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In this context, Erin, a 45-year-old English teacher and a former president of a Filipino/a voluntary association in her city, decided to run for a seat in the city legislature in the 2014 local election. She emphasized her grassroots advocacy activities in helping Filipino workers to collect overdue wages and volunteering to assist marriage immigrants: “I felt that I could be of help to t hose p eople who are less fortunate because I was also poor when I came to Korea and went through so much difficulties. I know how oppressed and hopeless they would feel b ecause I was in their shoes.” For Erin, Jasmine Lee’s presence in congress represented no more than a symbolic gesture on the part of the conservative party to include multicultural families without trying to build or connect with the grassroots mobilization of marriage immigrant w omen or multicultural families as a w hole.
Conclusion The presence of a marriage immigrant w oman in Korean parliamentary politics resulted from a combination of multicultural buzz, the legacy of Korean women’s organi zations’ political empowerment movement, and political parties’ response, rather than from grassroots organ i zing among marriage immigrant w omen. Although this contextually driven descriptive representation may not have led to increased understanding or competence for political participation among marriage immigrant w omen as scholars predicted, it did provide a rare opportunity for these women to explore their complex collective identities and the political implications of these. In discussing Jasmine Lee, Filipina marriage immigrants in this study expressed diverse collective identities and made varied political claims as Filipinos, members of multicultural families, and individuals in an underprivileged social group. Although the presence of a co-ethnic politician in congress evoked a strong sense of ethnic pride among the Filipina participants, this pride has been brought into sharp relief in the context of constant racism and othering. This reactive nature of ethnic identity sometimes led to an inner conflict, which some women expressed in identifying as both Filipina and Korean. The tension among multiple identities was also apparent in how some w omen saw Lee’s proposed bill advocating the rights of undocumented migrant children as obstructing the government’s efforts t oward multicultural c hildren. Finally, when the w omen recognized that Lee did not share their underprivileged socioeconomic status, they expressed doubt regarding her ability to speak for them. The findings of this chapter suggest that, ultimately, descriptive representa tion of a minority group remains symbolic if the representation is imposed without attending to the diversity within the group. As the president of the CKWP admitted, “a movement for migrant women’s political participation should not aim to make one or two talented w omen lawmakers, but to make all migrant women be treated and accepted fairly as citizens of Korean society.” Descriptive
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representation can have a more substantive impact on migrant women, their families, and Korean politics if it is firmly rooted in these groups’ grassroots mobilization. Such organi zing and representation, in which marriage immigrants are able to develop their diverse voices and agendas and represent themselves accordingly, are possible only when marriage immigrants are accepted “as we are”—as politi cal subjects with complex identities and desires—in the public sphere.
Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge my special thanks to the editors of this volume and Hae Yeon Choo for their great help in improving this chapter. This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18K12917. NOTES
1. All names of individuals are pseudonyms. 2. The literal translation of damunhwa is “multicultural,” but the term is colloquially used to refer to families with marriage immigrants. 3. The Korean National Assembly and local assemblies employ a mixed-member electoral system, with some members elected through the single-member electoral system and others elected on the basis of the electoral performance of their party and their rank on the pre-decided party list. The latter process is known as proportional representation. 4. According to Kang (2014, 120), conservatives who emphasize tradition and continuity in the Korean nation wanted to ensure that multicultural families continue Korean patriarchal norms and values by assimilating marriage immigrants and ensuring the biological reproduction of the Korean nation. For neoliberals, the c hildren of multicultural families, many of whom are thought to have ties to South Asian countries through their mothers, would function as a bridge in pioneering the South Asian market in the f uture. 5. During my interview with Ra Lee, Lee explained that she was recommended as a potential candidate by the president of the Multicultural Family Support Center (MFSC) in her city, which was contacted by the GNP. She became acquainted with the MFSC director when she volunteered at the center. Prior to her election, Ra Lee was involved in Marriage Immigrant Network as a leader of Mongolian marriage immigrants. The network, which is affiliated u nder the Seoul Immigration Office (SIO), is a voluntary organi zation of marriage immigrants that focuses on helping newcomers by offering voluntary assistance (e.g., interpretation serv ice) at the SIO. 6. Film directory of the Korean Film Council. http://w ww.koreanfilm.or.k r/eng/films/index /filmsView.jsp? movieCd=2 0112695 (accessed October 23, 2019). 7. The two bills put forward by Lee that passed were about supporting “comfort women,” who w ere enslaved by Japanese soldiers, and providing a l egal foundation for the Korean L abor Foundation to conduct international cooperation projects. A further twelve bills, some of which were revisions to the Multicultural Family Support Act, were integrated into other similar bills, and the original bills w ere scrapped. 8. The Unification Church has matched Japanese women with Korean men since the 1960s and has contributed to a steady number of Filipina marriage immigrants coming to Korea since the 1990s (Kim 2012).
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9. The bill was brought before the National Assembly on December 18, 2014, but was automatically scrapped a fter it failed to pass during the session. 10. According to Statistics K orea, the average monthly h ousehold income in K orea in 2012 was 4,077,000 South Korean won (about 3,485 United States dollars).
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2 Money Matters in Immigrant Motherhood JULIE S. KIM
Low marriage rates and extremely low fertility rates, despite pro-natal policies, have persisted in South K orea (Korea) for many years. More recently, marriage rates further declined from 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people in 2010 and 5.9 marriages per 1,000 in 2015 to 4.7 marriages in 2019 (KOSIS 2020). The total fertility rate, which hovered between 1.05 and 1.30 throughout the 2010s, fell below 1.00 to 0.98 in 2018 and to 0.92 in 2019 (KOSIS 2020). Public discourse relates these statistics to the high cost of housing and challenges of securing economic stability, as well as high expectations and demands placed on intensive parenting (W. Choi 2016; Harlan 2012; Sharma 2013; Shin 2015). While t hese factors, including high costs associated with c hildren’s education, may deter Koreans from pursuing marriage and parenthood or having more than one child, popular media tell little about how those factors affect marriage immigrants in Korea. Are they immune from similar pressures, specifically intensive parenting and investing in their children? For marriage immigrants of Korean husbands, their status as potential mothers affords them Korean citizenship, to which most migrant workers are not entitled (Cheng 2011; Choo 2013; Kim 2013). Along with their legal inclusion, immigrant mothers are often expected to assimilate in Korea and raise their children as Korean citizens, thereby constructing “ethnicized maternal citizenship” (Kim 2013). W omen must negotiate and reconcile the tension between their identity as both a foreigner and a mother to “Korean” children as they navigate motherhood and mothering practices in a Korean context. To illuminate immigrant w omen’s understanding of so-called Korean motherhood, I take an analytical approach from economic sociology, focusing on immigrant mothers’ economic practices and relational work. I also connect women’s relational work to identity work and show that mothers’ economic practices are integral to establishing and affirming their identity as m others in K orea. The concept of relational work proposes that the interplay of economy and intimacy is sustained through appropriate matching among social relationships, economic 52
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transactions, and media of exchange (Zelizer 2012; Bandelj 2012, 2016). For example, we prepare birthday presents in consideration of our friends’ tastes and preferences instead of a check payment, which would likely violate the expectations of our friends in terms of what constitutes an appropriate gift. Such practices help establish and affirm our relationships with those friends, and we are constantly working on our various relationships. Motherhood, as a prominent juncture of economy and intimacy, is a fruitful site for examining immigrant w omen’s relational work and identity as m others. Extant sociological literature reveals that prevailing cultural ideologies encourage labor- intensive and financially draining child- centered mothering practices (Hays 1998; Blair-L oy 2003; Christopher 2012). Among American families, children from middle-class and upper-m iddle-class families tend to engage in structured after-school activities, such as soccer games, band practices, and organized playdates. However, children from poor and working-class families likely have less-structured schedules (Lareau 2011). T hese differences explain how socioeconomic status structures diverging parenting practices across families, and the extent to which c hildren participate in enrichment activities is contingent on household resources (Lareau 2011). In Korea, however, parents across classes try to fill their c hildren’s schedules with activities and rearrange their own economic priorities to do so. In this context, immigrant m others’ relational work is tightly linked to their identity work. Understanding immigrant m others’ relational work and their adoption of mothering practices that they perceive as Korean helps uncover the mechanisms through which they integrate into Korean society. Simul taneously, immigrant mothers’ aspiration to secure pink-collar work—in translation, interpretation, teaching, and office work, as opposed to factory and farm work—becomes part of their relational and identity work. They hope to counter assumptions of multicultural families being poor and uneducated and to mitigate hildren’s lives. the negative reach of those assumptions onto their c This chapter investigates the meaning of motherhood among immigrant mothers in K orea by uncovering how the various economic activities they engage in sustain their idea of Korean motherhood. The chapter contributes to a larger literature of gender, family, and immigration in several ways. First, it offers glimpses of immigrant people’s lives through the subjective meanings and understandings of their everyday practices, much like Sohoon Lee’s work on Korean Chinese migrants (see chapter 5 of this volume). Second, this chapter contextualizes women’s private lives and identity in the home, which complements Ilju Kim’s ethnographic work on Filipina Korean immigrants (see chapter 1). Third, this chapter shows how immigrant women elucidate Korean motherhood, while attempting to challenge assumptions about immigrant m others and their class status. Many of the immigrant women’s experiences discussed in this chapter reveal their everyday integrative processes into the broader society, as they establish their identity as m others in K orea. This presents a sharp juxtaposition to the experiences of Korean women married to Filipino husbands (chapter 8) or Muslim husbands
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(chapter 3), which illuminate complex relationships that challenge f amily and kinship norms in their own ways. I start with a theoretical discussion of relational work to frame my analytical approach. I examine examples of child-centered, economic practices that help establish and sustain the social identity of Korean m others. Then, I analyze the economic behaviors and decisions that immigrant mothers perceive as Korean. Immigrant mothers’ relational work reveals how they come to define appropriate mothering in K orea and respond to the prescribed pecuniary practices in Korean motherhood. Specific short-term spending behavior, long-term savings plans, and money-earning activities lend themselves to helping immigrant m others establish their dual role as mother and immigrant in Korea.
Relational and Identity Work in the Construction of Motherhood I apply relational work (Zelizer 2012; Bandelj 2012, 2016) primarily to investigate how the interplay of social relations and money m atters informs immigrant mothers in Korea about Korean motherhood, and how women’s relational work helps them affirm their identity as mother in the Korean context. Viviana Zelizer (2005) proposes that economy and intimacy are intricately intertwined, and that p eople engage in relational work, which entails constructing different meanings, bound aries, and understandings of their social relations and economic action (Zelizer 2012; Bandelj 2012, 2016). Relational work is a useful analytical approach b ecause it urges the analyst to uncover the meanings attached to economic practices and social ties while recognizing the role of broader cultural and structural forces in shaping such relationships (Bandelj 2016). Relational work as an analytical approach has been applied to socioeconomic relationships and contexts in a range of areas, such as managers in manufacturing industries (Whitford 2012); artists’ innovative work in the dance world (Montanari et al. 2016); female egg donors and receiving couples in the in vitro fertilization market (Haylett 2012); women and club promoters in VIP entertainment work (Mears 2015); and wives in transnationally brokered marriages (Kim 2018). One example of relational work in mothering is the practice of giving an allowance. When a mother gives an allowance to her child, an economic transaction takes place, yet one cannot simply describe it as an economic exchange between two actors. The m other engages in a form of economic transaction that is culturally and socially proper with her child, giving an allowance rather than a salary, with an appropriate type of money, such as cash rather than a paycheck. Money has social meaning through our interpersonal ties (Zelizer 1994); as such, money in the form of an allowance not only acknowledges the mother-child bond but also reinforces it. In turn, these appropriate economic practices reaffirm and legitimize the woman’s identity as m other and her relationship with her child. In many ways, women’s relational work as mothers constitutes a performative aspect of identity work in which specific economic practices help m others
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construct their sense of maternal identity. According to Goffman (1961), we manage the impressions we make on others in our social interactions. Therefore, when mothers engage in appropriate mothering practices, it also helps others to identify and accept them as m others. Thus, relational work is akin to identity work in that there is internal self-reflection and external engagement in creating and maintaining a social identity in interactions (Jenkins 2008). Drawing from relational work, I illuminate the ways in which immigrant women’s pecuniary practices reflect their understanding of Korean motherhood. Examining how m others work out money m atters—including spending, saving, and securing financial resources for their children—highlights motherhood as an impor tant site for negotiating their identity as immigrant mothers. Additionally, the ways in which immigrant m others aspire to secure financial resources, or the types of jobs they want to hold, play a role in breaking the link between their immigrant status and assumed lower class while projecting middle-class values and goals.
The Korean Context and Mothers’ Roles A culture of heavy parental involvement in Korea requires financial resources and extensive time commitment, particularly from mothers (Yang and Rosenblatt 2008). Most children in Korea engage in numerous extracurricular activities, such as playing musical instruments and sports. Although the quality of those activities depends on the time, energy, and financial resources parents can expend, Korean parents across social positions invest heavily in their c hildren’s development (Cho 2015; Moon et al. 2016; Statistics K orea 2018). This investment begins early: Korean families with school-age children and younger spend nearly one-fifth of their total household income on c hildren’s after-school programs (Kim et al. 2016). Parents generally believe that they need to support their children well into adulthood u ntil they are financially independent (Moon et al. 2016). Consequently, numerous studies document how financially taxing parenting is in K orea and the extent to which Koreans regard child-rearing as a financial burden (Chung and Choe 2001; Anderson and Kohler 2013; Woo and Hodges 2015; Fingerman et al. 2016). Mothering practices involve enrolling c hildren as young as toddlers in private after-school centers known as hagwon. Hagwons offer classes in a variety of subjects, from music and art to athletics and computer science. More typically, hagwons are academic centers that reinforce or teach advanced material in core subjects such as math and English. Research on preschool-age children found that an estimated 35.5 percent and 83.6 percent of two-year-olds and five-year-olds, respectively, attended a hagwon or received private academic instructions outside of school and daycare (Kim et al. 2016). In 2017, the national average monthly hagwon costs were ₩307,000 ($280) per child in elementary school; more than ₩438,000 ($400) in junior high school; and ₩515,000 ($470) in high school (Statistics Korea 2018). Meanwhile, the average post-tax annual salary for adults in their 30s and 40s—age groups that most likely have school-age c hildren—was
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₩34 million (less than $30,000) in 2016 (Korea Economic Research Institute 2017). Hagwon costs are burdensome, particularly for low-income and middle-income families (Kim and Park 2010), yet parents do not hesitate to enroll their children in classes (Park et al. 2011). This tendency for families to overinvest in their children’s education (Hultberg et al. 2017) is driven by a firm belief that education is the vehicle of economic and social mobility (Sorenson 1994; Chung and Choe 2001). Parents seek out additional preparations that may improve their c hildren’s chances of entering elite universities and securing stable work (Chung and Choe 2001; Anderson and Kohler 2013; Woo and Hodges 2015). Korean parents extend financial support into their c hildren’s adulthood. Nine out of ten parents, for example, believe that they need to help pay for tuition and support their children through college (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs 2015). The average yearly tuition for a four-year college in 2018 was more than ₩13.4 million, roughly $12,500 (Ministry of Education 2018). Parents who do not have enough college savings often take out loans to finance the expense. Educational loans in 2013 peaked at ₩1.88 trillion—nearly $1.8 billion (Korea Higher Education Institute 2018). In the same year, adults in their 50s—those likely to have college-age children—accounted for 30 percent of applicants for debt restructuring (Yoon 2014). Parents also find other ways to meet the economic demands of supporting their children, including pulling money from their retirement funds and borrowing from extended f amily (Sharma 2013; Anderson and Kohler 2013; Chung and Choe 2001). Many Korean parents also believe that they are financially responsible for their children until marriage. Parents generally cover two major expenses for their adult children: wedding and home purchase. According to a 2017 Korea Consumer Agency survey, wedding expenses average ₩45.9 million ($43,000), a cost that young adults typically cannot take on without help. In Seoul, where approximately one-fifth of the Korean population lives, competition for limited urban space drives real estate prices to extraordinary levels. Consequently, home purchase is nearly impossible for many newlyweds, even among dual-earning, middle-class couples (Shin 2015; W. Choi 2016). Instead, the newlyweds’ ability to buy their first home depends on the socioeconomic status of the groom’s f amily (Kim 2017), given that traditional nuptial practices require the groom’s f amily to purchase the newlywed’s first home and the bride’s f amily to pay for furnishings and appliances (Kim 2017; Shin 2015). Unfortunately, these expenses place a considerable burden on parents (Shin 2015; W. Choi 2016). One of the main reasons many older Korean adults in their 50s and 60s do not retire is to be able to cover their c hildren’s college education and wedding expenses (Mirae Asset 2017), with some spending more than half of their existing savings (S. Choi 2016). Given the combination of gender ideologies and financially draining parental practices, motherhood has complex consequences for women’s employment trajectories (Kim and Cheung 2015; Tsuya and Choe 2004; Chung and Choe 2001). Much like the discriminatory conditions against working m others in the United States (Budig 2006; Correll et al. 2007), the motherhood penalty also exists in
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Korea, where m others are viewed as less qualified and less competent employees (Kang and Rowley 2005) and receive lower pay than men with equivalent credentials and work experience (Zhang et al. 2008). Although high educational attainment has enabled more w omen to enter the labor market in recent decades, participation is transient b ecause women tend to leave the l abor market a fter having c hildren (Kim and Cheung 2015). This results in relatively low rates of labor force participation among w omen in their 30s and 40s (Cooke 2010). A sample of 1,013 adults between the ages of 20 and 60 from a nationwide survey further conveyed persisting expectations of caregiving as the mothers’ primary role and breadwinning as the fathers’ role in the household (Moon et al. 2016). Indeed, 49.9 percent of married couples in their 30s, 54.2 percent in their 40s, and 50.5 percent in their 50s comprise dual earners (Park 2019). With working and mothering demands, working m others in their 30s have the least amount of time to spend on leisure activities (Im et al. 2018). Moreover, the current generation of Korean m others perceives good mothering as going beyond providing financial resources. It entails building high-quality parent-child relationships centered on creating a strong emotional bond (Otto 2017) and helping children develop high social competence (Hong 2019). Yet, the emotional work entailed in Korean mothering is not readily visible on the surface. As a result, the practices that immigrant m others describe as Korean in this chapter remain limited to, first, the more tangible, visible ones, surrounding money practices, and, second, what immigrant mothers construct as Korean mothering.
Methods This chapter draws from open-ended in-depth interviews with thirty-one immigrant w omen married to Korean men. The interviews were conducted in the summer and fall of 2014 in metropolitan Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, where h ousehold income and asset levels and living costs are higher compared to other regions, and several rural counties in Chungcheong Province, with relatively lower household income levels and living costs (Statistics Korea 2017). The face-to-face interviews lasted from sixty to ninety minutes each. Although a few of the women initially went to K orea to work and eventually married and put down roots, most in this study migrated specifically for marriage through marriage brokering (either formal or informal). Formal brokers include matchmaking agencies. Informal brokers include other migrant women, friends, and family with social ties in both Korea and the w omen’s countries of origin. To identify interviewees, I reached out to multicultural family support centers, migrant workers’ offices, and women’s rights organizations in Seoul and rural areas by phone, email, and in person. Some organizations allowed me to visit their site and interact with potential interviewees directly; other organizations preselected interviewees. The interviewees found through t hese offices also gave referrals to other migrant wives who might otherw ise have been difficult to contact.
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Interviews focused on women’s experience of migrating to Korea and their social and economic relations before and a fter marriage. Although social- desirability biases can potentially color their stories, women are often motivated to tell their experiences in more honest ways than assumed (Morrill et al. 2005). In addition, my identity as a female researcher close to the age range of these women helped them feel comfortable. Some expressed relief for being able to share thoughts and feelings that they could not with friends and family. Others described the interview as a confession in which they could divulge and admit their mistakes, particularly when talking about relational conflict. Women in this study entered Korea between 1990 and 2011. Of the thirty-one interviewees, fifteen came from Vietnam, six from China, five from the Philippines, two from Mongolia, and one each from Japan, Cambodia, and Thailand. Although immigrant wives of Korean husbands also come from non-A sian countries, the majority are from neighboring Asian countries. Interview participants are not representative of all foreign-born wives in K orea, but contacting organizations with serv ices dedicated to marriage immigrants and interviewee referrals allowed for sample diversification across important characteristics such as marriage status, work status, service-user or non-user status, residence in rural or urban areas, and education level. In terms of social characteristics of my interviewees, twenty-nine of the women were married and two were divorced. The source of marital dissatisfaction for the two women with dissolved marriages was their husband’s infidelity. The women’s ages ranged between 24 and 45, with age gaps between them and their husbands ranging from one year to twenty-eight years. Twenty-one of the w omen worked part or full time in occupations such as factory workers and interpreter-translators. The remaining ten identified themselves as housew ives. Their husbands’ occupations included both blue-collar and white-collar work, from farmer and factory workers to business o wners and government employees. Living arrangements also varied across families. Some w omen lived with their nuclear f amily and others with their in-laws, which carried implications for women’s employment opportunities and access to organizational serv ices. The w omen had between one and four c hildren. Of the thirty-one w omen, only two were not m others. Both discussed their desire for children but wanted to wait u ntil they w ere financially comfortable.
Immigrant Mothers’ Relational Work Of numerous tasks that m others perform, the following sections highlight economic practices that help immigrant women construct their identity as m other in the Korean context based on their perceptions of ideal Korean motherhood.
Budgeting and Spending Like a Korean Mother Many Korean m others practice money earmarking by budgeting and bookkeeping h ousehold income and expenses. Regular household expenses that address the
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collective well-being of the family include rent for t hose who are not homeowners, insurance payments (such as health and life), utility bills, and other necessities (food, clothing, and telecommunications). Children’s educational expenses deserve further attention b ecause they are a distinct budgetary concern. Tuya, a 29-year-old woman from Mongolia who has two elementary-age sons, explained: “I know which hagwon has the best Korean composition classes even though I’m not Korean. My husband is clueless about all that. I research which programs are the best, how much they cost, and what we can afford b ecause m others know more.” According to Tuya, it is the mother who gathers education-related information. Gendered division of labor obligates mothers to make informed economic decisions on proper educational spending in the household. Acquiring the knowledge to make appropriate financial decisions on children’s educational activities can be time consuming. They have to gather information about which extracurricular activities are developmentally appropriate, compare the quality of teachers and educational institutions, and calculate their costs and affordability. Collecting information from organizational websites, pamphlets, and advertisement is only one component of making informed decisions. O thers include meeting with teachers, visiting program sites, networking with other mothers, and financial planning. How do immigrant mothers accomplish t hese tasks? First, native mothers become a point of reference, and ideas about appropriate parenting and raising Korean children derive from interactions with Korean mothers. With a six-year- old daughter and a five-year-old son, Mei, a 31-year-old college-educated woman from China, explained: “You don’t have to send kids to hagwon, but I heard from other Korean m others that hagwon teaches the same material as schools but better. If I want my kids to do well in school, I need to send them to hagwon.” Conversations with Korean m others shape w omen’s understanding of hagwons as a requisite when children enter elementary school. Although enrollment in costly hagwons is optional, Mei, like other Korean parents, regards hagwon as an imperative for her c hildren’s academic success. This understanding also prioritizes its associated costs as an important h ousehold budgetary item. Mei feels that she w ill be prepared to pay for her c hildren’s f uture hagwon costs b ecause she works part time as a translator, and her husband works at an electrical company. In this way, Korean mothers inform immigrant mothers about the type of educational investment they should make, when to do it, and why. Women’s identity work involves external development à la Goffman—that is, managing the impressions they have on others. But it also involves internal work, cultivating a sense of self. Adopting Korean mothering practices thus has consequences regarding how immigrant w omen identify themselves. Jasmine, a 31-year-old w oman from the Philippines who lives in the rural regions of Korea with her husband, their two c hildren, and her in-laws, spoke of how tending to her children’s educational development influences the way she feels about herself as a mother: “Thinking about my child’s academic development makes me feel like a Korean mother. Back in the Philippines, no one really cared about which preschool
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to send their c hildren and which extracurricular activities to sign them up for when they enter elementary school. But in Korea, I have to consider many factors because these decisions are so important here.” By engaging in child-rearing practices similar to those of native mothers, Jasmine feels “like a Korean mother.” Her relational work gives her an opportunity to relate to Korean m others and create an emotional connection with them. Further, she highlighted specific aspects about her role as mother in K orea that sets her apart from mothers in the Philippines, underscoring how m others in dissimilar contexts may approach parenting differently. In contrast, some immigrant w omen with less personal and h ouse hold resources question their competence as m others. A m other of two young d aughters, 28-year-old Cam from Vietnam spoke of how this happens, and how she addresses her potential shortcomings: “I’m most concerned with my kids’ schooling because Ic an’t be as good as Korean moms, but I have many Vietnamese friends I can talk to when I have problems. Raising kids in K orea is hard, and it can be expensive, but there are cheaper ways to enroll kids in many programs. . . . My friends and I pool our resources together to do that.” Despite her desire to meet all her c hildren’s needs, Cam does not have her husband’s full financial and emotional support because of economic constraints. When Cam compares her mothering practices against t hose of Korean m others by saying that she cannot be “as good as Korean moms,” she not only worries about her capacity to make appropriate decisions but also feels inadequate b ecause of her immigrant status, which is compounded by the lack of financial resources. Cam’s self-assessment is in contrast to Tuya’s. Tuya exhibits more confidence expressing how she behaves like Korean mothers even though she is not Korean. Both mothers construct their identity and sense of self as a mother by looking at Korean mothers and treating them as the standard comparison group. Class and immigrant status intersect critically, as they exacerbate the disadvantages immigrant m others experience. For Cam, who is married to a factory worker twenty years her senior, her working-class background and a low level of educational attainment further aggravate her worries when assessing her role as a mother. Cam’s account reveals that some of the larger investments in children are class-specific. Although Korean parents and immigrant parents alike want to see their c hildren succeed, certain ideal mothering practices are reserved for those with more money. Then, working-class immigrant m others with a lack of financial resources may share more similar sentiments with Korean m others in parallel class positions. Cam’s experience, however, shows that immigrant women find alternative ways to manage the discrepancy between their needs and economic constraints by mobilizing network resources. Social ties with co-ethnic friends and other immigrant mothers offer resources and instrumental support. Although immigrant mothers such as Mei seek additional support through interethnic exchanges, mothers in this study more commonly turned to co-ethnic w omen to help address
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social and cultural gaps and to receive emotional support. Cam’s explanation about her friends’ role elucidates how women, especially working-class m others with fewer resources, rely on immigrant networks to navigate motherhood in Korea. Through t hese networks, w omen share practical knowledge about child-rearing and cost-saving strategies for enrolling in after-school activities, such as crowdsourcing, taking advantage of special enrollment promotions, and identifying f ree programs offered through community centers. Although Korean mothers are reference points for raising Korean children, some immigrant mothers have limited opportunities to actively interact with them. For these mothers, the network of interethnic and co-ethnic immigrant mothers becomes an invaluable resource for troubleshooting the challenges they encounter.
Savings for Future Gifting and Economic Mobility In addition to managing financial decisions on meeting children’s current academic needs, w omen display future-oriented behavior by saving for their c hildren’s college and wedding expenses. Almost all the interviewed women had at least one savings account for their c hildren, though the savings amount ranged from just a few dollars each week to a c ouple of hundred dollars per month. Some women, particularly those who make larger monthly deposits, make automatic deposits into their c hildren’s accounts. Ling, a 34-year-old mother from China, lives in a small city with her husband, an electrician, and their two c hildren. Their income is moderate, and the couple is able to save regularly even after paying for monthly expenses, including insurance fees of more than ₩1 million and children’s sports and arts hagwon expenses ranging from ₩2 million to ₩3 million. They direct deposit ₩100,000 into one savings account and ₩200,000 to another. Like immigrant mothers who save in this way, Ling makes joint savings decisions with her husband. In contrast, w omen making smaller deposits tend to save whatever they can. Cam, for example, opened a savings account for each of her two c hildren and deposits any leftover money after her monthly expenses or smaller sums of ₩50,000 and upward accumulated by saving change from cash transactions. To save for their children’s college tuition, Cam and her husband rarely send remittances to Cam’s parents in Vietnam, a commonly expected practice among immigrants. Generally, saving for children’s future expenses is common, but the amount and the method of saving vary by class. Although saving for children’s expenses is integral to Korean parents’ relational work, the decision to finance large future expenses leaves more than a financial burden on parents. 42-year-old Thuy from Vietnam has two sons, 15 and 11 years old, who compete nationally in Taekwondo. To support their athletic careers, Thuy set an aggressive savings goal, but between her part time earning as a legal interpreter and her husband’s income from factory work, meeting the goal is challenging. She explained: “I guess the main goal is to raise my children well, and send them off to college. I want to send them to Korea National Sport University. If not, then Yong In University. Am I being too ambitious? But I have to be!
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That’s why I need to work hard and save, so I can pay for their studies. My biggest fear is not being able to pay tuition to the school of their dreams.” Immigrant mothers regard paying for their c hildren’s college tuition as a Korean parental duty. Thuy’s fear of not being able to fulfill that shows how these perceived parental obligations take an emotional toll. If these monetary responsibilities are so burdensome, why do immigrant mothers practice them? W omen construct their identity of m other and constantly work on it through reflexive and ongoing processes of creating and re-creating it. Lihua, a recent divorcee, lives in a small rented apartment with her seven-year-old son in Gyeonggi Province. She works around the clock in sales b ecause her monthly earnings depend on her sales commission. Despite her financially difficult situation, Lihua’s understanding of motherhood calls for her to work hard, make sacrifices, and financially support her son throughout his life: “I need to buy an apartment for my son because I’m his mom. Isn’t that a given? Korean moms and Chinese moms like me think this way. What’s the point of earning and saving if it’s not for my son? I would rather work harder now than see him living a hard life. I need to buy him an apartment, pay for his wedding, and a car.” Lihua believes that working and saving to pay for her child’s major expenses are a cultural norm and a part of motherhood in both Korea and China. However, the norm that Lihua speaks of is fraught with assumptions. Women’s employment is considered a norm in China, with a high female labor force participation rate, due in part to policies from the Mao era that minimized wage loss from reduced work hours when w omen have children, employer-sponsored childcare, and guaranteed lifetime state employment (Cook and Dong 2011). Although transitioning to a market economy made high-quality childcare less affordable and women’s labor force participation comparatively challenging (Cook and Dong 2011), women still contribute 41 percent to the Chinese GDP (McKinsey Global Institute 2018). In contrast, Korean m others do not have similar institutional support. They experience job insecurity and persisting discrimination, with structural impediments. Despite the declining female labor force participation rate in China, from 79.4 percent in 1990 to 68.5 in 2019, the rate is still higher than the increasing rate in Korea, from 49.7 percent in 1990 to 59.8 percent in 2019 (ILO 2020). Lihua shows that immigrant mothers assume paid work as an integral part of Korean motherhood, based on what they see and what they need to do to support their c hildren’s education. Immigrant mothers’ construction of what Korean mothers do, however, may depart from the broad picture of reality in K orea. Nevertheless, immigrant mothers prepare themselves to pay for their children’s f uture expenditures because t hese monetary practices are understood as part of Korean parenthood. Preparations involve opening savings accounts for college and home, seeking paid employment, and taking other measures, such as changing family living arrangements and reprioritizing spending habits. W omen’s behaviors reflect immigrant mothers’ desire to support their grown c hildren financially in the f uture, and their versions of ideal Korean parenting practices.
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Not All Earned Monies Are the Same Despite persisting cultural notions and structural barriers that frame motherhood and employment as incompatible in K orea, many immigrant m others see them as complementary and construct work status as an important component of Korean motherhood because of the financial needs of their c hildren. Immigrant m others’ reasons for seeking employment, and the type of jobs they hope for, make salient their view of mothering and working as co-constitutive. Immigrant m others do not describe work as something independent of or incompatible with motherhood. Women work, or aspire to work, because they have children to support. Practical reasons for seeking employment include contributing to household income and paying for child-related expenses. Indeed, twenty-one of the thirty-one women interviewed work either full or part time, and women’s income tends to go directly into their c hildren’s educational costs, since m others manage the expenses related to the children’s academic needs. Stay-at-home immigrant mothers who wish to enter the labor market bring up f uture expenses, such as college tuition, as reasons for considering paid employment. Many immigrant mothers, however, do not seek employment simply with greater pay. Sometimes the amount matters less than how the money is earned, as the source of income has particular weight. Many immigrant m others reflect on the extent to which their foreignness is associated with being lower class and the negative consequences of that assumption on their children. Thus, many immigrant mothers aspire to secure middle- class occupations with the hope of breaking off the linkage between their immigrant status and assumed lower class. Women express this by delineating undesirable and desirable types of employment. Both working and stay-at-home immigrant m others generally identify factory and farm work as undesirable, as opposed to pink-and white-collar jobs.1 Desirable employment options include interpreter-translator, teacher of language or culture, tour guide, business owner, or office worker. Although t hese positions are often part time, working m others still prefer them to higher-paying factory work, rationalizing part time employment as an optimal arrangement for managing motherhood and paid work. Like many working mothers in this study, Ahn, a Vietnamese stay-at-home mother, worked at a factory prior to having her two children. She explained her plan to transition to pink-collar work: I’ve been in Korea for over eight years now. I first worked at a car- manufacturing factory but only lasted a week. Then a restaurant for about a year. Then a kimchi2 factory. In the beginning, I earned maybe one million won a month, but it increased to two million by my fifth year. . . . But I had my first child. . . . Now I’m learning how to use the computer, Excel, and PowerPoint b ecause I want to help my husband at his office.
During the early years of her life in K orea, Ahn primarily worked in factories that required minimal skills, building experience that helped her earn a substantial
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amount of money over time. Yet, she did not return to factory work a fter giving birth. Instead, she now spends time acquiring skills that w ill allow her to work in an office setting. Improved Korean skills and increased self-confidence, associated with age and length of stay in K orea, encourage w omen to venture into new lines of work, but becoming a m other also prompts immigrant w omen to assess their life situations and make changes they see as more appropriate or fitting. Immigrant mothers make sense of how they earn money as part of their relational work because their occupation affects the self-perceived quality of their motherhood. Specifically, many mothers believe that they can be better m others if they have a more desirable or respectable job. Reyna, a 29-year-old from the Philippines and m other of four c hildren, described how and why: I’m studying Korean and computer these days to be a good mother. I want my boys to be proud of me. I was a stay-at-home mom u ntil recently when I started teaching English at a local college that I attend. My [oldest] son is ecstatic about that. He brags to all his friends that I’m a college student and English teacher. I think he was embarrassed of me before b ecause I’m a foreigner. He used to get picked on at school and often came home crying. It was stressful, but now I see that there’s something I can do to help my son. I want to accomplish more for him.
Until Reyna began working as an English teacher, she was a stay-at-home m other and wife to a farmer in the rural part of K orea. Outside the h ouse, she was an oegugin (foreigner) and thus a source of embarrassment for her young sons. When income from farming was not enough to raise four sons, Reyna capitalized on her English skills and worked as an English instructor. Once becoming a teacher, Reyna felt that she earned respect from her community as well as her sons. Her sons’ relations with their peers also improved. Her account illustrates what immigrant mothers often fear, for well-founded reasons: that their c hildren encounter stigma and discrimination in public spaces such as school. Conflict often starts with teasing and taunting about having a foreigner m other, and anecdotes of multiethnic students coming home from school crying or getting in trouble for fighting with other students legitimize this fear. Some m others like Reyna, however, find that respectable, professional occupations help mitigate the potential stigma and discrimination their children encounter. Therefore, immigrant mothers’ occupational decision becomes critical in their identity work, as it allows some to negotiate their mother identity and help reduce disadvantages engendered from their nonnative identity. Desirable types of occupation are laden with class aspirations. Working as an interpreter, a teacher, or an office employee allows immigrant mothers to signal middle-class status and values. This highlights a critical aspect of immigrant mothers’ background because many women—t welve in this study—have a college degree, yet their foreignness tends to override their trainings and credentials. Thus, with pink-collar occupations that children perceive as important, immigrant
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mothers have the opportunity to portray themselves as contributing members who are integral to Korean society while countering negative assumptions associated with their foreigner status. Immigrant m others’ work experiences also enable them to better interact with institutions and institutional figures. For example, mothers who are language teachers, cultural ambassadors, or interpreters- translators frequently occupy institutional spaces and professionally work with Koreans on a daily basis. This aspect of their employment makes their encounters with other Koreans in schools, hospitals, and banks more of a routine, which, contrarily, can be intimidating to mothers who do not frequent those spaces. Working mothers reflect that their paid employment gives them a sense of increased confidence, agency, and legitimacy when h andling institutional challenges concerning their mothering practices, and their experiences help them feel more comfortable interacting with their children’s teachers too. Thien, from Vietnam, for instance, exhibited more confidence as she described her work: “I work as an interpreter, among many things. . . . I’m in a position where I can help myself and help others whether it’s going to the hospital or filling out paperwork. That’s why so far, I’m glad I made the right decision by moving to K orea. I would’ve just become a h ousew ife if I stayed in Vietnam. But h ere, I can study and be something else on top of being a mom and a wife.” Because of the pronounced presumptions about the social class of marriage immigrant w omen in K orea, pink- collar professional work helps immigrant mothers distinguish themselves from the stigmatizing designation of oegug-in (foreigner). Aspirations of securing professional occupations, therefore, are meant to break the assumed connection between immigrant status and working-class background and connect immigrant mothers to middle-class values and image. Interestingly, when asked about their employment status, many working immigrant mothers explained they are like other working Korean mothers because of their shared concerns about balancing work and f amily. Immigrant working m others emphasize that they have the same worries as Korean working mothers regarding who w ill watch their c hildren when they are at work, what the f amily should have for dinner after work, and whether they can make it to their children’s next school performance. That is, immigrant mothers identify employment status as another crossroad that makes them feel and act more like Korean mothers. Although the balance between work and f amily may pose challenges, including emotional strug gles and time management, immigrant mothers focus on the benefits that come with employment, such as perceived respect from their children, further institutional acceptance, and cultural competence outside the home.
Conclusion This chapter examined immigrant w omen’s understanding of Korean motherhood by exploring motherhood as a juncture of economy and intimacy wherein specific economic practices related to their c hildren help establish and reaffirm w omen’s
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identity as m other. Desires to see their children succeed are not unique to Korean mothers, but immigrant w omen observe that some of the specific gendered relational work entailed in motherhood across social classes is distinctively Korean. Becoming a Korean m other in the cultural sense means performing children- centered relational work and spending money on children in ways similar to native Korean mothers. This involves budgeting expenses related to children’s enrichment activities and being the more knowledgeable parent regarding educational programs and associated costs, regardless of Korean proficiency and cultural understanding. From the perspective of immigrant w omen interviewed in this chapter, Korean mothers dedicate a large share of their financial resources to children’s enrichment programs, and t hese investments appear compulsory to many immigrant women. Therefore, when immigrant women take serious mea sures to make similar investments in their c hildren, some see themselves as more like a Korean m other. When immigrant m others do not or cannot allocate their economic resources similarly, some feel as though their motherhood is challenged, or that they are not good mothers. T hese reflexive processes create w omen’s identity and sense of self as m others in Korea. Immigrant women’s relational work reveals that individuals sometimes make monetary decisions, not because they are financially sound but because those decisions help solidify identities in relation to their social contexts or meet sociocultural expectations of motherhood. Some immigrant mothers spend a little more money than they could afford for the right educational materials, others save more for their c hildren’s wedding expenses than for their own retirement, and some earn less money because they would rather work part time as a librarian than full time as a factory worker. Structural barriers and gender ideology may frame employment and motherhood as incompatible, but immigrant w omen see work and motherhood as complementary. Meaningful occupations may bolster their status as good mothers. My analysis further reveals that money from pink-or white-collar jobs, rather than from blue-collar work, regardless of the earned amount, help women overcome their foreignness, especially in their children’s eyes. Immigrant mothers are motivated to study Korean, obtain their driver’s licenses, and gain new skills so that they can pursue respectable occupations. Professional work experience also helps women negotiate their motherhood and mothering practices. In desirable work environments, such as offices and public agencies, w omen learn how to interact with institutional figures. In turn, they gain confidence in knowing how to communicate with other professionals in K orea. Pink-collar and non-working-class occupations, furthermore, help w omen project a middle-class lifestyle and values that help break the presumed link between low class and immigrant status. They also help w omen mitigate the negative social consequences their c hildren experience as a result of coming from a multicultural home. In t hese ways, motherhood can be a platform of integration for immigrant w omen as specific monetary practices help reinforce their motherhood in K orea.
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Finally, investigating w omen’s identity as m others through their everyday relational work sheds light on how immigrant mothers are embedded in the larger context of Korea through motherhood. This embeddedness extends beyond membership status—which the Korean government acknowledges by granting citizenship. Women establish and manage their identity as m other in their daily interactions with their spouses, other mothers, institutions, their children, and even themselves. Some immigrant women construct their identity by emulating practices they understand as those of an ideal Korean mother. Through reflexive processes, women also negotiate with prescribed mothering practices to create an internal sense of self as a mother. Immigrant women’s identity as mother, therefore, is not a fixed one, in which they choose to be more like a foreign mother or a Korean mother. Instead, it results from dynamic interactional and reflexive processes in which women constantly shape and reshape the identity and its meaning. NOTES
1. Pink- collar work generally refers to paid work that is largely performed by women (Schenk 2015) in sex-segregated organi zations and occupations (Acker 1990). Examples include secretary, nurse, and teacher, and these occupations typically pay less than other white-collar work. 2. Kimchi is a type of Korean food. Made of fermented vegetables, commonly napa cabbage, it is a staple in Korean diet. REFERENCES
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Kim, Julie S. 2018. “Payments and Intimate Ties in Transnationally Brokered Marriages.” Socio- Economic Review 17 (2): 337–356. doi:10.1093/ser/mwx061. Kim, Keuntae. 2017. “The Changing Role of Employment Status in Marriage Formation among Young Korean Adults.” Demographic Research 36 (5): 145–173. Kim, Minjeong. 2013. “Citizenship Projects for Marriage Migrants in South K orea: Intersecting Motherhood with Ethnicity and Class.” Social Politics 20 (4): 455–481. Korea Consumer Agency. 2017. “8 out 10 Single Adults Want a ‘Small Wedding’ but Hesitate due to Surrounding Conditions.” https://w ww.kca.go.k r/h ome/sub.do?m enukey=4002&mode =view&no=1002536292 (in Korean). Accessed March 1, 2018. Korea Economic Research Institute. 2017. “2016 Average Wage at 3.4 Million Won and Median Wage at 2.6 Million Won.” August 17. http://w ww.keri.org/web/w ww/news_0 2 (in Korean). Korea Higher Education Institute. 2018. “KHEI Statistics 8. Educational Loans.” April 25. http:// khei.re.k r/p ost/2057 (in Korean). Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. 2015. “KiHASA 2015 National Birthrate, F amily Health, and Welfare Report.” https://w ww.k ihasa.r e.k r/w eb/publication/research/view.do ?pageIndex=3 0&keyField= & key= & menuId= 4 4&tid= 7 1&bid=1 2&division= 001&ano=2 057 (in Korean). Accessed March 1, 2018. KOSIS (Korean Statistical Information Serv ice). 2020. Statistical Database. Daejeon, Korea. https://kosis.k r/eng/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?menuId=M _01 _01&vwcd=M T _ETITLE&parmTabId=M _01_01&parentId=A.1;A _ 3.2;A21.3;#A21.3 . Accessed August 1, 2020. Lareau, Annette. 2011. Unequal Childhoods. Berkeley: University of California Press. McKinsey Global Institute. 2018. “The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in Asia Pacific.” New York: McKinsey & Company. Mears, Ashley. 2015. “Working for F ree in the VIP: Relational Work and the Production of Consent.” American Sociological Review 80 (6): 1099–1122. Ministry of Education. 2018. “April 2018 Official Announcement of the State of Affairs in Higher Education.” April 30. https://w ww.moe.go.k r/b oardCnts/v iew.do?boardID=2 94&boardSeq =74045&lev= 0&m= 0204 (in Korean). Mirae Asset. 2017. “5060 Retirement Survey Fact Book.” https://pri.m iraeasset.com/book /report/survey_view.aspx?id=591&boardCode=1108&pageNum=1 &type= &key=(in Korean). Accessed October 9, 2019. Montanari, Fabrizio, Annachiara Scapolan, and Martina Gianecchini. 2016. “ ‘Absolutely Free’? The Role of Relational Work in Sustaining Artistic Innovation.” Organi zation Studies 37 (6): 797–821. Moon, Mugyeong, Sook In Cho, and Jeong Min Kim. 2016. “Perspectives and Values of Koreans on Becoming a Parent and Raising C hildren.” Seoul: K orea Institute of Child Care and Education. Morrill, Calvin, David A. Snow, and Cindy H. White. 2005. Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Spaces. Berkeley: University of California Press. Otto, Wendi J. 2017. “Evolving Korean Parenting Foundations Revealed through C hildren’s Perspectives of East Asian Parenting Beliefs, Styles and Practices.” Journal of Education and Learning 7 (2): 34–49. Park, Eunha. 2019. “Dual-Income Households Increase by 21,000, Breaking Record.” Kyunghyang Business, June 25. http://biz.k han.co.k r/k han_art_view.html?artid=2 01906251200011&code =920100 (in Korean). Park, Hyunjoon, Soo-yong Byun, and Kyung-keun Kim. 2011. “Parental Involvement and Students’ Cognitive Outcomes in Korea: Focusing on Private Tutoring.” Sociology of Education 84 (1): 3–22.
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Sharma, Yojana. 2013. “Asia’s Parents Suffering ‘Education Fever.’ ” BBC News, October 22. http:// www.bbc.c o.uk/news/business-24537487. Schenk, Jennifer. 2015. “Pink-Collar Work.” In Women’s Rights in the United States: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Issues, Events, and P eople, edited by Tiffany K. Wayne, 239–240. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Shin, Ji-hye. 2015. “Burden of Wedding Expenditure Weighs Heavily on Korean Parents.” Korea Herald, March 27. http://w ww.k oreaherald.com/v iew.php? ud=2 0150327000659. Sorenson, Clark W. 1994. “Success and Education in South Korea.” Comparative Education Review 38 (1): 10–35. Statistics Korea. 2017. “The Survey of Household Finances and Living Conditions (SFLC) in 2017.” December 21. https://kostat.go.k r/portal/eng/pressReleases/1/index.board?bmode =read&aSeq=3 66814. ———. 2018. “Private Education Expenditures Survey in 2017.” March 15. http://kostat.go.k r /portal/eng/p ressReleases/1/index.board?bmode=r ead&aSeq=3 67176. Tsuya, Noriko O., and Minja Kim Choe. 2004. “Investments in C hildren’s Education, Desired Fertility, and W omen’s Employment.” In Marriage, Work, and Family Life in Comparative Perspective: Japan, South Korea, and the United States, edited by Noriko O. Tsuya and Larry L. Bumpass, 76–94. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Whitford, Josh. 2012. “Waltzing, Relational Work, and the Construction (or Not) of Collaboration in Manufacturing Industries.” Politics & Society 40 (2): 249–272. Woo, Hongjoo, and Nancy N. Hodges. 2015. “Education Fever: Exploring Private Education Consumption Motivations among Korean Parents of Preschool C hildren.” Family & Consumer Sciences 44 (2): 127–142. Yang, Sungeun, and Paul C. Rosenblatt. 2008. “Confucian F amily Values and Childless C ouples in South K orea.” Journal of Family Issues 29 (5): 571–591. Yoon, Ja-young. 2014. “Student Loans to Weigh on Economy.” Korea Times, June 2. http://w ww .koreatimes.co.k r/w ww/biz/2014/06/602_ 158377.html. Zelizer, Viviana A. 1994. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ——— . 2012. “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean?” Politics & Society 40 (2): 145–174. Zhang, Yuping, Emily Hannum, and Meiyan Wang. 2008. “Gender-B ased Employment and Income Differences in Urban China: Considering the Contributions of Marriage and Parenthood.” Social Forces 86 (4): 1529–1560.
3 Developing and Negotiating Social Identity among Korean Women with Pakistani Husbands YO ON K Y U N G K WA K
Before the 1990s, the majority of international marriages in South Korea (hereafter K orea) w ere between Korean w omen and foreign-born men, and such u nions accounted for less than 1 percent of all marriages in the country (Lee 2008). Foreign- born men marrying Korean w omen were largely from Japan and the United States (KOSIS 2018), two countries that had long had complicated political relationships with Korea. The Korean public generally had a negative attitude toward these unions because the relationships were often perceived to begin in the space of sex work—g isaeng (courtesan) tourism for Japanese businessmen or gijichon sex workers around U.S. military camp towns (Kwak 2019). Even when women marrying non-Korean men w ere not sex workers, they w ere often judged harshly u nder the nationalist patriarchal gaze for choosing men from countries that dominated K orea politically and militarily, over Korean men. The pattern of international marriage involving Korean women changed in the 1990s (see the introduction in this volume). The main change stemmed from the omen. diversification of the nationalities of foreign-born men marrying Korean w The numbers of Korean w omen marrying Japanese and American men remained steady, but increasing numbers of women married men from Asian developing countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and China (also see chapter 8 in this volume regarding the unions between Filipino husbands and Korean wives). This phenomenon can be traced back to the introduction of the Industrial Trainee Program (ITP) in 1993 and its expansion with the Employment Permit System (EPS) in 2004, which prompted an influx of low-skilled migrant workers from Asian developing countries. These workers were granted entry to alleviate labor shortages in the manufacturing industry, but their presence also created a domestic pool of potential marriage partners for Korean women. Despite the steady increase in international marriages and the diverse configurations of pairings between Korean women and non- Korean Asian men, research on t hese couples has been relatively scarce. Especially compared with 71
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scholars’ and policy makers’ intense attention to marriages between Korean men and non-Korean Asian women, Korean women’s international marriage has been virtually ignored, an omission that has guided the Korean government’s legal and policy directions in uneven ways (see chapter 8). The Korean state’s lopsided approaches to international marriage are grounded in a patriarchal understanding of the marital arrangement, in which a woman becomes a member of her husband’s family at the time of marriage—and, in the case of international marriage, a member of the husband’s country. Thus, prior to 1997, the Nationality Law granted Korean citizenship to the foreign-born wife of a Korean man immediately after marriage but offered the foreign-born husband of a Korean woman only a three-month temporary stay in Korea with no right to work (Kwak 2019). This institutional discrimination was formerly overlooked b ecause many Korean w omen moved to their husbands’ countries upon marriage, but when this discriminatory law posed a major problem for the increasing numbers of couples comprising Korean wives and migrant husbands who sought to stay in Korea, this group demanded a change (Cho 2000; Jung 2007). One of their main problems with the 1997 Nationality Law was that migrant husbands were not allowed to work, which made it very challenging for their families to make ends meet (Kwak and Kim 2019). Additionally, to be with their families in Korea, migrant husbands had no choice but to renew their visas every three months, traveling to neighboring Asian countries b ecause the process could not be carried out in K orea (Kwak and Kim 2019). These restrictions forced some c ouples to divorce on paper so that the husbands could work, and the men sometimes worked in K orea without the legal status required to do so (Kwak and Kim 2019). The 1997 revision to the Nationality Law provided both foreign-born wives and foreign-born husbands with a spousal visa that allowed a maximum stay in Korea of two years. This change, which prevented foreign-born wives from immediately being naturalized, was primarily intended to deter “fake marriages” while extending the visa duration for foreign-born husbands. The revision did not address the right to work, however, which was not changed u ntil the 2002 revision of the law. Furthermore, as Minjung Kim discusses in chapter 8, K orea’s 2008 Multicultural Family Support Act originally excluded families formed by Korean women and immigrant husbands from receiving support and later treated such families as unwelcome guests. Both the Nationality Law and the Multicultural Family Support Act show that Korea’s institutional frameworks have been unfavorable to couples made up of Korean women and immigrant husbands, increasing their vulnerability and marginality (Cho 2000; Jung 2007; Kwak 2019). This chapter focuses on Korean women married to Pakistani immigrant men. There are two important reasons for the close examination of this group. First, in recent years, the number of Muslim immigrants married to Korean women has been on the rise in K orea, and Pakistani men have been the largest group among these men. Although Pakistani husbands accounted for only 0.6 percent of all immigrants who married Korean nationals in 2018, there was a 5,300 percent
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increase in the number of these men, from 36 in 2000 to 1,955 in 2018 (KOSIS 2019). In addition to this numerical change, there has also been a change in the socioeconomic characteristics of Pakistani husbands in Korea. Pakistani husbands from the 1990s through the first decade of the twenty-first c entury tended to have entered Korea as low-skilled migrant workers through the ITP and the EPS. However, after 2010, increasing numbers of Pakistani men marrying Korean women had entered Korea as overseas university students and then moved into white- collar jobs after graduation. This shift can be attributed to the Pakistani government’s Higher Education Commission scholarship, which was introduced in 2007 to encourage Pakistani students to study abroad, mostly in science and engineering fields. In fact, partly because of this scholarship, the number of Pakistani students attending Korean universities progressively increased each year, from 386 in 2010 to 1,720 in 2018 (KOSIS 2019). T hese changes require scholarly attention because they may lead to diverging paths of immigrant incorporation. A second reason for focusing on Korean w omen married to Pakistani men is that analyzing these families reveals unique challenges related to differences in cultural practices, especially those based on religion (Kwak 2019; Kwak and Kim 2019; Kwak and Lee 2018). To reconcile these c ouples’ religious differences, some Korean women have converted to Islam and actively sought support from the Pakistani community (Kwak 2019). Even when the women do not convert to Islam, their marriage life is likely to be influenced by Islamic culture and lifestyle, including dietary requirements, b ecause they are immersed in this lifestyle in everyday life (Cho 2000; Jung 2007; Kwak 2019). In fact, a previous study found that not converting to Islam or adhering to Islamic dietary requirements can become a source of marital conflict and even lead to divorce (Cho 2000). In addition to t hese marital challenges, Korean w omen with Pakistani husbands face growing anti-Muslim prejudice in the public sphere (Kwak and Kim 2019). It has been reported that, regardless of whether they convert to Islam, the Korean wives of Pakistani husbands have to deal with hateful attitudes and insensitive comments about their marriages from sources ranging from strangers to immigration office staff members (Cho 2000; Jung 2007; Kwak 2019). Extending the current discussions on couples made up of a Korean wife and Muslim husband, this chapter aims to elucidate how Korean women married to Pakistani men develop and negotiate a social identity as the wives of Pakistani immigrants in a society that lacks awareness of Islam. This process of Korean wives developing and negotiating a social identity is s haped by a variety of social inequalities based on gender and their husbands’ race, religion, class, and immigrant status; in this chapter, I closely examine how religion shapes these w omen’s experience and construction of a new social identity (see, e.g., Weiss 1991). Reflecting recent demographic changes among Pakistani immigrants in Korea, the present study considers Korean w omen married to Pakistani immigrants who came to Korea as low-skilled migrant workers through the EPS, as well as more recent immigrants, such as highly skilled workers and overseas students. To situate how
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religion shapes a context for Korean wives’ social identity construction, the next section traces the development of Islamophobia in K orea.
Islamophobia in Korea Islamophobia is generally understood as “a type of racism that targets expression of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” (APPG 2018, 11). As in many other countries, Islamophobia has become more widespread in K orea b ecause of political and military crises around the world. A series of events during the first decade of the twenty-first c entury shaped the grossly unfair, negative perception about Muslims among Koreans. The first of these events was the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, which led to widespread anti-Muslim sentiment around the world and forged a misguided association between Muslims and terrorism (Park 2017). The mass media coverage of Muslims around the 9/11 attacks was, for many Koreans, perhaps the first time they were exposed to Muslims, but it was certainly not the last. A fter 2003, when the Korean government passed a motion approving the dispatch of Korean troops to Iraq at the request of President George W. Bush, the media reported on a series of terrorist attacks against Koreans in the Middle East (Baek 2011; Jang 2015). One of the incidents considered most shocking by many Koreans occurred in 2004, when interpreter Kim Sun-il was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq by a terrorist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s second in command (Sohn and Faraj 2004). The video of Kim’s killing was broadcast, sending shockwaves through the entire country. Another high-profile incident occurred in 2007, when a group of twenty-three missionaries from Korea w ere kidnapped in Afghanistan. A fter two of them w ere killed, the Korean government granted the terrorists’ demands, withdrawing their troops in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages (Choe 2007). The media’s uncritical reporting on t hese incidents reinforced connections between terrorism and Muslims or Islam in K orea, contributing to the growth of Islamophobia. Jung (2014) found that between 2012 and 2014, 22.2 percent of Korean news articles mentioning Muslims were about terrorism and 4.1 percent of the articles focused on conflicts and struggles in M iddle East, whereas only 1.7 percent dealt with topics such as Islamic art and culture. Unfortunately, growing Islamophobia has given rise to public hostility targeting Muslim immigrants and businesses. In 2016, Kim Kang-san, a Pakistani-born naturalized Korean man married to a Korean w oman applied to become a candidate and representative of the Saenuri Party, the conservative ruling party at the time (Yu 2016). His application prompted an overwhelming number of telephone calls and complaints to governmental offices, as well as threats against him because he was a Muslim, and social media users petitioned for his name to be removed from the list of candidates. Ultimately, Kim Kang-san was not nominated. This reaction was vastly different from the supportive response to Jasmine Lee, a Filipina marriage immigrant who
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became a congresswoman in 2012 (see chapter 1). Koreans’ Islamophobia has been directed not only at individual Muslims, but also at ventures associated with Muslims. For example, when several cities announced plans to build halal food- processing complexes as a part of an initiative to promote the tourism industry in 2016, strenuous opposition from the public—particularly Christians—eventually forced the cities to cancel all t hese projects (Lee 2016). T hese instances also indicate that intense hostility t oward Islam has often been linked to concerns expressed by Christians and anti-immigrant conservatives (Koo 2016). The hostility t oward Muslims has worsened in K orea in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not only b ecause of the unjustified assumption that Islam is inherently associated with terrorism, but also because of the recruitment of Koreans into terrorist groups. For example, in 2015, it was reported that an 18-year-old Korean man had voluntarily traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) (Kwon and Park 2015). Koreans had not previously considered that alienated young people in Korea could be recruited by ISIS (Kwon and Park 2015). Subsequently, several Internet posts appeared that made the wild accusation that Muslim men marry Korean w omen to propagate Islam—and thus terrorism. Koreans’ hostility toward Muslims reached its peak in 2018, when approximately five hundred asylum seekers from Yemen arrived at Jeju Island—the largest island in K orea, best known as a tourist destination. This unprecedented influx and the high visibility of these asylum seekers triggered fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims. Koreans participated in anti-refugee protests and petitioned for the abolishment of the Refugee Law through the government’s online petition system. Although some refugees entering Korea were from countries other than Yemen, and the group included non-Muslims, the media tended to perpetuate the impression of the asylum seekers as Muslims. It seems that, with the increasing visibility of Muslims in K orea, Koreans’ othering of and hostility t oward Islam and Muslims have become more pronounced in Korean society. Islamophobia has affected the lives of Muslim immigrants, including Pakistani men married to Korean w omen, making it difficult for them to be incorporated into Korean society. The Internet has played a major role in the unfettered reproduction and spread of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim xenophobia. Huisu Lee (2013) has noted that the absence of neutral or reliable sources from which to learn about Islamic principles is a serious obstacle to combatting Islamophobia in Korea, especially b ecause the Christian groups that dominate the public discourse on Islam tend to generate and perpetuate Islamophobia. Consequently, many Koreans harbor fear and suspicion of Muslims (Jeong 2017). In the context of growing Islamophobia in K orea, this chapter explores how Korean women married to Pakistani men develop and negotiate different identities—balancing between being the wife of a Pakistani Muslim man and being the d aughter of Korean parents, or between being a Korean and being a Muslim. Korean women’s marriages to Pakistani men and their association with Islam are
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judged by their families and friends because of the husband’s migration status, country of origin, socioeconomic status, and occupation, with racism and Islamophobia playing a role in this process. Among t hese many factors and forces, this chapter focuses on how the husband’s religion figures into the wife’s relationship with her parents, her negotiation with both her parents and her husband, and the development of a new social identity. I illustrate how biased perceptions of Islam and Muslims are reflected in the lives of three Korean women who fell in love with Pakistani men. This chapter is based on a larger study on families of immigrant husbands and Korean wives, for which I collected the stories of the six couples of Korean wives and Pakistani husbands. Here, I highlight the accounts of three women: A Reum, who was in her 20s at the time of the interview; Eun Young, who was in her 30s; and Min Hee, who was in her 40s. (To ensure confidentiality, these names are pseudonyms.) A Reum had been married for two years, and the other two women had each been married for more than ten years. Each w oman had one or two children. A Reum’s husband originally came to Korea to study at a university, and Eun Young’s and Min Hee’s husbands came to Korea as low-skilled migrant workers through the EPS. The husbands w ere all self-employed. Both A Reum and Eun Young had converted to Islam around the time of their marriages, whereas Min Hee had remained a Christian.
Becoming Muslim Immigrants’ Wives Eun Young remembered how she was fed up with seon, a formal introduction meeting for marriage arranged by parents, relatives, or professional matchmakers. If the seon goes well, the c ouple subsequently go on dates, and discussions about marriage soon ensue. B ecause a well-matched marriage is the primary goal of seon, Eun Young’s matchmakers placed considerable emphasis on the educational, financial, and family background of prospective husbands. But Eun Young was more interested in the men’s personalities and the attraction between the couple than in potential husbands’ economic standing. Disillusioned by t hese arranged dates, Eun Young felt reinvigorated when she finally met her current husband on a casual blind date. Her husband, Omar, came to K orea as a low-skilled worker through the EPS and was different from the Korean men Eun Young had met before. She described this difference: Korean men are very materialistic and calculating. When Koreans go out on blind dates, the men tend to focus on finances and would ask how much income the w oman makes, and, if she is unemployed, they would inquire about how much the w oman’s parents would support them upon marriage. This kind of attitude among young men is common b ecause of the economic hardships in Korean society. My husband wasn’t that calculating. Even though we w eren’t financially stable at first, I w asn’t worried about money. I am optimistic and don’t [get constricted by] worry[ing] about the f uture.
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Eun Young faced strong opposition from her parents when she told them about her Pakistani boyfriend, Omar. Eun Young’s parents had never considered the possibility that their daughter would marry a non-Korean, let alone that they might have a son-in-law from a developing country, such as Pakistan, and with a factory job. Eun Young believed that her parents w ere unable to accept her relationship with Omar because of his job as a low-skilled worker, as they had expected their college-educated daughter to find a husband with a professional career. In patriarchal societies such as K orea, the social norms for heterosexual marriage dictate that the husband, who is supposed to be the provider, should have a higher socioeconomic status than the wife (Kwak 2019). In the case of international marriage, this logic also applies to the global status of the marriage partners’ countries of origin: a Korean woman should “marry up” by finding a husband from a country that is more developed than her own; when she does not do this, she is perceived as violating normative status expectations for heterosexual marriage (Kwak 2019). Koreans’ attitudes toward having a foreign-born son-in-law have likely changed in recent years, as the number of international marriages among Koreans has increased. However, compared with the United States or Japan, for example, Pakistan is not as familiar to Koreans and, more importantly, not as developed. In Eun Young’s parents’ eyes, this made Omar a relatively undesirable match, and they were not impressed by the bachelor’s degree he had earned in Pakistan. Eun Young recalled, “Of course, my parents w ere against foreigners. They asked me why I have to marry a foreigner, especially someone from a developing country, when there are so many Korean men. Pakistan is a developing country compared to Korea, right? They also asked me, ‘What about the kids?’ I didn’t r eally think about such things. Instead, I asked myself if I would be happy if I married a Korean man.” According to Eun Young, her parents w ere concerned about the vulnerable position she would find herself in if she proceeded with the marriage, and they w ere particularly worried about the potential mistreatment that their future grandchildren might experience in K orea. It took a year for Eun Young to persuade her parents to allow her to marry Omar. Notably, religious differences w ere at the crux of Eun Young’s parents’ strained relationship with Omar. Eun Young’s family believed in Christianity, whereas Omar’s family believed in Islam. Eun Young’s parents’ problem with Omar, however, went beyond the difference in religious faith. That is, having a Muslim son- in-law was not necessarily the same as having a Buddhist son-in-law. Particularly, what kept them from accepting Omar as a son-in-law was their negative perception of Muslims. These biases were why A Reum did not even tell her parents that she had converted to Islam and married a Pakistani man. A Reum met Abdul on campus when they were attending the same university, and their friendship developed into romance. A Reum recalled that she and Abdul had experienced disapproving stares and verbal abuse in public spaces from random p eople. A Reum recalled, “When I just started dating [my husband], before I converted to Islam, maybe at Sindorim
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subway station, I was holding hands with Abdul and an old lady insulted us. She said that I was bad b ecause I was g oing out with a foreigner who looked like him. My husband understood everything but pretended he d idn’t. I was very upset. I didn’t understand why I should hear such t hings. I cried a lot that day.” Over the course of their relationship, A Reum became interested in Abdul’s religion. She began to visit a mosque to gain a better understanding of his worldview and beliefs as well as the meanings b ehind particular Muslim practices. Gradually, these visits became more frequent, and she eventually decided to convert to Islam. However, she did not share her decision with her parents. A few months a fter her conversion, A Reum and Abdul registered their marriage without informing their parents, which is unusual in K orea. She did this b ecause she had anticipated strong opposition from her parents and did not see a point in trying to get their permission. She believed that they would never approve of her u nion with Abdul because of Islamophobic sentiments—both their own and those of Koreans in general. According to a survey carried out in 2010 by the Korean Broadcasting System, more than 70 percent of respondents strongly opposed the idea of their own family members marrying Muslims (Baek 2011). A Reum thought that she and Abdul w ere lucky in that Abdul had a lighter skin tone than most Pakistani men; this characteristic made his interactions with Koreans easier, compared with the situation for other immigrants from Asian developing countries. When she finally told her parents that she had married without their knowledge, that she had converted to Islam, and that her husband was a Muslim, it was too much for them to handle. She did not know which aspect of the situation made it most difficult for her parents to accept her husband. While recounting her story, A Reum often mentioned how sorry she was to have gone against her parents’ expectations, describing herself as not living up to what is expected of a d aughter: “Yes, of course I am a bad d aughter, not a filial daughter to my parents. I had always listened to my parents while growing up. When I was young, the only t hing that made them angry was my poor grades.” Unlike Eun Young and A Reum, who had never doubted their own feelings for their husbands despite unfavorable reactions from their families and friends, Min Hee was initially hesitant, fearful, and anxious about having a relationship with a Muslim. She met her husband, who had come to K orea as a low-skilled worker through the EPS, at a community center. When he started to pursue her by visiting her at her workplace, Min Hee was intrigued, but she was hesitant to let her feelings for him develop, largely b ecause of negative images related to Muslims—e.g., “terrorism and t hings like that”—that she had seen in the media and internalized, “even though t here are good Muslims too.” At first, she started hanging out with him along with her colleagues, and she could see how easygoing and good-natured he was with everyone. Over the next four years, as their relationship developed, Min Hee was able to overcome her own bias against Muslims and modify her perception of Islam. A fter she decided to marry him, like the other w omen in this
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study, Min Hee faced frantic opposition from most of her family members and friends. These w omen’s accounts illustrate how they encountered intense opposition, disapproval, and rejection from their parents, which is fairly common among Korean women marrying Muslim men. The three w omen’s marriages met with opposition mainly because the grooms came from Pakistan, a developing country, and believed in Islam. Generally, a bride’s parents appraise a groom based on his level of education, occupation, or job prospects. These are important determinants of parents’ judgement about whether a man is an acceptable spouse for their daughter because they want their daughters to “marry up”—the perceived social norm expected of women. Marrying a Pakistani immigrant is often seen as “marrying down” because they are from a country perceived to have a lower standing than that of Korea in the global hierarchy and because their job prospects are not viewed positively. Importantly, the women’s parents’ opposition is fueled by the fact that Koreans’ general familiarity with Islam is limited to negative perceptions of Muslims sustained by the unfavorable portrayal of Muslims in the media. Korean women married to Muslim men have to continue to negotiate with their Korean families about their new faith or marriage while learning what it means to live with a Muslim husband.
Adapting to Islamic Life A Reum and Abdul, who had forsaken her parents by secretly marrying, later had to live with them in order to reduce their living expenses, and this put them under her parents’ close scrutiny. In addition to being the wife of a Pakistani man, A Reum was a Muslim herself, which presented another obstacle for her relationship with her parents, who neither understood Islamic values and practices nor supported their d aughters’ conversion to Islam. “My mother d oesn’t like the fact that her son-in-law is Muslim and that her daughter converted to and believed in Islam. To me, she hates everything related to Islam. She d oesn’t like that my husband and I pray five times a day. This is something my mom and I argued about and I think that is why my husband started disliking my m other. Even though we live in the same house, I sense that my husband avoids interacting with my mother, although he never expresses such feelings openly.” To her parents, A Reum’s conversion to and full immersion in Islam was too conspicuous, which was unsettling to them. In addition to regularly attending a mosque, A Reum and Abdul adhered to Islamic religious practices like devoted Muslims, such as praying five times a day, following the strict dietary requirements of eating halal meat and not consuming alcohol, and participating in fasting during Ramadan. Additionally, A Reum wore a hijab e very day. The hijab is a visible symbol recognized worldwide as a sign of religious practice: its visibility has often led to backlashes against Muslim minorities, making hijabs a prime target for
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hostility in a non-Muslim country (Kudo 2009). A Reum confessed that wearing the hijab had triggered many arguments with her parents. Her hijab had become the focus of local gossip in the neighborhood where she and her parents lived, and her parents repeatedly asked her to stop wearing it. They could not appreciate the religion that drew unwanted attention to themselves, and their repudiation of the couple’s religion exacerbated problems in their relationship at home. To minimize conflict with her parents, A Reum reached a compromise, agreeing that she would not wear the hijab in their neighborhood but would wear it in other public places. She lamented, “I want to wear the hijab all the time, and I know I should. But I’ve seen my parents crying so many times whenever I’ve worn the hijab. They’ve asked me not to wear it near their h ouse. I think they must be embarrassed by the neighbors’ alienating gazes. P eople, especially Koreans, hold strong prejudices against Islam, and they gossip about any overt expression of this religion.” A Reum’s account makes it clear that religion, specifically Korean w omen’s Islamic religious practices, can be a significant source of conflict in Korea families. A Reum was torn between her role as a member of a Muslim family and her role as the d aughter of Korean parents. A Reum knew that Abdul appreciated her conversion and saw her wearing the hijab as a meaningful aspect of forming an ideal Muslim family. He was thus very unhappy to see how his in-laws criticized and restricted A Reum’s practice of their faith. Abdul was learning that K orea is a tough environment for Muslims, even in their own homes, and was concerned about how to guide his child regarding developing a religious identity. However, A Reum also knew that her parents w ere troubled that their d aughter had developed a Muslim identity. For them, her marrying a Muslim man was one t hing, but practicing her husband’s religion was another. They said that they were afraid that she was abandoning her Korean identity even though, in A Reum’s view, these identities did not have to be mutually exclusive. A Reum was saddened that her parents felt alienated from their neighbors b ecause of her religious practice and that her conversion brought such discord to their family. Whereas A Reum shared her husband’s religion, Min Hee, who was from a Christian family, had to deal with religious differences with her husband. As the wife of a Muslim husband, she felt obligated to adopt some aspects of the Islamic way of life, which was not easy to do. For example, she found it very difficult to follow the dietary restriction of consuming only halal meat, and she was especially frustrated that her husband did not allow her to eat pork at home. She confessed that she had secretly eaten sam-g yeop-sal, a popular Korean pork dish, when dining out with friends or family members. T hese secret excursions w ere a form of hidden resistance in dealing with her frustrations in her marriage life and with her husband’s rigid attitudes based on his faith. Min Hee’s husband also restricted her economic, social, and cultural activities on the basis of the traditional gendered division of labor. Although a gendered division of labor grounded in Confucianism is a patriarchal norm in Korea, working-class wives have always worked to make a living, and contemporary
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women increasingly find paid work a necessity for themselves and their families. However, Min Hee’s husband strongly objected to her working and insisted on practicing gender separation in public spaces. Over the years, her several visits to Pakistan and frequent interaction with other Muslims had helped her understand how the strong gendered division of labor underlies gender relations in Pakistan and how it is intertwined with the religion. A fter a few years of the c ouple having a tug-of-war over the issue of her work, Min Hee eventually quit her job. This did not mean, however, that she had lost her desire to work; rather, she had become increasingly more frustrated, and she even expressed that her husband’s religious belief was uncompromising and inconsiderate of non-Muslims. More importantly, Min Hee had also experienced clashes with her husband over their different religious beliefs. Her husband pressured her to distance herself from Christianity, discouraging her from going to church, which she occasionally did with her family members without her husband’s knowledge. Eventually she made peace with herself about not practicing Christianity as she had in the past. Still, she felt conflicted about raising their c hildren as Muslims, but she did not know how to make her husband see things differently. In the end, she felt like she was the only one in the marriage who compromised or adapted their behav ior, which seemed unfair. With regard to c hildren, the interviewed Korean wives and their husbands often shared the concern that a lack of understanding of Islamic practices could be a potential source of discrimination, exclusion, bullying, or maladjustment at school. This is why Eun Young’s husband, Omar, who ran a successful business in Korea, temporarily postponed applying for naturalization so that they could send their child to an international school that offered halal meat as a school lunch option. Korea’s international schools enroll children of foreign nationality and those with one or both parents of foreign nationality, and they tend to foster environments that value and respect diverse ways of life and embrace children from diverse backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, and religion, for example. Eun Min Hee said that she and her husband strongly emphasized their child’s school performance so that excellent academic performance would challenge peer prejudices and stereot ypes about multiethnic children and their families and reduce the chances of their children facing discrimination, because Koreans place a high value on education. Thus, by “taking steps to minimize the effects of racism by excelling” (Tizard and Phoenix 2002, 69), the c ouple used educational attainment as a tool to reposition themselves as an upwardly mobile family, distancing themselves from the overall perception of multicultural families. It appears that faith guides every aspect of devout Muslims’ lives, making it challenging to find neutral ground with non-Muslims who experience or are exposed to Islamophobia and whose faith is different from Islam. Many Korean wives have to negotiate a gendered power imbalance with their husbands, seek tolerance from their family members, and remain conscious of the potential discrimination their children could face because of their association with Islam and
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Muslims. T hese processes sometimes frustrated the interviewed Korean wives and created tension in the family because of the necessity of their continuous efforts to deal with two seemingly competing sets of cultural expectations—Korean and Muslim. This kind of familial tension may escalate into clashes when Koreans feel that traditional Korean cultural practices are undermined by uncooperative Muslim husbands.
Still a Korean Daughter Jesa, or ancestor rituals, are important traditional ceremonies that Koreans perform to honor their ancestors by offering abundant food and paying respect to the ancestors’ spirits. Gijesa is held annually in the evening or at night on the date of the ancestor’s death, and charye is performed in the morning on important holi orea’s Thanksgiving Day) and seol-lal days such as chuseok (August harvest day, K (New Year’s Day). Especially on these holidays, a large number of Koreans travel to join family gatherings, enduring the worst traffic jams of the year, particularly when they have to travel from Seoul to other parts of the country. A fter the ceremonies, extended f amily members enjoy a generous meal, often with alcohol, which can be a source of tension for Korean wives with Muslim husbands. Min Hee recalled, At first, my husband tried very hard [to be accepted by my family as a son- in-law], but it didn’t seem to work. So now, for example, if my parents eat pork, he tries not to even smell it and looks at it with contempt. My parents are uncomfortable with such attitudes. It is quite common to have some alcohol on traditional holidays when all the family members are together, but my husband thinks that it is wrong to drink, even with f amily on a special occasion. Korean traditional holidays are very big festivals and are like a big party for families, but he can’t get along with people and enjoy the event.
Min Hee described how her husband initially tried to fit in by trying to do what Koreans do but then, at some point, decided that he could no longer compromise his religious integrity. He began to explicitly condemn Min Hee’s f amily’s consumption of alcohol and pork during f amily gatherings, which often soured the festive mood at family gatherings. To improve his attitude, Min Hee’s parents made an effort to prepare food that her husband liked, but their son-in-law’s intolerance of the Korean ways of enjoying f amily time made them feel resentful and unappreciated. Consequently, a chasm grew between Min Hee’s husband and her parents. A fter her conversion to Islam, A Reum s topped participating in jesa. Koreans usually perceive jesa as a practice that is more cultural than religious, so even Christian Koreans participate in a modified form of jesa because it is an intrinsic part of Korean culture. Since Islam strictly forbids Muslims to worship or bow to any gods or spirits other than Allah, many Muslims, like some fundamentalist
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Christians, view jesa as ceremonies to worship ancestral spirits and refuse to participate, which can lead to familial clashes. Given the importance of these events, A Reum’s Buddhist parents could not accept the young c ouple’s refusal to participate in t hese serv ices; they told A Reum and Abdul that they could watch the ser vice from the back of the room instead of bowing to the ancestors during the ceremony. A Reum accepted this compromise to honor her parents’ wishes, but Abdul still could not bring himself to be in the room where the ceremony took place, heightening the tension and conflict within the family. A Reum described this situation: Last seol-lal, when I was in my last month of pregnancy, my mother was angry with me because I did not want to worship our ancestors. My mother told me that I should just watch and did not have to bow in the worship if bowing would be too difficult for me. But even simply watching the worship would have been difficult for me and especially for my husband, who was born and brought up in a Muslim country. He and I agreed that he could go to bed and I would wake him up when the worship was finished. My mother was absolutely outraged by the fact that he did not even watch the worship and that he had slept through charye when even my grandmother was participating in it.
Combined with unresolved tension arising from the marriage, A Reum’s conversion, and the couple’s co-residence with their in-laws, Abdul’s refusal to participate in jesa even when her parents offered a compromise exacerbated the problems in A Reum and Abdul’s relationship with her parents. Unfortunately, A Reum’s extended family also perceived Abdul’s refusal to take part in their cultural ceremony both as a sign of his lack of respect for elders and as a condemnation of Korean culture. This growing discord made it increasingly difficult for A Reum’s husband to be accepted as a member of the family. Each family managed this type of issue differently. Some Pakistani husbands did not mind participating in jesa because they believed that they w ere cultural ceremonies, whereas others were averse to bending the rules of Islam u nder any circumstances. Caught in the m iddle, women struggled to find neutral ground between their husbands and their parents and among different social identities as the daughter of Korean parents, the wife of a Pakistani Muslim man, and a member of social communities. In this situation, wives look for a new space and collective and develop a new social identity.
Identity Development through Social Networks A Reum’s conversion to Islam affected her relationship not only with her parents but also with one of her closest friends. A Reum explained, “When I told my friends that I had converted to Islam, my close friends accepted this and understood me. But one friend, with whom I felt particularly close, found this decision very hard
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to accept and did not contact me for quite a while. We ran into each other one evening, and, later, I got a message from her in which she told me that it was too culturally shocking for her. But over time, she came to understand me, [and] she ere not familiar with Islam started to contact me again.” Most of A Reum’s friends w but respected her choice. Even the friend who initially withdrew eventually came around. Nonetheless, A Reum said that she could not help but feel that her relationships with many of her friends were not same as before her conversion to Islam. Eun Young, who eventually converted to Islam, also described how she and many of her friends slowly drifted apart after she married her Pakistani husband and converted to Islam. Therefore, both A Reum and Eun Young became more engaged in social gatherings with other Korean w omen who were married to Muslim immigrants and/or who had become Muslims themselves. A Reum explained that these gatherings, held a fter mosque serv ices, allowed the w omen to share experiences that were difficult to explain to other Korean w omen and to provide support for one another. Her comments lend support to the claim that Islamic gatherings are often a source of peer reassurance, which, in turn, helps Korean women to create a stronger sense of Muslim identity (Kudo 2009). A Reum continued, “Now religion is part of our life, so we do not think of religion as a separate thing [from our lives]. I spend time meeting people who practice the same religion. At the meetings, t here are people married to Pakistanis, like my husband, or to Arabs. I get along with t hese people better than I do with other Koreans.” Even the w omen who had not converted to Islam—including Min Hee, who harbored stereot ypical views on Islam—often developed new personal networks and joined informal gatherings organ ized for Korean women married to Muslim men. When, according to Min Hee, many Korean women who are married to Muslims felt uncomfortable “to talk about their husbands to p eople around them,” t hese gatherings provided a safe space to honestly and openly discuss family issues or other conflicts and to gain courage to take on t hese challenges. Islam thus served as a foundation for building a new community, compensating for social isolation and alienation from other Koreans. In addition to dealing with family issues, Korean w omen with Muslim husbands often rely on these gatherings to discuss and confront the issues of discrimination and exclusion they and their children experience at workplace or at school. The women who took part in this study reported that they had also joined Internet forums and actively participated in online social networks of Korean women with Muslim husbands, where these women tried to make their collective voice heard regarding how they were being treated by their neighbors, coworkers, or children’s friends’ parents. However, hateful backlash from people posting derogatory comments about Koreans married to foreigners discouraged them from staying active online. In recent years, the Internet has become a channel through which racism is vociferously expressed and displayed. This kind of hostility compelled the women to moderate their online activity, as A Reum noted: “When you read stuff on the Internet,
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the comments are so scary. Many bad comments are probably posted by those who are really sensitive about pure Korean blood and stuff like that. When Koreans are still protective about the pure bloodline, we face a lot of hardships, and t hose who would like to raise issues [about minority rights] hesitate to do so.” Although t hese women initially joined social media networks in an attempt to challenge negative stereot ypes and stigmatizing labels about Islam and Muslims, their online presence and actions made them more likely to be the targets of online racist and sexist attacks. An onslaught of open hostility toward them forced them to retreat to a private forum with heightened security that allowed access only a fter user authentication. Islamophobia is often at the root of the growing social distance between the wives of Pakistani Muslim men and their Korean f amily members and friends, as well as the alienation and hostility from other Koreans that these w omen experience both online and offline. By expanding social networks and ties at the mosque and joining informal gatherings through t hese connections, t hese women forge a strong social identity as the wives of Muslim immigrants.
Conclusion This chapter has investigated the ways in which Korean w omen with Pakistani husbands negotiate their relationships with their parents and their husbands, balancing their roles as the d aughters of Korean parents and the wives of Pakistani husbands. The study’s findings show that these migrant husbands’ country of origin and perceived socioeconomic status put them at a disadvantage and hamper their in-laws’ reception of them. In K orea, men from developing countries are often associated with economic struggle, which places them in subordinate positions in the ethnic hierarchy (Lee 2008). Although this was not discussed in the chapter, racism also plays a role in the disadvantage of Pakistani immigrants, and Southeast Asians in general, in Korean society (Jung 2007). Being associated with immigrant husbands who are not white in appearance or who are from developing countries tends to move Korean women into separate, lower rungs of the social hierarchy, compared with w omen who are associated with immigrant husbands who are white and from Western countries, who tend to be located in higher social categories. In addition to focusing on perceived socioeconomic status and country of origin, this chapter has highlighted how Pakistani husbands’ religion, Korean wives’ conversion or proximity to Islam, and Islamophobia among Koreans play a role in shaping w omen’s interpersonal relationships and contribute to them developing a social identity as the wives of Muslim immigrants in a non-Muslim country. Many of the wives of Muslim immigrants I met, including the three women featured in this chapter, described frequently encountering faith-based prejudice and discrimination in their daily interactions. This dynamic can be explained by social attitudes toward Islam, which tend to create barriers, leaving these Korean wives
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vulnerable to social exclusion and alienation from their wider family networks. Although a Korean wife’s conversion to Islam may enhance marital quality, the couple’s unified religion may also escalate tensions and conflict between the woman and her parents because of the perceived incompatibility between her Muslim husband’s desire not to compromise his religious integrity and traditional Korean ceremonies and popular food choices that are important aspects of f amily time. Even when the w omen had not converted to Islam, their association with Islam was seen negatively and served as a marker of “otherness,” causing them to feel alienated from their friends, family members, and other Koreans. To offset their social isolation and alienation, the women mobilized themselves to make their voices heard through regular meetings or informal gatherings with other women in similar situations. It is an interesting didactic exercise to compare the experiences of Korean women married to immigrant men with the experiences of immigrant women married to Korean men. Both groups of women are often subject to patriarchal attitudes from their husbands: immigrant wives of Korean men are expected to perform Korean mothering (as shown in chapter 2 of this volume), and the Korean wives of immigrant men described in the present chapter talked about how their husbands’ religion is prioritized over their own. Similarly, the contrast between the two groups of women’s relationships with the Korean state shows how patriarchy is embedded in the state’s approach to international marriage. Marriage immigrant w omen’s reproductive roles are understood as contributing to preserving their Korean husbands’ paternal line, embodying patriarchal nation-building. Korean women, in contrast, are viewed as having failed in that duty to the nation when they married immigrant men. Interestingly, both Korean w omen with immigrant husbands and immigrant women married to Korean men are raising “multicultural” c hildren, whose family backgrounds and appearances differ from those of the majority of Koreans, but the state’s policies do not necessarily recognize this commonality. Korean w omen married to Pakistani Muslim men did not see any change in their Korean identity through marriage. Yet, they felt that other Koreans, such as their wider family networks, neighbors, and society at large, no longer considered them to be full Koreans, which affected how other Koreans viewed and treated t hese Korean w omen with immigrant husbands. This led the w omen to find themselves occupying an ambiguous space in terms of their identity in Korea, the country where they were born and where they had spent their entire lives. Consequently, these women had to develop a collective identity as the wives of Muslim husbands. The findings presented in this chapter raise many issues that should be further explored. The chapter sheds light on how public expressions of Islamophobia and severe anti-Muslim sentiment intimidate the wives of Muslim husbands to the extent that they feel unsafe advocating for the rights of Muslim immigrants and their families. Korean women with Muslim husbands sometimes look for ways to ensure their children’s safety and education by actively seeking schools that will allow their
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religious practices, or even considering migration to another country. How can these families find ways to practice an Islamic way of life and fully adhere to Islamic princi ples, while also maintaining their relationships with their Korean family members? This is an important question for K orea’s multicultural f amily policy, which currently does not pay much attention to families with Korean wives and foreign-born husbands, let alone Muslim immigrant husbands. Further research exploring how Muslim husbands perceive and manage relationships with their Korean f amily members could also reveal a fuller picture of these multicultural families.
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Korean). Accessed December 29, 2020. Kudo, Masako. 2009. “Pakistani Husbands, Japanese Wives: A New Presence in Tokyo and Beyond.” Asian Anthropology 8 (1): 109–123. Kwak, Yoonkyung. 2019. “Pushing Away from Their Own Nation? South Korean W omen Married to Migrant Husbands from Developing Countries.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (7): 1186–1203.
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Kwak, YoonKyung, and Mee-Hye Kim. 2019. “Child-Rearing Experiences of Migrant Husbands from Developing Countries in South K orea.” Journal of Multicultural Society 12 (2): 5–34. Kwak, YoonKyung, and Minyoung Lee. 2018. “Migrant Husbands’ Relationship with Their In- Laws in South K orea.” Journal of Family Relations 23 (2): 157–177. Kwon, K. J., and Madison Park. 2015. “Police: Korean Teen May Have Fled to Syria to Join ISIS.” CNN, January 22. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/22/world/isis-korea-teenager/index .html. Lee, Huisu. 2013. Islam Told by Professor Hui-soo Lee. Seoul: Cheung-A (in Korean). Lee, Hyekyung. 2008. “International Marriage and the State in South K orea: Focusing on Government Policy.” Citizenship Studies 12 (1): 107–123. Lee, Myeongji. 2016. “What’s the F uture of Halal Food in K orea?” Hankook Ilbo, January 30. http://daily.hankooki.c om/lpage/economy/201601/d h20160130075152138090.htm
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PA RT T WO
Making Lives u nder Immigration Control
4 Precarious Family Making among Undocumented Migrant Women H Y U N M E E K I M A N D Y U S E ON Y U
Two years after coming to South Korea (hereafter Korea) from Vietnam in 2006 as a marriage immigrant, Ho Thi left her abusive and neglectful Korean husband. In 2008, she arrived at Industrial Complex A, the field site for this research, seeking a job. She did not want to return to her home country herself, but she sent her one-year-old son to live with her mother in Vietnam. Lacking both technical skills and information about job opportunities, she moved in with a Vietnamese man who introduced her to others in the industrial complex. Her Korean husband filed for divorce in 2010 without notifying her, rendering her an undocumented migrant. Ho Thi’s Vietnamese boyfriend, who was also undocumented, taught her how to earn money and send remittances to her family in Vietnam. She said that she “didn’t love him” even though they lived together and w ere known as “a c ouple” among friends and co-workers in the complex. As soon as the couple started living together, they brought Ho Thi’s son back to Korea and raised him together for four years. In 2012, Ho Thi’s partner was deported to Vietnam in one of the government’s crackdowns on undocumented workers. He then entreated her to come back as well so that they could marry legally, but Ho Thi did not want to start a family with a man she did not love. She attributed the failure of her first marriage to a lack of love; her second marriage, she believed, should be to someone she truly loved. Later, we heard that she was living with a Korean man she had met at the complex. Ho Thi’s life course reflects the reality of many marriage immigrant w omen who leave their homes because of their husbands’ violence and abuse and then become undocumented after the husband’s unilateral decision to divorce. Korean immigration law stipulates that only a citizen can sponsor a foreigner to move to and remain in K orea, which creates a serious power imbalance between a Korean man and his foreign spouse (Kim et al. 2017). As part of his guarantor rights, Ho Thi’s husband had the ability to lodge a complaint of abandonment and report her to the immigration office, which he did. 91
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A fter separating from their Korean husbands, many immigrant women labor as undocumented workers, trying to save enough money to avoid returning to their native countries empty- handed. Ho Thi’s situation illustrates the precarious marriage–labor nexus an immigrant woman experiences because of her legal circumstances. Although Ho Thi first arrived in K orea by a legitimate path, her legal status changed over time. The illegality of her later status meant that she needed to negotiate the traditional norms that govern heterosexual relationships, such as marriage and love. The instability and uncertainty that immigrant women like Ho Thi experience because of their legal status often keep them from having normal experiences of family life, romantic love, marriage, and childbirth. A growing body of literature on immigrant w omen in Korea focuses on marriage immigrants and how they negotiate with the patriarchal, ethnocentric values that the Korean state, community, and family expect them to follow and perform (Kim 2015; also see chapter 2 in this volume). Previous work exploring how these women step outside t hese norms in the economic and political spheres (chapter 1) or through divorce (see chapters 6 and 7) has largely focused on women’s experiences in the legal realm. Little attention has been dedicated to how undocumented migrant w omen perform reproductive or care labor to survive econom ically and fulfill their aspirations for love and romance through conjugal union, cohabitation, and other diverse forms of family making. The number of undocumented migrants in Korea has fluctuated over time, depending on the current national migration policy; as of 2019, the estimated number of undocumented migrants in the country was 390,000 (Ministry of Justice 2019). However, the number of undocumented migrant w omen remains unclear for the lack of data, and little has been published on their lives. It is known that women become undocumented either when marriage immigrants divorce or separate from their Korean husbands, or when labor migrants overstay their visas to continue working in K orea (Kim et al. 2017). National policies on the treatment of undocumented migrants vary widely across countries, yielding different experiences of illegality. To date, the Korean government’s nonintegrative approach and the legal invisibility of undocumented workers have left this population vulnerable to deportation, confined them to low-wage jobs, and prevented them from fulfilling their basic needs (Coutin 1998). Sudden separation and the departure of friends or family members are facts of everyday life for the undocumented community. However, as shown in chapter 5, migrants and their families develop visa management strategies in response to the government’s visa restrictions, using informal or illicit commercial serv ices. Migrants’ strategies to lengthen their stays resist the host government’s paradigm of keeping migration temporary. Even with their undocumented status, migrant women manage to find ways to survive, stay, and earn money, and look for people to love and with whom they can form families and have children. This chapter examines undocumented women’s experiences of romantic love, cohabitation, and child-rearing in Korea to analyze how these women’s precarious legal status shapes their family making. To secure access to
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the undocumented population, we conducted two years of field research in an industrial furniture-making complex, which we call Industrial Complex A. The area surrounding the complex is known as a temporary haven for undocumented migrant workers, who face constant government crackdowns. Despite their difficult and unstable lives, many of these workers manage to actively participate in the social fabric of the complex, using diverse strategies of adaptation and negotiation. Unlike their counterparts who have legal status, undocumented migrant women deviate from normative, legitimate, and traditional family values and practices; negotiate specific gendered expectations; and engage in flexible and fluid sexual practices. B ecause they are legally nonexistent, even ordinary practices such as dating and getting married become challenging for them. T hese economically marginalized, undocumented migrant w omen must adjust their levels of responsibility for and devotion to their families. This chapter provides insight into these women’s lives as wage-earning workers and as f amily makers.
Gender and Illegality Migrants experience various forms of instability, depending on their legal status (Goldring 2010; Goldring and Landolt 2013, 3). The political, social, and economic context of the host country confers illegal status, which, in turn, forces undocumented migrants to pay the costs of living an unpredictable life. Illegality renders them victims of structural violence, and the resulting poverty in the receiving country carries over to their families in their home countries (Ahmad 2008). The constant threat of deportation promotes “a state of hypervigilance and fear” that limits these people’s social participation (De Genova 2002; Enriquez 2017, 1154). At the same time, as argued by Engin Isin (quoted in McNevin 2007, 655–674), undocumented migrants surpass their ascribed identity as illegal aliens, participating in local processes of production and reproduction through labor, consumption, and social activities. Rather than subsuming them u nder abstract distinctions of national versus nonnational or citizen versus noncitizen, it is important to recognize that these individuals embody multiple specific identities such as local residents, romantic partners, drinking buddies, managers, factory workers, tenants, consumers, and parents. Gender plays a significant role in shaping experiences of illegality, working in conjunction with race, class, and generation (Abrego 2011; Schmalzbauer 2004; Enriquez 2017). Existing paradigms tend to view migrant w omen in Asia as a homogeneous group, focusing on how they perform gender, guided by maternal instinct or by their filial duty as d aughters (Levitt 2001). The discourses on transnational families presume that the gendered division of labor these women engage in is natural, and the ideology of the f amily in Asia has been regarded as a core value that connects migrant w omen and their families at home (Yeoh et al. 2005). For example, migrant w omen overcome the crisis of familial separation by being active
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agents in long-distance mothering through overseas phone calls and remittances of money and gifts (Parreñas 2001). According to Eithne Luibhéid (2008), gender and illegality intersect in the experiences of undocumented migrant w omen. Their status of illegality renders their work, love and marriage, and childbirth unofficial. Their rights as laborers are constrained and reduced, and formal weddings, marriage registration, and hildren’s births are difficult. T hese w omen’s legal even the registration of their c status also prevents them from visiting their homelands, which leads to semi or permanent family separation (Yu 2015). The geographical boundaries of borders and long-term separation across significant distances make familyhood and familial relations challenging to realize. To maintain t hese familial relations, undocumented migrant women have to cooperate and negotiate with t hose they consider their long-term or temporary f amily members, both in their home country and in the host country (Bacigalupe and Lambe 2011; Singh et al. 2012). The intimacy necessary to maintain f amily relationships u nder the condition of illegality is at times ruptured; at other times, this intimacy is reconstructed to form new familial relationships (Huang et al. 2008). The constraints imposed by undocumented status often lead to a realignment of gender roles and expectations in romantic or intimate relationships. Laura Enriquez (2017) has shown how, among 1.5-generation undocumented young adults who immigrated to the United States before the age of 16 years, some men accommodate more egalitarian gender roles and scripts. For these men, traditional gender roles are incompatible with barriers related to their immigration status because, for example, they cannot obtain driver’s licenses and thus cannot perform the expected masculine roles. Few studies, however, have paid attention to how undocumented migrant w omen modify their gender roles and expectations in the process of dealing with the conditions of illegality. Our research contributes to filling this gap by examining how undocumented migrant women become agents in coordinating and negotiating relationships that involve dating, courtship, cohabitation, marriage, and child-rearing in a legally ambiguous situation in K orea.
Research Methods and Field Site We conducted field research and in-depth interviews from April to December 2012 and from March to December 2013, and followed up with several migrant residents in the study site by a short visit and chats in 2019. In total, in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-eight migrant women and twenty migrant men. In this chapter, all participants have been assigned pseudonyms to protect their confidentiality. During the two-year research period (2012–2013), we visited the study site almost every Sunday to participate in local events. Place plays a critical role in facilitating the negotiation of undocumented migrant status (Schmalzbauer 2004). The research site, Industrial Complex A, is a furniture-making industrial complex
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in the province of Gyeonggi-do and is known as an undocumented workers’ haven. The area’s diverse population includes migrant workers and their families from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. In 2013, we found that the area was occupied by about 290 manufacturers, including more than eighty furniture exhibition markets and factories. With the flow of migrant labor into the region, Industrial Complex A established itself as a communal residential space for migrants. However, it remains the case that t hese individuals’ residential status, including their length of stay, is determined by the Korean government, which defines t hose who deviate from this status as “illegal.” Such undocumented migrants are deemed criminals and are subject to government crackdowns and deportation. The history of migrant l abor in Industrial Complex A began in the late 1980s. Prior to the so-called International Monetary Fund crisis in 1997, the number of migrants in the industrial complex had already reached approximately 2,000; this number then steadily declined, reaching 1,500 by the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century (Jeon 2002; Kim 2006). At the time of our research in 2013, the number had dropped even further, with approximately 700 migrants in the complex; this number has since remained consistent. Although the exact number of undocumented migrants is difficult to obtain, we estimate that approximately 80 percent of the 700 migrants were undocumented during the study period. About 250 furniture manufacturers in Industrial Complex A w ere small businesses employing fewer than twenty workers, and more than 60 percent of these businesses had fewer than five to ten employees on the payroll. Many enterprises operated with only one employee. Every year, approximately 20 to 30 percent of the furniture factories went out of business and left the complex, with an equal number of manufacturing businesses entering the complex to replace them. The declining furniture-making industry has endured in the densely packed complex because of the cheap leases for factory space and the plentiful labor provided by the migrant workforce. Small business o wners facing a chronic shortage of workers have to rely on the labor of migrants, including those who are undocumented. Thus, undocumented migrants gravitate t oward the area in their search of emotional, physical, and psychological security. The immigration office, police officers, and small business o wners have developed a mutual understanding that this complex cannot survive without undocumented workers. This does not mean, however, that the complex is an extraterritorial jurisdiction where undocumented migrants can escape crackdowns. Rather, the complex is positioned at the interface of two conflicting realities. With its high concentration of undocumented migrants, the complex has become a target of regular crackdowns; however, at the same time, illegality is tolerated as a condition of maintaining the operation of business as usual, which temporarily suspends the threat of deportation. Despite the unpredictable crackdowns and deportations they face, undocumented migrants are indispensable (although unequal) partners of local Koreans, such as factory managers, business o wners, leasing agents, and welfare service
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providers. Likewise, undocumented migrants play multiple roles in social reproduction in Industrial Complex A (Kim and Yu 2012), where they form and sustain families across generations while navigating various challenges to make their lives more bearable. During our field research, most undocumented migrants in the complex w ere men who had lived in the area for more than ten years. The ratio of women to men working in Industrial Complex A was about one to four. Men migrants who had lived in the complex for a long time had networks that supplied them with information about employment, accommodations, and social serv ices. Long-term residents offered newcomers the local knowledge necessary to s ettle in the complex. However, undocumented migrant men were unable to freely move around and residentially isolated, which reduced their chances of dating or finding marriage partners in K orea. Thus, t hese men brought a marriage partner from their home country to the complex. Or, many undocumented men pursued a cohabiting relationship with a co-ethnic w oman, who entered the complex in search of a job and social security a fter becoming undocumented, by actively providing necessary assistance to live in the complex.
Different Paths to Forming Families Like most people, undocumented migrants consider marriage or having a life partner as a normative practice in which they would like to engage, but, b ecause of the lack of resources, f ree mobility, and social networks caused by their illegality, they typically face challenges in pursuing traditional forms of marriage. Some undocumented migrants nevertheless seek formal marriage, whereas others look for informal cohabitation arrangements. Undocumented migrants, who must be on guard against crackdowns and deportation, consider earning potential, psychological security, and f amily responsibility when looking for a partner. They acknowledge that the most salient feature of their life is their illegality, but their experiences are mediated by other social factors in the complex, where they are able to gain employment and socialize with fellow co-ethnic migrants. Undocumented male workers mostly came to Korea as industrial trainees, legal laborers, and tourists, and became undocumented when they overstayed their visa to continue working and earning money. ecause their illeMost of the men interviewed in this study experienced anxiety b gal status could prevent them from participating in normative life-course activities, such as dating, courtship, and marriage. The gender ratio imbalance also seemed to hamper their chances of finding partners for romance or marriage. When they were older than the traditionally defined marriage age, these men tried various approaches to find partners, using dating apps and websites, as well as their social networks. B ecause they generally favored women who shared their native language and culture, they also actively searched for partners in their home country.
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Some of the interviewed men sought formal marriage in a modified form, despite their precarious circumstances. The most common form of marriage in the complex was telephone marriage, which was practiced by men from Islamic cultures, such as those from Pakistan or Bangladesh, who faced heavy pressure to marry as they grew older. These men knew that they were expected to return to their home country to marry a local woman and live as a husband and f ather. At the same time, they felt obligated to save as much money as possible for their f uture life in the home country by extending their stay in K orea, thus postponing marriage. Caught between the social pressure to marry and form a family and the desire to delay their return, they opted for telephone marriages. In such a marriage, when a man decided on a partner from his home country, his parents arranged a wedding ceremony by telephone with this woman. In most cases, the bride and groom did not meet before the wedding. F amily members and friends, also participating by telephone, served as witnesses to the ceremony. On the wedding day, the groom’s friends in the complex would decorate his room with ornaments, prepare food, and invite guests. Although their undocumented status deferred their marriage, the men in the complex nevertheless carried out a semblance of traditional wedding ceremonies, attempting to follow the social and cultural norms of their home countries. Regardless of their legal status, most of these men took pride in the skills, knowledge, and economic resources they had acquired in K orea; many expressed confidence that they would be able to sufficiently provide for their wives, even while they remained in Korea. Or, they provided a pathway for their wives to the complex and to their undocumented status. When Arif, who was from Bangladesh, turned 27, he married Pushpa by telephone. A fter the telephone marriage ceremony, like many new husbands in the complex, Arif paid an enormous fee to a broker to bring Pushpa to K orea on a tourist visa. Pushpa arrived in Korea three months after the phone wedding. On her arrival in K orea, Pushpa began working at a company that produced electric heating mats, as her husband had arranged beforehand. Although she was liberated from the constraints of the patriarchal family culture in Bangladesh, where she would have been expected to live with her in-laws (Lee 2012), Pushpa had to adjust to the dual burden of factory work and housework, as well as to the threat of government crackdowns. On the surface, the couple appeared to conform to patriarchal marriage and family norms in that Pushpa, the wife, moved to be with her husband. However, after arriving in Korea, she began performing wage labor to help her f amily, shifting her status from that of a dependent caregiver to becoming an active wage earner like her husband. Thus, despite Pushpa’s undocumented status, living as a migrant laborer in K orea offered her the flexibility to negotiate gender roles and to be f ree of some obligations to her parents-in-law. Unlike Pushpa, most migrant w omen in the complex moved to the complex only after becoming undocumented b ecause they knew that they could find jobs there regardless of their legal status. Cohabitation was common in the complex. In a previous study of Industrial Complex A, Kyung Tae Park (2001) found that more
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than half of the undocumented migrants from the Philippines met new partners at the complex. Most c ouples began living together without a wedding ceremony. Many preferred cohabitation to marriage because they were already legally married to someone living elsewhere and had children. Even while cohabiting with a woman in the complex, many undocumented men maintained marital status with their spouses in their home countries in case they needed to return or were deported. For women, having a partner could lower their sense of vulnerability by reducing the costs of living, having a sense of protection against sexual harassment, and alleviating the anxiety arising from their illegality (Chae 2007). When facing uncertainty, instability, and insecurity (Constable 2003; Hewison and Kalleberg 2013), cohabitation allowed undocumented migrant women to achieve a status, thus giving them the ability to retain their membership as resident workers in the complex. In a practical sense, as Ho Thi’s case makes clear, immigrant m others preferred cohabitation to remaining single because of the long work hours, low wages, and high rent and other living costs, all of which increased the difficulty of raising a child alone. A common saying in the area was, “You can’t raise a child alone. You’d better find a new partner.” Those who reported receiving this advice did not take offense. Cohabitation was also a strategy for women to escape sexual predation. In the complex, where women migrants were a minority, new women quickly became a focus of interest and gossip. Additionally, when w omen tried to rent a room on their own, they w ere sometimes subjected to biased notions that they were sexually dubious. Women thus felt the need for “journey husband” (Women’s Link Worldwide 2009, 3), who could protect them against sexual threats while living alone. Leslie, a Filipina, moved to Industrial Complex A to make money to pay for her son’s education in the Philippines a fter her two-year contract as a nurse in a Seoul hospital expired in 2010. Initially, she had tried to find a job as an English tutor in Seoul, but such part-time jobs did not pay enough to support her son in the Philippines and pay for her living expenses in Seoul. With no friends or relatives in K orea and no access to information about employment, Leslie attempted to make connections online on her own. She met a Filipino boyfriend through an online dating serv ice. He helped her get a job in the plastic injection factory where he worked and brought her to the complex, where the two began living together as a c ouple. Cohabiting could reduce living expenses b ecause couples w ere eligible to live in a rent-f ree room in a boardinghouse operated by the factory employing them. The factories provided these rooms only to couples, in an effort to secure a stable workforce; thus, cohabitation was often essential rather than optional. Factory owners also preferred to support couples because of the premise that men are normally the primary breadwinners and w omen are the secondary earners, which justified paying w omen less than men. In such a context, although Leslie wanted to describe her decision to cohabit with her boyfriend as one based on love, this love was embedded in a transactional relationship. Leslie’s relationship was situational, place-specific, and temporary,
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and it could not be explained using the traditional concept of marriage. Leslie viewed the cohabiting relationship as a way to resolve the issues of finding a room on her own, overcoming insecurity and loneliness, and managing economic difficulties. Her boyfriend insisted that they have a child together to stabilize the relationship, seeing childbirth as a symbol of the formation of a new family. However, Leslie wondered whether having a child with him and building a new family would be wise, given that she already had a son in the Philippines. To a certain extent, cohabitation—in contrast to marriage—enabled Leslie to retain some control over her life. In the complex, when a couple lived together and had a child, it was considered to mean that the couple had formed an independent nuclear family. The formation of this new family implied a change in preexisting family relations, including the unilateral or consensual end of any relationship with a spouse in the home country, or the beginning of a secret affair that was unknown to the spouse at home. This development prompted some migrants who w ere estranged from their spouses or children in their home country to cut off contact with them and to stop sending remittances. Cohabitation and having a child also necessitated the rearrangement of finances. As long as she did not have a child with him, Leslie did not need to be involved in sending remittances to her partner’s family. However, if the couple had a child and a stable relationship, t hese remittances would become a financial concern of the family unit. Women migrants who formerly sent most of their income to their parents in their home country adjusted the amount of these remittances after having a child because they then had to contribute time and resources to raising the child. Leslie did not wish to be involved in her boyfriend’s obligatory remittances to his family or to adjust the amount of money she sent to her child in the Philippines a fter forming a new f amily with her boyfriend. She worried that having a child with her cohabiting partner would make it difficult for her to meet her responsibilities for her child in the Philippines. Leslie called her relationship with her boyfriend “a very long love”—one that could be expressed through long- term transactional negotiations. As they settled into cohabitation, they began their own long-term planning. A cohabiting c ouple had to come to terms with both explicit and tacit arrangements regarding the exchange of intimate labor, money, and love. For the women migrants in the study, sending remittances was of utmost importance b ecause it could determine the quality of life of their families in their home countries. Especially, migrant women who had children in their home countries endeavored to send remittances regularly and consistently, regardless of their level of income. To that end, migrant m others tended to have longer working hours, compared with migrant women without c hildren. Further, when these m others met a new partner, before agreeing to live together, they received a promise from the partner to respect her continued transfer of money to her children in the home country. For some cohabiting c ouples, remittances could be a way of showing conjugal intimacy, but, for o thers, remittances jeopardized the relationship. Financial
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disputes associated with remittances could lead to a w oman deciding to break up with her cohabiting partner. In sharp contrast to the behavior of migrant m others, migrant fathers sometimes reduced the amount of money sent or even terminated their remittances to their family in the home country when they entered a new relationship. This difference between men and w omen can be explained by social norms emphasizing w omen’s responsibilities to their families and children as filial daughters and m others (Abrego and Larossa 2009). This gendered expectation explains why women in the complex preferred single men or those who did not have to send money to their home country for the education or support of a child because they were completely separated from the family or because their children had already grown up. Being in a precarious relationship because of their undocumented status made it difficult for women migrants to maintain or fully comply with the family and gender norms of their home countries. Undocumented p eople in the complex often expressed admiration and respect for married couples who stayed married. Couples who married in their home countries and moved to the complex together were routinely referred to as “original husband” and “original wife.” These “original couples,” who w ere also undocumented in K orea, embodied f amily life in the conventional sense—they legally married a fter a long period of romantic courtship, had c hildren, and continued their conjugal relationship even a fter moving to Korea. The term “original” implies the stability and morality of the familial ideal. The original couples in the complex were both respected and envied because it was seen as difficult to maintain marital relations as undocumented migrants, especially when such legal status and labor conditions w ere prolonged. Only one of the fifteen Filipina research participants was part of an original c ouple. In contrast, it was common to meet migrants whose partners had been deported. To our knowledge, only a few mi grants whose partners w ere deported immediately returned to their home country and reunited with their partners t here. Undocumented migrants are constantly forming, postponing, and undoing family practices during their stay in K orea.
A Work-Centered Life and Reconfigured Gender Norms While witnessing routine crackdowns and u nder constant threat of deportation, the undocumented men and women participating in this study were conscious of temporal limits because they did not know when they would have to return to their home countries. This sense of l imited time created a tendency for them to highly value wage-earning activities that would allow them to make as much money as possible in whatever time they had. This prioritization of wage-earning work compelled the undocumented migrants to develop a work-centered lifestyle and to reconfigure conventional gender norms. This work-centered lifestyle meant that women who are not working because of increased childcare could be subject to disapproval within the community.
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Sonya, a Bangladeshi woman, became a stay-at-home mother after her third baby was born. P eople referred to her, she overheard, as “a lazy woman who simply spends money.” In the complex, women usually returned to work after two or three months of recovery following the birth of a child. Sonya stayed at home a fter the birth of third child, and she was solely responsible for the h ousekeeping and childcare while at home. She and her partner understood that this approach meant that there would be a decrease in the family income and an increase in the living costs. Many migrant women reported experiencing a rigid separation of paid work and domestic responsibilities that undergirded their economic dependence and a sense of powerlessness. However, their gender did not prevent undocumented women from leaving domestic responsibilities behind and becoming wage laborers. In fact, none of the undocumented women in the complex were full-time h ousewives without any work experience. Seeing their paid work tallied in cash every month, these women became aware of the relationships between work, time, and money and readjusted their roles accordingly. Many women preferred to work rather than to stay home to take care of the household and c hildren. Working overtime or weekend shifts at the factory generated additional cash, whereas housekeeping or childcare did not. In the interviews, the women noted that they would like to spend more time with their children but that they were not willing to reduce their working hours to do so. The undocumented women migrants wanted to prove their value to themselves and to others; thus, they adapted themselves, transitioning from homemakers to econom ically successful workers. In the complex, women who were skilled at cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and raising children were still favored, but those who were good workers and were thus paid high wages w ere the most respected by men. The migrant men also actively supported women’s wage labor because men’s gender role as breadwinners was precarious and not easily fulfilled given their illegal status. The undocumented men who needed to save money during the limited and unpredictable amount of time available before their deportation tended to participate in reconfiguring gender norms. Some skilled women who worked in the furniture factories and w ere relatively highly paid did not engage in domestic or care labor because they often had to work overtime and late at night. Notably, in Industrial Complex A, when both the woman and the man in a h ousehold worked, the housework was shared evenly between them. The men, who knew what work in the factory was like, contributed to the housework and childcare as a matter of course. Residents of the complex widely believed that men from Islamic cultures, who w ere generally thought to be conservative, were more active in sharing housework within the complex. Pushpa’s husband, Arif, was one of these men. He accommodated relatively egalitarian gender roles b ecause of his marginalized status as undocumented and because of the couple’s urgent need to make money before returning to Bangladesh. This couple exemplified the type of families formed as “dynamic and highly contradictory social units” that combine economic stability and reconfigured gender norms (Abrego and Larossa 2009, 1072; Enriquez 2017).
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Despite this reconfiguration of gender norms, gender differences still existed in the complex. Specific gendered expectations and practices w ere observed when a migrant family in the complex struggled to locate the optimal balance between maximum wages and job stability. Most of the migrant workers—both men and women—sought jobs that paid high wages; however, a fter the birth of a baby, women tended to become more concerned with stability. Within t hese c ouples, especially when the man and woman did not work at the same factory, most men sought a job that would pay the highest wage possible, whereas women looked for a job that would provide a stable income. The migrant men chose to work for employers who could offer skilled and experienced workers more room to negotiate their wages and l abor conditions. The migrant w omen who were married to or cohabiting with these men, in contrast, chose to work at factories without a history of late payments, even if they offered lower pay, simply because this choice would provide income stability. The w omen migrants tended to be concentrated in shoe and plastic injection mold factories, which offered steady pay and stable work conditions. In addition to providing work that was easier than what was required in furniture factories, these types of factories were known to pay salaries on time (ttabak, never missing once). These w omen’s work ethic dictated that they should endure “hard work as long as it pays well,” and they believed that the best jobs in the complex w ere in factories that paid laborers on time. This was important because the w omen had a fixed set of expenses that had to be paid on time. In addition to rent, utility bills, groceries, phone bills, and other regular costs, these expenses included remittances to their families in their home countries to cover medical bills, education costs, and other living expenses. A month-long delay in wages would have a detrimental impact on the w omen and on their families in their home countries. Missing a wage payment also meant that their plans to return to the home country might be delayed. Hence, married or cohabiting couples adopted the financial strategy of finding one job that paid the most and one job that was as stable as possible. Working in different workplaces also prevented the c ouple both being unemployed at the same time.
Delayed Returns and the Decision to Return For the migrants participating in this study, the timing of their return to the home country depended on whether they had achieved their initial goal in migrating. Feelings of fulfillment were entirely personal, subjective, and gendered. The undocumented women were more reluctant to return home than were their men counterparts b ecause the ambiguous nature of their marital or cohabiting rela omen. Most undocumented tionships made homecoming a worry for many of the w migrants in Industrial Complex A w ere forced to return to their home countries because of crackdowns and the ensuing deportation. They feared these crackdowns and viewed them as “the start of hardship” or “a downhill to failure” in their
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migratory lives, given that returning to their home countries would mean a loss of income, social relationships, and family. Crackdowns were frequent: during our field research, the residents of Industrial Complex A experienced two large-scale crackdowns each year. More recently, the number of small-scale crackdowns has increased. Wary of a possible crackdown, undocumented migrants informed one another of the location of safe h ouses and the ways to reach them. It was common for the migrants to talk about how to avoid or escape crackdowns, and part of these conversations focused on personal appearance. Migrant w omen believed that having lighter skin helped them to avoid detection b ecause they could “pass” as Korean women. For their common goal to stay in Korea and make money for as long as possible, migrant women had to do whatever they could to avoid raids and postpone returning to their home countries. They tried to manage their crises as best as they could, but they w ere not always successful. Priyathama spent a good deal of time in wage work, sharing parenting and housework responsibilities with her husband, who drank heavily. A fter he was detained by the authorities and deported to Nepal in May 2012, Priyathama unexpectedly found herself enjoying life and did not wish to return to Nepal. She looked for ways to stay in the complex with her daughter and to work more, but she realized that living alone in the area was not economically feasible. Before her husband’s deportation, Priyathama and her husband worked while her daughter was looked after in the nursery in the complex. A fter they had worked the day shift, Priyathama’s husband took care of the household and childcare while Priyathama worked the night shift or overtime. Her husband’s sudden deportation led to a sharp drop in income because Priyathama could no longer work the night shift or take on overtime hours. Her monthly income of 1.4 million Korean won barely covered her rent, utility bills, childcare, phone bill, and food. Although her colleagues at the factory praised her as a smart and tenacious worker, she did not earn the same pay as her men counterparts, who were typically able to support their families without relying on their partners’ wage. If women’s wages had been equal to those of men, she would not have returned to Nepal. However, she was forced to return, which demonstrates how migrant women’s independence was obstructed by the gender hierarchy and wage discrimination in the complex. In May 2013, Pushpa and Arif, along with four other migrant workers, were arrested in their factory during a raid. Arif was deported within a week but Pushpa was released by the immigration office under the condition that she and her son, Shapra, would leave Korea within two months. To prepare for their departure, Pushpa put together and sent ahead parcels of Korean goods and food for Shapra, who had only known life in Korea. Then, two months later, Pushpa and Shapra boarded a plane to her home country, Bangladesh, although Pushpa wanted to remain in Korea. She wanted to raise her son in Korea because she found the quality of life in Korea, with its climate, clean air and water, and stable source of electricity, far better than that in Bangladesh. She also thought the Korean education system would be better for her son.
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More importantly, Pushpa and the other undocumented migrant w omen in the complex did not want to return to their home countries b ecause they knew that doing so would mean losing their independent status as wage earners. While in K orea, Pushpa was able to work and send remittances home, guaranteeing her social recognition in her home country. However, after she was forced to return, she lost the autonomy she had enjoyed away from patriarchal familial relations. In Bangladesh, she had to live in the home of Arif’s family, and she could not help her parents or family economically as she had done while living in the complex. Further, as George and Sharon Gmelch (1995) have pointed out, migrant women who return to their hometown villages face isolation and boredom because they are presented with fewer opportunities for social mobility, which contrasts sharply with the cultural autonomy and economic independence they experienced as migrants. Eventually, Pushpa, Arif, and Shapra migrated to Malaysia. This was a positive change for the family, providing Shapra with a better education and allowing Pushpa to reclaim her economic and cultural autonomy. The timing of migrant w omen’s return to their home countries was also related to their c hildren’s ages. As their c hildren grew older, the pressure to return mounted. Some migrant mothers sent their children back home to live with the women’s parents so that they could continue to work and support their families. Other migrant w omen left when their c hildren w ere old enough to enter kindergarten or elementary school. This is one reason why few c hildren over the age of seven lived in the complex. Raising an undocumented child in Korea, where education and medical serv ices are not provided by the government, would mean an increase not only in living expenses, but also in the risk of their and their c hildren’s lives being disrupted. When a child was deported, the mother usually left with the child while the husband remained in K orea and continued to work. When the husband was deported, however, the situation was handled differently. As mentioned above, it was economically unviable for a migrant w oman to raise a child on her salary alone; therefore, following the deportation of her husband, a migrant w oman could either return to the home country with her child or begin a new relationship with another man. A cohabiting c ouple’s return to their home country tended to beget a confused sense of belonging. On their return, their sociocultural reincorporation was ham ere from different countries, they pered by their uncertain marital status. If they w faced additional stigma. A single mother who had a child by a man of a different ethnicity was especially likely to be viewed as an “abandoned w oman.” This gendered bias made reintegration in the home country more difficult for migrant women than for their men counterparts. The complicated marital status of many returnees, combined with their lack of proper documents, has been found to prevent their c hildren from accessing residence rights and social welfare (Kim et al. 2017). Heather and Akan were a multiethnic couple living in Industrial Complex A. Both had other spouses from whom they had separated, as well as other children.
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Heather’s mother looked after her daughter in the Philippines, and Akan’s three children were being raised by his former wife in Indonesia. Together, the couple was raising their d aughter, who was born in Industrial Complex A. Akan received a monthly salary of 1.2 million Korean won, and Heather received a salary of 1.1 million Korean won. Each month, Akan sent 400,000 Korean won to provide for his three children in Indonesia, and Heather sent 350,000 Korean won to her m other to cover her daughter’s living expenses and education. Heather and Akan shared their monthly living expenses, as well as the educational expenses for their daughter in Korea, but they saved money separately. With their different nationalities and families of their own in separate countries, to which country should they return when they have to leave Korea? Even if they could select one country to live in together, what would they do with their families in the other country? Their neighbors worried that it would be impossible for the c ouple to return to the same place in the near future and live together. The couple had multiple family members to whom they were obligated to provide lifelong care: Heather’s daughter and mother in the Philippines, Akin’s three daughters in Indonesia, and the daughter they had together in K orea. Their c hildren, living in multiple localities, caused the c ouple to delay returning “home.” At the end of the research period, the couple had yet to decide when and to where they would return. After separating from her Korean husband, Helen, a Filipina, lived with Jordan, a migrant man from her home country. Conscious of what people said about them, Helen emphasized that she and her partner were not in contact with their former spouses. She had severed contact with her Korean husband, and Jordan’s relationship with his wife in the Philippines was also over. Helen was a naturalized Korean citizen, whereas Jordan was an undocumented migrant. Helen said that she would like to leave for the Philippines with their son if Jordan were deported, but she was unsure about whether she would be able to live with Jordan. “Yes, I will leave with him. Jordan’s ex-wife has a man and another child. We are the real couple. We are not fake,” she stressed. Helen and Jordan stressed that they w ere “the real c ouple” because they had broken all their ties with their former spouses, even though they were not legally divorced. However, their Filipino neighbors questioned w hether the couple would be able to live together in their home country, given the complex issues of birth registration and economic integration. The exploration of undocumented migrants’ unofficial family relationships, such as cohabitation, expands our understanding of transnational families, which has previously focused on marriage. In the face of crackdowns and the threat of deportation, undocumented migrant w omen create informal and transitory cohabiting households to gain economic and psychological stability. T hese families and households are also the product of the situations circumscribed by the host country’s laws (Douglass 2006). W hether intended or not, the h ouseholds and families built by undocumented migrant w omen in Industrial Complex A deviate from kin- and marriage-centered institutional norms, diversifying gender relations within transnational families and challenging familial norms.
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Conclusion This chapter has examined how undocumented migrant w omen, a “hard-to-detect and hard-to-identify population” (Borjas 2017), construct and maintain families in Korea and in their native countries. We analyzed how migrant women’s family strategies intersect with class and gender and how they are affected by these women’s illegality. Undocumented migrant w omen navigate complex and often conflicting demands created by a production–reproduction nexus that positions them at the intersection of material and affective labor, both in K orea and in their homelands. These women are also emerging as critical actors in global capitalist networks in which flows of reproductive l abor reshape the diverse exchanges that constitute new bases of intimacy. Undocumented w omen may initially depend on their men colleagues and romantic partners for safety and economic resources, but they are also vulnerable to sexual exploitation by t hese men. For immigrant w omen with illegal status, love, marriage, and childbirth are not elements of a sequential process in the life course; instead, these life events are in flux as these women respond to their unstable legal status. In other words, undocumented migrant women’s family making unfolds as they optimize their productive and reproductive opportunities within the para meters of illegality. With the global spread of neoliberalism, these women, who are experiencing a crisis of personal and family reproduction, are moving toward families that are more flexible and open than normative or immutable. Simultaneously, t hese w omen invest more time and passion in wage labor than in housework or childcare, reaching the status of skilled workers, earning social recognition, and building their reputations. This ethnographic study has also presented the predicament migrant w omen face in the migration process—the precariousness and difficulty of marrying and cohabiting to distribute money and intimate values such as love and motherhood to maintain both their family in their home country and their newly formed family in their host country. These w omen tend to resist absolute loyalty to or sacrifice for their original or newly formed families, seeing family instead as an entity that they can join and withdraw from depending on their circumstances. A sense of familism driving these women to provide for their children and families back home may not fit with prevailing gender norms. The social context of illegality creates temporality and conditionality in the institution of the family. Instead of participating in a “normal family,” therefore, undocumented migrant women practice “women-centered familism” (Yu 2015). This underscores the idea that women emerge as important agents who reinterpret the concept and meaning of family. The vulnerable legal status, gender, and class of undocumented migrant women make it impossible for them to form an ideal family that conforms to the embedded family norms of e ither the home country or the host country. The
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undocumented migrant w omen in this study maintained relationships with their home country and sought to balance the extent of their economic obligations to and intimacy with their f amily members, both in the home country and in the complex. The family relationships formed and maintained by the undocumented migrant women in the industrial complex, then, can be seen as temporary, flexible, and transactional. Their love, cohabitation, marriage, and childbirth cannot be solely explained by familiar concepts such as the transnational family, long- distance motherhood, or the global division of reproductive labor. Undocumented migrant women are unable to form a f amily in accordance with legal, moral, and cultural norms. Engaging simultaneously in reproductive and productive labor networks over the course of their lives, these w omen develop women-centered householding strategies optimized under the conditions of illegality.
REFERENCES
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Hewison, Kevin, and Arne L. Kalleberg. 2013. “Precarious Work and Flexibilization in South and Southeast Asia.” American Behavioral Scientist 57 (4): 395–402. Huang, Shirlena, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, and Theodora Lam. 2008. “Asian Transnational Families in Transition: The Liminality of Simultaneity.” International Migration 46 (4): 3–13. Isin, Engin F. 2002. Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jeon, Hyuk jin. 2002. “Oegugin nodongjareul wihan sahoeseongyo hwaldonggwa banghyang: Seonggonghoe namyangjugyohoe tesyallomui jipteui hwaldong bipanjeok gochal” (Social Mission Activities and Directions for Migrant Laborers: A Critical Review of the Activities of the “House of Shalom” in Namyangju Anglican Church). Master’s thesis, Sungkonghoe University (in Korean). Kim, Hee Sook. 2006. “Munhwajeogeung seuteureseuga ijunodongjaui uul buran michineun yeonghyang: Gyeonggido maseokjiyeok mideungnongnodongjareul jungsimeuro” (The Influence of Acculturative Stress on Migrant Workers’ Depression and Anxiety: Focused on Undocumented Workers in Maseok, Gyeonggido). Master’s thesis, Hanyang University (in Korean). Kim, Hyun Mee. 2015. “Intimacies and Remittances: The Material Bases for Love and Intimate L abor between Korean Men and Their Foreign Spouses in South Korea.” In Mig rant Encounters: Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility Across Asia, edited by Sara L. Friedman and Pardis Mahdavi, 24–45. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kim, Hyun Mee, Shinhye Park, and Ariun Shukhertei. 2017. “Returning Home: Marriage Migrants’ L egal Precarity and the Experience of Divorce.” Critical Asian Studies 49 (1): 38–53. Kim, Hyun Mee, and Yu, Yu Seon. 2012. “Mideungnogijuminui sahoejeok gwangyewa jiyeokjaesaengsan: Gyeonggi-do A Gongdan saryereul jungsimeu-ro” (Regional Reproduction in the Social Relations of Undocumented Foreign Workers and Local Koreans in a Furniture-Making Industrial Complex in Gyeonggi-Province). Cross-Cultural Studies 19 (2): 53–84 (in Korean). Lee, Kwang-su. 2012. “Gusulsareul tonghae bon banggeulladesiin iju nodongja syagolssiui hanguk sahoe jeogeunge michin yoin” (Cultural Adaptation of Migrant Workers in Korean Society: A Study on Mr. Shagor from Bangladesh through His Oral History). Cogito 72 (August): 231–260 (in Korean). Levitt, Peggy. 2001. “Transnational Migration: Taking Stock and Future Directions.” Global Networks 1 (3): 195–216. Luibhéid, Eithne. 2008. “Sexuality, Migration, and the Shifting Line between L egal and Illegal Status.” Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14 (2/3): 289–315. McNevin, Anne. 2007. “Irregular Migrants, Neoliberal Geographies and Spatial Frontiers of ‘the Political.’ ” Review of International Studies 33 (4): 655–674. Ministry of Justice. 2019. Statistical Monthly Report 12:1–38 (in Korean). Park, Kyung Tae. 2001. “Nodongnyeok songchulgugeseo bon ijunodongjaui sahoejeok yeongyeolmang: Pillipin gajokgwa gongdongchereul jungsimeuro” (Migrant Laborers and Social Network in the Eyes of the Labor-Sending Countries: Focused on Filipino Family Communities). Quarterly of the K orea Theological Study Institute 113 (June): 26–48 (in Korean). Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2001. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2004. “Searching for Wages and Mothering from Afar: The Case of Honduran Transnational Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (5): 1317–1331. Singh, Supriya, Shanti Robertson, and Anuja Cabraal. 2012. “Transnational F amily Money: Remittances, Gifts and Inheritance.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 33 (5): 475–492.
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Women’s Link Worldwide. 2009. Migrant W omen’s Rights: An Invisible Reality. https://w ww .womenslinkworldwide.org/fi les/eede3cfcd856eda8e190847f53100771.pdf (in English). Accessed December 31, 2021. Yeoh, Brenda S., Shirlena Huang, and Theodora Lam. 2005. “Transnationalizing the ‘Asian’ Family: Imaginaries, Intimacies, and Strategic Intents.” Global Networks 5 (4): 307–315. Yu, Yu Seon. 2015. “Gaguhwa (Householding) gwajeongeseo natanan mideungnogijuyeoseongui gajokgwangeui byeonhwae gwanhan yeongu” (Transformation of Family Relationship in the Process of House-Holding of Undocumented Female Migrant). PhD diss., Yonsei University (in Korean).
5 Open Sesame Korean Chinese Kinship Relations and Codes to Reclaim Time in South Korea S O H O ON Y I
A s of 2019, more than 2.5 million foreign residents live in South K orea, with Korean Chinese migrants constituting the largest group and making up 28 percent of all foreign residents (Korea Immigration Serv ice 2020). Ethnic Koreans from the People’s Republic of China (China), who are referred to as Korean Chinese or joseon orea in the early 1990s. Since that time, Korean jok, began to migrate to South K Chinese migrants have persistently had complex encounters with South Korean immigration policy around the meaning of cross-border kinship. Shifts in South Korea’s immigration policies have significantly shaped kinship relations in Korean Chinese communities in both South Korea and China, and Korean Chinese migrants’ cross-border kinship relations and their relationship with South Korea’s immigration system have become more complex over the past two decades, mainly because this group has continued to come to South Korea in large numbers using temporary visas. Korean Chinese migrants have been excluded from the government support programs and legislation available to multicultural families. This chapter aims to include them in discussions about multicultural families, which is an effort to highlight three issues related to Korean Chinese migrant families in South Korea. First, Korean Chinese migrants, despite their co-ethnicity (of Korean ethnicity), have been perceived to display distinct cultural characters and their “differences” have been ethnicized and racialized (Shin 2016; Yang 2019; see also Choo 2006). Scholars have noted that this othering of Korean Chinese is related to their tendency to form distinct “ethnic” enclaves distinguished from the rest of South Korean society (Lee et al. 2017). Second, cross-border kinship between South Koreans and Korean Chinese played an important role at the beginning of their migration into South K orea, but cross-border kinship between Korean Chinese people in South K orea and China has become more prominent in the last decade. Third, despite a dramatic increase in the number of Korean Chinese residents in South Korea, the rate of intermarriage has not seen the same growth; rather, Korean 110
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Chinese migrants have exhibited a high rate of intramarriage. This marriage pattern has resulted in the formation of migrant families with distinct immigration, social, and cultural characters. In this sense, they make another kind of multicultural family in South Korea. This chapter examines the extensive kinship relationships maintained by Korean Chinese migrant families despite their temporary legal status. The term “temporary” is contentious because most Korean Chinese migrants stay on a long- term basis, beyond the provisos of their visa but without overstaying their visa.1 Rather than viewing the transformation of South Korea’s co-ethnic immigration policies over the last three decades as e ither “restrictive” or “open,” in a dichotomous fashion, I consider the whole spectrum of temporal precarity, questioning the meaning of temporariness and migrants’ belonging. In this investigation, I consider the experiences of Korean Chinese migrants who are attempting to reclaim their personal and family time from what Cwerner (2001) has termed the “heteronomous times” of immigration control. For those migrant families whose stories are included in this chapter, the terms of their legal residency status had little bearing on their plans to live in South Korea. I find explanations for their experiences in the contradictory immigration policies and the migration industry, which translates such policies into “codes” that migrants can purchase to extend their stay.2 I argue that the governing paradigm of managed temporary migration (Chi 2008) is countered by the migrants’ management strategies, which they perform with the assistance of migration businesses that help them “buy” time. Through this investigation, I aim to add to a growing body of work on temporalities and immigration, analyzing time as a lens through which precarious l abor, migrants’ lives, and subjectivity can be understood (Ahmad 2008; Axelsson et al. 2017; Elliot 2016; Griffiths 2014; Robertson 2014, 2016). South K orea’s immigration policies for co-ethnics (ethnic Koreans with foreign citizenships) have centered on stratifying categories of p eople on the basis of their citizenship and awarding visas of varying durations depending on an individual’s perceived contribution to the national interest, as interpreted by the state. Until 2010, the vast majority of Korean Chinese migrants were restricted to the category of “temporary visitor.” Here, the term “visitor” is symbolic yet contradictory. The Working Visit (H-2) visa was implemented in 2007 as a program for temporary (dang i) labor migration and was open only to ethnic Koreans from China and countries of the former Soviet Union. This hybrid program allows a discourse regarding ethnonationalism for “our brethren” (uri dongpo) but also controls their entry and limits the social acceptance of these “brethren” by treating them as temporary migrant workers. However, despite the use of the word “visit” in this designation, H-2 visa holders can stay in South K orea for an extended period of time (up to almost five years—four years and ten months, to be precise), and, since 2010, many H-2 visa holders have had a pathway to a longer stay, as described below. I begin this chapter by laying the theoretical groundwork for analyzing the relationship between temporary migration and kinship. After explaining the
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methods, I examine the development of policies affecting Korean Chinese immigration, describing temporal restrictions on kinship-related visas and contradictions in immigration legislation. Next, I critically review the visa management strategies that migrants adopt to maintain their cross-border family relations by defying or circumventing the time limits on their visas. To illustrate how cross- border families negotiate t hese temporal limits, I present the narratives of three Korean Chinese migrant families living in South K orea. Finally, I conclude by highlighting how conflicts between mi grants’ time and the temporal limits imposed for immigration control have s haped Korean Chinese family life.
Time and Temporariness in Kinship-Based Migration Within his broader concept of “the times of migration,” Saulo Cwerner (2001) uses the phrase “heteronomous times” to describe the presence of immigration control that can leave migrants feeling temporally alienated or trapped. Temporal heteronomy is especially pronounced in the current dominant policy paradigm, which prioritizes managing migration by limiting labor migrants’ ability to put down roots in their destination countries. These limits commonly take the form of temporal restrictions on visas or constrained prospects for permanent residency (Castles 2004, 2011; Chi 2008; Wickramasekara 2011). The concept of temporariness is central to understanding the environment that shapes migrants’ precarious work (Ahmad 2008; Axelsson et al. 2017), as well as the spatial and social practices of migrants and their families (Westcott and Robertson 2017). The managed migration paradigm imposes a rigid temporariness on migrants with varied life circumstances and dictates the terms of their stay. For example, a young mother may be frustrated by the lack of family unification provisions in a temporary labor migration program, given that she cannot bring her child with her to the destination country. Facing heteronomous immigration regulations, migrants are forced to adopt temporal strategies to accommodate their individual needs and those of their families. The young mother may designate a person in the country of origin to care for her child, bring her child to the destination country through irregular channels, or choose to seek other arrangements for her child. Migrants abide by multiple temporal norms linked to immigration and to sociocultural practices. These norms tell them when they should do what. In examining the regulations regarding migration, it is important to pay attention to the dynamics at play among the multiple temporal norms and migrants’ counterstrategies. Shanthi Robertson (2013) observed that “elastic” family arrangements are required because entry to destination countries is increasingly “staggered,” involving multiple steps and extended periods on temporary visas (see also Westcott and Robertson 2017). The market providing serv ices for migrants’ border crossings plays an impor tant role in the process of reclaiming time around the world. Legal border crossing routes have received less scholarly attention than illegal routes, despite growing
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evidence that legal routes of migration are acting in an informal way (Surak 2013; Nyberg Sørensen and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013; Lee and Chien 2017; Robertson 2013). In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been directed t oward the new ways in which the state controls its borders through the migration industry. Furthermore, migrants use migration industry serv ices to overcome obstacles posed by immigration restrictions and to cope with shifting and often incoherent immigration policies. This double-faceted role of the migration industry as both an enforcer of border control and a facilitator of border crossing means that migrants must be strategic when selecting serv ices and that using migration ser vices can have unintended consequences. For example, the immigration authority in Australia outsources immigration enforcement to educational institutions by having them surveil and control international students and trainees (Weber et al. 2013). Migrants may also use education to achieve a desirable legal status or to extend their stay in the destination country (Lee and Chien 2017; Robertson 2013). Although the migration industry provides temporary relief from restrictive immigration schemes, it can also trap migrants in a protracted state of precarity (P iper and Withers 2018) by encouraging them to develop a dependence on the informal measures provided by the market rather than challenging the fundamental problems of temporary migration. This chapter explores the market language, codes, and serv ices that have become embedded in migrants’ lived realities. The complex history of Korean Chinese migration has led to contradictory immigration policies that propagate a “papereality” (Dery 1998; Kim 2016) that differs dramatically from the lived real ity. For migrants, the role of the migration industry is to turn unrealistic policies into sets of codes that can be purchased and performed to appease the bureaucracy. For example, migrants who may not know their visa type or subclass can nevertheless explain what they had to do to obtain that visa. Specific policy language, such as “lottery,” “Korean language test,” and “training,” is widely used in daily conversations among Korean Chinese migrants. The migration industry is seen as offering “code words”—in many ways like the “open sesame” that opens the door to hidden wealth in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—that ensure migrants’ initial entry and further stay in South K orea. As long as one has such codes, the legal eligibility requirements for a visa are viewed as almost irrelevant.
Methods This chapter draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with forty-t wo Korean Chinese migrants in South K orea, as well as a document analysis of co-ethnic immigration policies enacted from 1992 to 2017. My fieldwork in South Korea took place over the course of fifteen nonconsecutive months from 2013 to 2015. During the fieldwork, I was based in a migrant organ ization working exclusively with Korean Chinese migrants, which I refer to as the Chinese Brethren Association (a pseudonym), located in the western region of
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Seoul. The association ran a shelter that was popular among live-in domestic and care workers seeking a place to stay at weekends. It also offered classes every Sunday to teach migrants traditional Yanbian dance and drumming. My role was to teach middle-aged migrants how to use their smartphones, which enabled me to interact with them on a regular basis. As most of my research participants spoke fluent Korean (often in the Yanbian dialect), I conducted most of the interviews and focus groups in Korean. In this chapter, I focus on three Korean Chinese women’s families whose stories are representative of broader patterns I observed in the larger data set. T hese three w omen—Sukhui, Miae, and Geumsun (all pseudonyms)—were members of the Chinese Brethren Association with whom I had regular contact during my time as a volunteer. I also interviewed Miae’s daughter-in-law, Jiseon. The document analy sis included a review of laws and policies— namely, the Overseas Koreans Act, the Immigration Control Act, and the enforcement decrees and the enforcement regulations of the said laws. Additionally, I obtained historical records through the online portal of the Korean Ministry of Government Legislation (www.law.go.k r). I accessed public notices (goshi) on co-ethnic migrants through the websites of the K orea Immigration Serv ice (www.h ikorea .go.k r and www.immigration.go.k r). The document analysis allowed me to comprehend and analyze the interview data and to demonstrate how migrants make strategic decisions about their visas despite the complexity of immigration policies. Using the documentary analysis, I next organ ize policy transformations into three time frames to illustrate the relationship between temporariness, kinship, and the changes in the migration programs. Finally, I use the interview data to show how migrants adapt to sudden and frequent changes in visa policies.
Temporariness, Kinship, and Labor Migration Three and (Almost) Five Years: The Predominance of the “Kinship Stream” in Labor Migration from 2003 to 2010 For a decade after the normalization of bilateral ties between South Korea and the People’s Republic of China in 1992, Korean Chinese migrants relied on invitations from their kin (by blood or marriage) to gain visitation permits to enter South Korea. The visa was meant to assist reunification of families that had suffered prolonged separation as a result of the Korean War and the Cold War. However, in the context of the substantial income difference between South Korea and China in the 1990s, Korean Chinese migrants without access to the l abor migration program overstayed their short-term visas for f amily visit to work. Korean Chinese migrants’ experience reveals the exclusionary politics that selectively award long-term status to some overseas Koreans and temporary status to other co-ethnic migrants. Comparing the unequal treatment of Korean
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American and Korean Chinese migrants, Dong-Hoon Seol and John Skrentny (2009) have argued that South Korea’s pattern of ethnic return migration demonstrates “hierarchal nationhood.” Notably, the Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans (hereafter referred to as the Overseas Koreans Act) provided overseas Koreans from areas considered relatively wealthy, such as North America and Europe, with unimpeded access to Overseas Korean Status (F-4 status), but the same status was not provided to ethnic Koreans from China. The exclusion of some ethnic Koreans from the Overseas Koreans Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2001, and the National Assembly a dopted a revised law in 2004. At the same time, the K orea Immigration Ser v ice began devising a temporary labor migration program for co- ethnic migrants, starting with the Employment Management System in 2002 and the Employment Permit System in 2003. The Employment Management System, in effect, regularized the informal route of kinship-turned-labor migration that began in the 1990s by granting work permits exclusively to co-ethnic migrants with kinship invitation documents. The expansion of the temporary migration scheme was in line with South Korea’s perceived need for foreign labor. In 2007, the Overseas Koreans Act Enforcement Decree was revised to make select ethnic Koreans from China and formerly Soviet countries become eligible for F-4 visas, but on a severely restricted basis. In the same year, the government in Seoul introduced the Working Visit (H-2) visa status for ethnic Koreans, framing it as part of the government effort to embrace overseas Koreans but conditioned on their ability to contribute to South Korea’s economic growth (Korea Immigration Bureau 2007). The kinship-based migration stream offered an opportunity to enter the country and work, but f amily relations had little meaning beyond being an administrative requirement, in contrast to the previous focus on the “humanitarian” motivation of family reunification. South Korean relatives are required to guarantee their migrant relative’s identity, but they are not responsible for their financial sponsorship. H-2 visas are issued for three years, and migrants can extend their stay for an additional twenty- two months. The maximum stay is limited to four years and ten months—two months short of the five-year minimum residency requirement to be eligible for citizenship. The visa thus places an explicit obstacle in the way of achieving citizenship and has an appearance of a circular migration program. The H-2 program presented an opportunity for certain migrants, who were called “overseas Koreans without kinship connections [to South Korean citizens]” (muyeon-go dongpo). As shown in figure 5.1, this group included amnesty recipients who were previously undocumented (H-2-3) and t hose selected by lottery (H-2-5). The government created this non-k inship stream to reduce the overall cost of migration (Kim 2009) by providing an opportunity for co- ethnic mi grants without kinship relations to enter South K orea without relying on illicit migration intermediaries and counterfeit kinship documents.
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Kinship (H-2-1) Amnesty (H-2-3) Draw (H-2-5) Visa change (H-2-6) Subsequent H-2 (H-2-7) FIGUR E 5.1 Five major streams of H-2.
Source: Lee 2017, 184.
Continuous Temporariness: Replacing the Kinship Stream Since 2010, the K orea Immigration Serv ice has reformed the co-ethnic visa programs to replace those migrants departing a fter the expiration of their initial three-year H-2 visas in three major ways. First, H-2’s non-k inship streams were expanded by increasing quotas for lottery (H-2-5), creating training programs for immigration purposes (H-2-6), and reducing the waiting time before a second visa could be issued (H-2-7). Second, a transition from an H-2 to an F-4 status was allowed, enabling Korean Chinese migrants to stay in South K orea for more than five years. H-2 (temporary) visa holders can now convert their visas to F-4 (long-term) visas u nder certain conditions, such as evidence of skills, long service in a sector experiencing a shortage, or being more than 60 years of age (Lee and Chien 2017). This development resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of Korean Chinese F-4 visa holders, with a substantial number of first-wave H-2 visa holders acquiring long-term status. Third, since 2011, all co-ethnic migrants u nder 60 years of age have been able to receive short-term visitation visas that are valid for ninety days (C-3-8 visas). Korean Chinese migrants, with the help of migration agencies, have used this provision to extend their stay without acquiring long-term status. Before the reform, those awaiting a second H-2 visa (H-2-7) had to leave South Korea for six months to a year before the visa was issued. Since the reform, migrants have been able to
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enter South Korea on a short-term visitation visa during this period of waiting. Whether this was an intended consequence or not, this policy reform means that H-2 visa holders can continue to live in South Korea during the waiting period through multiple short-term visas, which, de facto, allows for long-term stays. Although this strategy was popular during the time of my fieldwork, it is a highly precarious approach because migrants do not have the right to work on visitation visas, and many work without authorization. These policy changes have meant that Korean Chinese migrants have had many options for remaining on a continuous basis in South K orea, regardless of their long-term legal status since 2011. Rather than g oing undocumented, the migrants I encountered preferred to rotate through a range of temporary visas obtained by following the advice of licensed migration agents, travel agents, nongovernmental organizations, and migrant churches.3 Unlike the definite time line and fixed patterns of the “rhythm of circularity” (Kwon 2013), the recent policy shifts described above have created a rhythm that is more flexible yet precarious as well as performative, with migrant families operating in a state of temporariness. Furthermore, the growth of bureaucracy, complexity, and multiple entry points has transformed the focus of the migration market from committing outright forgeries (Freeman 2011) to enacting a bureaucratic performance. Migration businesses propose performance strategies to assist migrants in appearing “temporary,” “circular,” and like “visitors”—on paper—and offer informal strategies to reinforce this appearance. For example, the agency advises migrants to go for a “visa run,” a short international departure for the purpose of reentering on a new visa, or to sign up for an education program to receive a short-term training visa. These businesses interpret immigration regulations as concrete tasks that migrants must perform to gain access to a visa, following an approach that may be “backdoor” but is nevertheless l egal. The migration industry plays a crucial role in transforming complex bureaucratic policies into a set of codes, performances, and tasks that can be undertaken with assistance. Each concrete task, such as obtaining the airfare for a visa run trip or a training course registered with the K orea Immigration Serv ice, turns into an opportunity for business and profit. Korean Chinese migrants no longer experience the kind of entry restrictions that existed in the 1990s and early 2000s. Although a temporary migrant cannot invite his or her family members to come to South K orea, the variety of options available make it possible for an entire migrant family to enter the country with each member on a different temporary visa. However, in addition to putting a financial burden on migrants, the reliance on bureaucratic performance also creates a toxic dependence on migration businesses that do not always explain to the migrants why certain actions (e.g., flying back and forth or paying for training programs) are necessary. Next I present the narratives of migrants who manage their time and kinship relations in the context of the changing immigration policies, with the help of the migration industry, which provides them with the necessary “codes” to bypass immigration restrictions.
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Negotiating Cross-Border Families beyond Temporal Limits Sukhui, Miae, and Geumsun are Korean Chinese women who w ere in their late 50s and early 60s during the fieldwork. They lived in South Korea with their Korean Chinese husbands (except for Miae, whose husband had died). Miae’s and Geumsun’s adult children lived in South Korea, whereas Sukhui’s sons remained in China, and her daughters-in-law had recently returned to China a fter a temporary stay in South Korea. Miae became a naturalized citizen in the 1990s, whereas Sukhui, Sukhui’s daughters-in-law, Geumsun, and Geumsun’s children, as well as Miae’s son, Mun-gi, and his wife, Jiseon, were on H-2 visas at some point in their lives. As the following narratives indicate, although immigration controls placed substantial restrictions on their lives, these migrants formulated strategies to reclaim their time by creatively taking advantage of the migration policies. When they w ere unable to resist these heteronomous times (Cwerner 2001) imposed by the immigration restrictions, they reorganized their family duties, aspirations, and relationships around the time limits. In the following sections I explore the narratives of Sukhui, Miae and Jiseon, and Geumsun, focusing on how their families managed their temporariness.
Extended Temporariness: Buying Time for Extra Income Sukhui came to South K orea in 1999 a fter paying brokers 70,000 yuan (approximately USD 8,500 in 1999) through a labor migration program called the Industrial Trainee Program. This amount of money was quite large, “worth one apartment unit,” as she explained, though she was not sure what the money was used for, only that it was the “going rate” at the time. In this program, workers were treated as “trainees” and excluded from labor protections, and migrants who left the worksite would be undocumented. Sukhui decided to leave her registered workplace and work for higher pay as an undocumented migrant. She explained that her decision was inevitable in the face of her large debt to the migration brokers, with a high interest rate—50 percent per year. In addition to paying a low salary, her registered employer paid his workers only once a year to prevent them from r unning away, resulting in high compounded interest for Sukhui. Leaving her registered workplace enabled her to pay off her debt relatively quickly, and her hard work won recognition from subsequent employers, allowing her to achieve substantial savings, which she sent to China. However, her undocumented status meant that she could not see her family for a long time. She was 47 when she left China, and she returned seven years later when the amnesty program was announced in 2006, reentering South K orea on an H-2 visa in 2007. Sukhui’s two adult sons had stable and advantageous employment in China, which she wanted them to keep. Her two daughters-in-law, however, came to South Korea temporarily on H-2 visas to earn a higher income (figure 5.2). Neither Sukhui nor her husband had South Korean kin to issue a visa invitation, so her daughters- in-law had to find their own way to enter the country. Her first daughter-in-law
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No documented lineage with a South Korean citizen Industrial Training Program (1999) Undocumented (2002) Brief return to China (2006) H-2-5 (2007) F-4 Return to China?
First daughter-in-law Working visit status (H-2-?) (2009) Return to China (2014)
Sukhui
First son
In-gwon
Work in China until retirement Overseas Korean status (F-4-25) Return to China?
Second son
Second daughter-in-law
Both did not migrate to South Korea
Training visa (2011) Working visit status (H-2-6) Return to China (2014)
FIGUR E 5.2 Sukhui’s family
paid illicit brokers 100,000 yuan in 2009 (approximately USD 15,000 at the time) rather than waiting for a limited non-k inship stream such as the lottery. Her second daughter-in-law entered the country through the training stream (H-2-6) and took classes for a year before her H-2 visa allowed her to work full time. Because her undocumented status prohibited Sukhui from visiting her husband before the amnesty, she explained, her relationship with her husband deteriorated during their long years of separation. This experience convinced her that her daughters-in-law should not stay in South Korea for long. When her second daughter-in-law consulted Sukhui prior to the expiration of her visa, Sukhui pressed her to return to China rather than remaining in South Korea, for fear that the separation would cause her marriage to deteriorate. She said that her company didn’t give her many shifts, so she wanted to leave her job. So, I told her, you go back! If you don’t go back, divorce! You see, I gave her a hard time. She said, “Mother, why are you treating me this way?” . . . I said, “I was separated for more than 10 years, and there isn’t much feeling between [me] and your father[-in-law]. It will be the same for you two. If a married couple separates at such a young age, then you will have no feelings left! Send the divorce papers now!”
Likewise, at the end of her first daughter-in-law’s visa period, Sukhui reported that she had said, “That’s it. Your five-year visa is up, and now you go back!” At the time of the fieldwork, Sukhui had a long-term visa (F-4), and her husband had joined her in South K orea in 2013 after his retirement in China. He also had F-4 visa status, and they worked together as care workers in a long-term care facilit y. However, despite their residency status, her many years of living in South Korea, and her husband’s recent arrival, Sukhui maintained that she was working for “retirement money” and planned to return to China, that living in South Korea was still a “temporary” strategy to earn income, and that she had a vacant apartment waiting in China for their return.
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When Sukhui initially came to South K orea, the immigration policy imposed a temporary stay and lower wages b ecause of her “trainee” status. However, Sukhui used her illegality as an opportunity (see chapter 4 in this volume), though at the tremendous personal cost of not being able to see her family for many years and the subsequent deterioration of her marital relationship. Nonetheless, she remained undocumented for seven years, d oing what she thought was best for her family’s material well-being. A fter being granted an H-2 visa through an amnesty program, she found a l egal way to stay beyond the duration of this visa by converting it into an F-4 visa. Sukhui selectively abided by the temporal rules of South Korea’s immigration regime, demonstrating agency by setting up her own timeline for her stay in South Korea and advising her family on the rules according to what she thought was best for them.
Between Temporary and Permanent: Buying Time in the Meantime Jiseon’s mother-in-law, Miae, is a Korean Chinese migrant whose father moved to China from South Korea before the Korean War. Because Miae’s father had South Korean citizenship, she was able to become a naturalized South Korean citizen as a “return migrant” in 1996. When her son and his wife came to South Korea on H-2 visas (figure 5.3), Miae was able to issue invitation documents for her c hildren’s visa as a naturalized citizen. A fter their arrival, the process was relatively simple for her son, Mun-gi, because he was able to convert his temporary legal status (H-2) into a long-term visa (F-4) with the help of his employer. However, the process was more complicated for his wife, Jiseon, as she gave birth to a child not long after arriving in South Korea. Although both Jiseon and Mun-gi had initially worked for the same employer, Jiseon had to quit her job to take care of the baby and, therefore, could not take advantage of the migration pathway offered to her husband. Childcare responsibilities allowed her to seek only part-time, casual, and informal
Miae’s father
Miae’s sister
Moved to China from South Korea in the early twentieth century
Miae
Both acquired South Korean citizenship in the 1990s Jiseon
Mun-gi
H-2-1(2008) Return to China/wait (2013) C-3-8 (2014) 2nd H-2 (H-2-7) ?
Miae’s husband F-4-25 (date unknown) Deceased in South Korea Mun-gi’s sister
H-2-1 (2008) F-4-24
FIGUR E 5.3 Miae and Jiseon’s f amily
Mun-gi’s brother-in-law
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employment, and she could not find an employer who would help her secure a route to long-term migration status. Jiseon was, therefore, unable to convert her temporary visa before it expired. At the time of our first interview in 2013, Miae said that she spent her Saturdays cleaning and cooking for her son, as Jiseon went to China after the expiration of her visa. Miae introduced me to Jiseon in 2014, a fter she returned to South K orea on a second H-2 visa. Jiseon started the conversation by saying that she had considered going back to China for good because it was difficult to settle in South Korea. However, when she was in China, she also found life t here difficult. She joked that she had lived in South Korea for “too long,” saying that she had even forgotten how to speak in Mandarin, and her son used hand gestures to communicate with his Chinese kindergarten teachers because he had never lived in China and did not speak Chinese. Jiseon expressed a sense of “in-betweenness,” saying, “I have lived here so long it feels like this is my neighborhood. . . . When I’m there, I want to come here. When I’m h ere, I think of China. But my kid, when he was in China, he kept saying that he wanted to come to South K orea because he’s only lived here.” Jiseon’s case underscores the difficulties of mothers in migrant families, which differ from those of m others who have c hildren with South Korean men. Julie Kim in chapter 2 of this volume shows that migrant m others of Korean-born multicultural children have been shown to carry out motherly relational work as a means of integration. However, Korean Chinese mothers like Jiseon who have foreign-born children have to perform motherly work to manage their sense of belonging, or their own sense of temporariness and in-betweenness. Additionally, she had to synch her temporariness to her child’s development stage and arrange childcare responsibilities accordingly. When her first visa was about to expire, she considered returning to China and raising her son t here for a while. She even tried to get pregnant before leaving b ecause she and her husband wanted a second child. While her husband worked in South Korea, she could “use” the waiting period for her new visa to care for the infant. The visa time, however, was heteronomous to their family planning time, because she did not “manage to get pregnant” before her visa expired. She spoke of waiting in China and managing and strategizing her temporary legal status. “[The visa restrictions are] annoying because I have a child. I could have left him h ere, technically speaking [meaning his visa was still valid], but t here is no one to look a fter him. . . . I thought I should go back to live in China. But then I thought, I c ouldn’t do this, a family should live together but we were separated. My kid was looking for his father! So, I processed another visa.” Jiseon had planned to work after returning to South Korea on her second visa, but she got pregnant not long after arriving. She graciously joked about her pregnancy, saying, “Maybe t here’s something in the w ater h ere!” as the timing was ironically incongruent with the plans she had for her employment and her visa. Her husband’s long-term Overseas Korean status did not confer work permits for his dependents. As a pregnant woman and the m other of a toddler, Jiseon had difficulty finding a stable, full-time job that could lead to long-term status (F-4). When
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her toddler is ready for daycare, her visa w ill again be close to expiring. Jiseon cannot plan too far in advance, however, b ecause “the policies change e very day.” Knowing the ephemeral nature of immigration policy, she had learned from experience that she should research the appropriate codes for her specific circumstances only when her visa expiration is imminent. The frequent changes in visa policies made migration agencies function like information hubs that w ere essential for migrants to form strategies. Even without the unfortunate timing of her pregnancy, managing the visa- related tasks necessary to keep the legal status of her family was challenging. Jiseon identified the stages of applying for visas and noted the recent increase in the fees for each step. Her visa, her son’s visa, and her husband’s visa each required an individual application, and they all expired at different times. Knowing the administrative process regarding which documents to file and remembering each family member’s visa expiration date w ere important, and the burden was on Jiseon to handle these tasks. Jiseon also could not understand the need for “administrative performance” when, ultimately, all she needed for a visa was to pay a migration agent. The temporary visa restrictions, she said, w ere “meaningless” because t here was always “another way.” Jiseon expressed her frustration, saying, “It would be good if you could just pay—I d on’t understand why they make you go and come back. It’s a waste of time for Chinese p eople. You c an’t work and you waste money.” nder presThe abundance of temporary options made young migrants feel u sure to be strategic about how they managed their temporary legal status for their family’s optimal benefit. Besides facing the complexity of the task, Jiseon told me that she struggled b ecause her sense of the f uture oscillated between China and South Korea. She believed in China’s rising economic power and was averse to becoming a naturalized South Korean citizen and thus risk the loss of her Chinese citizenship. At the same time, she considered it, because of her husband’s stable income and f amily network in South K orea, where Mun-gi’s mother and s ister’s family live. In the fieldwork, this pattern of ambivalence was especially pronounced among younger Korean Chinese migrants—those in their 20s and 30s. Migrants in this age group were less impressed by the South Korean income, compared with the previous generation. Although the average income remained higher in South Korea than in China, one migrant noted that she felt stuck in low-income production jobs in South K orea. In China, in contrast, she would be able to work in managerial positions and enjoy the prospect of a higher income over the longer term. For similar reasons, Jiseon maintained a vacant home in China because she thought she might return at some point. Jiseon’s challenges and negotiation strategies w ere gendered, especially given her intersectional identity as a m other, a foreigner, and a precarious worker. The uncertainty of her f uture plans was exacerbated by her inability to secure stable long-term residency status in South Korea because of her childcare duties, and she was the only one in her extended family on a temporary H-2 visa. Nonetheless, in
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addition to managing her own legal insecurity, she was responsible for completing unpaid management tasks to maintain her family members’ visas. Likewise, Miae undertook unpaid care labor for her son at weekends while her daughter-in- law Jiseon was in China. Miae, who worked as a live-in domestic worker during the week, expressed her feelings of guilt about rejecting Jiseon’s request that she care for her grandson so that Jiseon could work. Miae justified her decision by saying that “children have to be raised by their mothers, especially when they are young,” and that the f amily would be more at peace if Miae had her own source of income. In Miae and Jiseon’s f amily, the burden of the f amily’s legal insecurity was borne disproportionately by the women, given the unpaid family-related work they were expected to undertake.
Precariously Permanent: Buying Time u ntil Age 60 Like Sukhui, neither Geumsun nor her husband, Taeil, had South Korean relatives who could issue invitation documents for them (figure 5.4). When the H-2 visa program was announced in 2007, the c ouple waited to be selected by lottery to receive visas. However, only Taeil was selected, and he moved to South Korea before Geumsun could; they lived apart while Geumsun continued to be unsuccessful in the draw in subsequent years. In 2011, it was announced that Korean Chinese migrants could obtain H-2 visas after undergoing vocational training while on a training visa. Geumsun undertook nine months of training, taking a floral arrangement class at weekends. She worked as a cleaner during the week to pay for her living expenses and her course, which cost 900,000 South Korean won (approximately USD 900). As it had to Sukhui’s second daughter-in-law, becoming a trainee meant very little to Geumsun. “What floral arrangement!” Geumsun remarked irately, because it was clear to her that she came to South Korea to work and not to learn. The ability to arrange flowers would be of very l ittle use to her b ecause she would not find work as a florist. The course was recommended to her for “practical reasons” (such as price and availability) that she did not fully understand. She understood the course as a “code” that she needed to perform to be granted access to South K orea. Cleaning was demanding work, but she had to attend the eight-hour course on
No documented lineage with a South Korean citizen Training visa (2011) H-2-6 (2011) ( Short-term visitation (C-3-8)?) ( 2nd H-2 (H-2-7)?)
Training (2013) H-2-6 F-4-27 (2014)
Geumsun
Taeil
H-2-5 (2007) C-3-8 (2014) F-4-25 (2015)
Son
Daughter
Training (2013) H-2-6 ?
FIGUR E 5.4 Geumsun’s family
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weekends instead of resting. To make m atters worse, Taeil worked on a construction site and lived in on-site accommodation in a different region when Geumsun first came to South Korea. Unable to afford the rent on her own, she found temporary lodging at a friend’s house, in public saunas, and in motel rooms, and she even spent two nights in a subway station. Later, Geumsun’s husband found a job closer to her, and they were reunited. Her adult son and daughter also joined them on H-2 visas after completing training courses. Geumsun strug gled to negotiate her temporary status because, although her f amily had moved permanently to South K orea in practice, they w ere still “temporary migrants” on paper. She and her son sold or rented out their h ouses in China with the hope of moving to South Korea permanently, and they had no intention of returning. Her family members were negotiating pathways out of the temporary residency status individually, with varying levels of success. Geumsun was not successful in attaining long-term status for herself, but she actively managed the l egal status of each of her f amily members so that her son could be granted an F-4 visa. Because Geumsun did not secure long-term residency status before her H-2 visa expired, at the time of our interview she was planning to make a visa run to Qingdao and then reenter South K orea on a ninety-day visitation visa (C-3-8). This option would allow her to live with her f amily without overstaying her current visa, buying time u ntil she received her second H-2 visa and ultimately an F-4 visa. Geumsun explained the process to me: GEUMSUN: I
should go back, apply, and then come back with an H-2 . . . after
waiting one year. I c an’t wait in China b ecause my son found a tenant for his house and we have no other house left. I have to go to a friend’s house when I go to China because they say this C-3 visa just takes 20 days to process. ME: But
the C-3 visa is just a three-month visitation visa. What happens after
those three months? GEUMSUN: You
go to a place like Qingdao in the morning and come back in the
evening. Then stay in South Korea for three months again, and go to places like Qingdao in the morning and come back in the even ing. Again three months, and go in the morning, and come back in the evening. I don’t have a place to stay in China—where would I stay for a year? The “visa jumping” strategy entails reentering South K orea on a short-term visa while waiting to apply for a subsequent H-2 visa. A migrant can go to any Chinese city (in Geumsun’s case, the coastal city of Qingdao, which is near South Korea), enter South K orea on a new visitation visa, and repeat the process u ntil a second H-2 visa can be applied for and issued. For Geumsun, the required waiting time was pointless because, as Jiseon also noted, migrants could easily “buy” time to circumvent the wait. Geumsun reported that her husband had made visa runs between Seoul and Qingdao for a year u ntil he turned 60 and became eligible for
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the F-4 (long-term) visa because of his age. Geumsun would turn 60 while on her second H-2 visa and be allowed to switch her visa to an F-4. The availability of informally arranged options for prolonged temporariness and the promise of a long-term visa at the age of 60 allowed Geumsun’s family to, in effect, immigrate permanently to South Korea, despite their temporary visas. Their suspended temporariness was mediated by a variety of migration businesses, including education providers, migration agents, travel agencies, and migrant associations. Although this performance of cross-border travel between airports may indeed eventually serve as the proverbial magic words (“open sesame”) leading to permanence and family unification for Geumsun’s f amily, until that time, it traps them in a situation of extended precarity.
Conclusion This chapter has examined the contested relationships among kinship, labor migration, and temporariness that Korean Chinese migrants in South K orea experience, looking in particular at the influences of temporary migration schemes on Korean Chinese families. The stories of the families of Sukhui, Miae and Jiseon, and Geumsun are exemplary of cross-border negotiations of temporality, demonstrating how the interactive dynamics between immigration policies and migrants play out over the course of a life. The experiences of these migrants show that the changes in policies regarding temporary kinship migration are part of a continued mismatch between the migrants’ time and the time of immigration control. Sukhui’s undocumented migration, the temporary migration of her daughters-in- law, Miae’s naturalization, Jiseon’s waiting time in China, and Geumsun’s visa jumping all resulted from migration policies that elicited specific temporal practices. In t hese practices, migrants are alienated from the justification for the policies that prompt them to fulfill roles that they do not understand. The reasons why Geumsun had to be trained in floral arrangement or why Geumsun and Jiseon had to take short trips to Qingdao made little sense to them. In reality, the possibility of a long-term stay, something that Korean Chinese migrants have fought for and desired for decades, and the complex codes that enable a long-term stay disguise the conditional acceptance of certain overseas Koreans through the exclusionary application of the Overseas Koreans Act. In this context, women migrants undertake various management tasks to satisfy hostile immigration time requirements according to the needs of their families. Sukhui made sure that her daughters-in-law kept their stays temporary, despite the emerging options for longer stays. Jiseon became an expert in visa policies to arrange the administration of her family members’ different documentation requirements, and Miae engaged in unpaid care work for her son, cooking and cleaning for him in place of his wife while she was away in China. Geumsun also actively sourced visa-related information to secure F-4 visas for her son and her husband. In addition to the translation of the policy by the migration industry
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and the performance by migrants, women’s unpaid family labor is integral to migrant families reclaiming their time from immigration control. The time limits of the migrants’ visas had little to do with their decisions to stay in South Korea temporarily or permanently. In fact, Sukhui’s long-term residency status and Geumsun’s temporary residency status contrasted with their future plans regarding life in South Korea. T hese migrants’ strategies and plans were largely s haped by complex family relationships, previous migratory experience, their estimation of the country’s development, and their financial and housing circumstances. Sukhui was determined to root her family home in China. Jiseon’s temporary status in South Korea was only a small part of her feeling of ambivalence about the future. Although temporary status was an obstacle for Geumsun’s f amily, it did not stop them from selling or renting out their homes in China. The Korean Chinese migrant families described here had experiences with waiting that differed somewhat from the waiting reported in previous studies. This was not a “migratory restlessness” (Elliot 2016) caused by the uncertainty of bureaucratic immigration status, long waiting times, and a reliance on informal and illicit intermediaries (Chu 2010). Instead, these Korean Chinese migrants knew how long they had to wait, as well as how to circumvent the wait. Although the immigration policies and procedures are publicly available, they are written in complex bureaucratic language, given the convoluted history of Korean Chinese migration to South Korea. The policies thus create a bureaucratic reality that differs from migrants’ daily experiences. These policies can be converted into a set of tasks to be performed by migrants. For this reason, Korean Chinese migrants buy serv ices, seeking to purchase the right code to open the magic door that w ill allow them to acquire appropriate legal status that suits the needs of their f amily at the moment. However, over-reliance on t hese migration serv ices can trap them in an alienated temporality and prolonged temporariness. Against this backdrop, migrants’ strategies are far from individual decisions, but rather coordinated family efforts that take into consideration various circumstances and plans regarding retirement, f uture c areers, family planning, and child-rearing. NOTES
1. For stylistic purposes, hereafter I omit placing quotation marks around the term “temporary” but the contentious nature of its use should be noted. 2. Hernandez-L eon (2008, cited in Nyberg Sørensen and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013, 154) defines the migration industry as the “ensemble of entrepreneurs, businesses, and ser vices which, motivated by the pursuit of financial gain, facilitate and sustain international migration.” Nyberg Sørensen and Gammeltoft-Hansen (2013) include serv ice providers (for-profit and not-for-profit) that facilitate the border-crossing process for transnational migration. 3. By “migration agent,” I am referring to the licensed “immigration administrator” (imin haengjeongsa) who often shares an office with a travel agency (yeohaengsa). I noticed a functional difference in the way Korean Chinese migrants use the term “brokers” and
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“travel agency,” with the former usually referring to those handling illicit and costly forms of migration. Travel agencies in Yanbian area (in Northeast China) have assisted migrants with not only flight tickets but also the visas and paperwork necessary to leave China from the early years of Korean Chinese migration. Travel agencies located in business areas popular with Korean Chinese migrants in South K orea serve a similar purpose. Licenses for migration agents w ere instituted in 2008 in South K orea, and migration agents operate on their own or in conjunction with travel agents. REFERENCES
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——— . 2020. 2019 Chulipguk oegukin jeongchek tong-g yeyeonbo (Korea Immigration Serv ice Statistics 2017). Gwacheon: Korea Immigration Serv ice/Ministry of Justice (in Korean). Kwon, June Hee. 2013. “Mobile Ethnicity: The Formation of the Korean Chinese Transnational Migrant Class.” PhD diss. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Lee, Chang Won, Seori Choi, and Seong ll Park. 2017. Guknae Ijuminui Chwieop Mit Sahoe Saenghwi: Jung-Guk Chulsinjareul Jungsimeuro (Working and Living Conditions of Chinese Migrants in Korea). Seoul: IOM-M RTC (in Korean). Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2006. “Migrant Domestic Workers in Korea: The Effects of Global House holding on Korean Chinese Domestic Workers.” International Development Planning Review 28 (4): 499–514. ———. 2014. “The Role of Multicultural Families in South Korean Immigration Policy.” In Asian Women and Intimate Work, edited by Emiko Ochiai and Kaoru Aoyama, 289–311. Leiden: Brill. Lee, Sohoon. 2017. “Migrant Women between the Law: Bargaining Kinship, L abour, and Space- Time Borders in South K orea.” PhD diss, University of Sydney. Lee, Sohoon, and Yi-Chun Chien. 2017. “The Making of ‘Skilled’ Overseas Koreans: Transformation of Visa Policies for Co-ethnic Migrants in South Korea.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (13): 2193–2210. Li, Hai Ying. 2010. “Damunhwajedohwaui poham/baeje nonliwa joseonjokijuyeoseongui wichiseong” (Inclusive/Exclusiveness of Multicultural Institutions and Positioning of Josunjok Migrant W omen). Korean Sociological Association Conference Proceeding, Seoul. December. Nyberg Sørensen, Ninna, and Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen. 2013. “Introduction.” In The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of International Migration, edited by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, 1–23. New York: Routledge. Park, Hyun Ok. 2011. “For the Rights of ‘Colonial Returnees’: Korean Chinese, Decolonization, and Neoliberal Democracy in South K orea.” In New Millennium South Korea: Neoliberal Capitalism and Transnational Movements, edited by Jesook Song, 115–129. New York: Routledge. P iper, Nicola, and Matt Withers. 2018. “Forced Transnationalism and Temporary L abour Migration: Implications for Understanding Migrant Rights.” Identities 25 (5): 558–575. Robertson, Shanthi. 2013. Transnational Student-Migrants and the State: The Education-Migration Nexus. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ——— . 2014. “Time and Temporary Migration: The Case of Temporary Graduate Workers and Working Holiday Makers in Australia.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (12): 1915–1933. ———. 2016. “Student-Workers and Tourist-Workers as Urban Labour: Temporalities and Identities in the Australian Cosmopolitan City.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (14): 2272–2288. Seol, Dong-Hoon. 2000. “Past and Present of Foreign Workers in Korea 1987–2000.” Asian Solidarity Quarterly 2: 6–31. Seol, Dong-Hoon, and John D. Skrentny. 2009. “Ethnic Return Migration and Hierarchical Nationhood.” Ethnicities 9 (2): 147–174. Shin, Julia Jiwon. 2016. “The Racialisation of Migrant Workers: The Construction of the ‘Other’ in South K orea.” minjujuuiwa ingwon, September. Surak, Kristin. 2013. “The Migration Industry and Developmental States in East Asia.” In The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of International Migration, edited by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, 87–107. New York: Routledge. Weber, Leanne, Amanda Wilson, and Jenny Wise. 2013. “Cops and Dobbers: A Nodal Cartography of Onshore Migration Policing in New South Wales.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 46 (1): 32–50.
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Westcott, Harriet, and Shanthi Robertson. 2017. “Childcare, Mobility Decisions and ‘Staggered’ Migration.” Migration, Mobility & Displacement 3 (1): 86–100. Wickramasekara, Piyasiri. 2011. “Circular Migration: A Triple Win or a Dead End?” Global Union Research Network Discussion Paper No. 15. Geneva: International L abour Organi zation. Yang, Hae-woo. 2019. “Nuga hyeomngoreul saengsanhaneuga? Injongjeok wigyeui hacheunge baechidoen oegulinde” (Who Produces Xenophobia? Foreigners Placed in the Lower Levels of the Racial Hierarchy). Bigyomunhayeogu 56: 87–125.
PA RT T H R EE
Claiming Rights and Building Lives
6 Unbearable Weightiness of Marriage Citizenship and Marriage in Multicultural South Korea N O R A H U I-J U NG K I M
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
International migration has renewed the importance of marriage as a citizenship- delineating institution. F amily migration accounts for 40 to 60 percent of all immigrants in western Europe (Groenendijk 2006) and is the main way for nonEU members to migrate to EU countries (Bonjour and Kraler 2015). In East Asia, foreign brides account for the majority of family-forming migration (Jones 2012; Wang and Chang 2002). Marriage migration in South Korea (Korea) has attracted the attention of the state, civil society, and academics alike, for various reasons. On the one hand, Korean state agents, such as policy makers, bureaucrats, and the judiciary, have expressed concerns that migrants use marriage to circumvent restrictive immigration policies and gain a foothold in K orea (Kim and Kim 2020). In this sense, the Korean state is preoccupied mainly with the vulnerability of the border—its inability to completely control who gets into the country, who gets to stay, and for ecause the state has how long.1 Marriage immigrants are of particular concern b few legitimate ways to control the institution of marriage, which I refer to as vulnerability of marriage for the state. With whom and when one may enter or exit a marriage is largely understood as a matter of individual choice, rather than an issue relating to national security. As long as marriage is between a man and a woman, the Korean state cannot deny issuing a marriage license to a c ouple as easily as it can deny a foreigner an entry visa to its territory. From a state’s perspective, marriage is a vulnerable institution in which the individual’s right to choose a spouse often trumps the state’s legitimacy to dictate who can marry and with whom. The vulnerability of marriage—that is, the state’s lack of legitimacy to control the institution—is heightened in the era of international migration. The state may have to approve an immigration applicant that it would otherw ise reject 1 33
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if the applicant is a spouse of a citizen. In this sense, the vulnerability of the border is in part caused by the vulnerability of marriage. Over the past two decades, the Korean state has taken various measures to control transborder marriages. The state’s strategy of talking about fraudulent marriage, I argue, is the state’s strategy for coping with the vulnerability of the border caused by the vulnerability of marriage. Although the state lacks legitimacy in controlling heterosexual marriage, it claims legitimacy over certain marriages when they can be deemed fraudulent (that is, marriages undertaken with a sole intent of gaining citizenship). On the other hand, scholars and activists have complained that Korean immigration and citizenship polices have made immigrant women more dependent on their husbands and in-laws. In this sense, Korean activists in support of marriage immigrants approach the issue using a framework similar to Susan Okin’s (1989) omen anticvulnerability by marriage, which discusses the systematic injustice to w ipating marriage (such as gender socialization and career choices), during marriage (uneven and unjust division of h ousework), and a fter the termination of marriage by separation and divorce (differential economic impact). The vulnerabilities that immigrant wives in Korea face are both legal and social, and these issues are interconnected. The patriarchal nature of marriage puts marriage immigrants in a socially vulnerable situation. In addition, as I explain later in this chapter, by making marriage immigrants’ prospects of acquiring Korean citizenship dependent on the cooperation of husbands and in-laws, the Korean state extends immigrant spouses’ social vulnerability into the realm of legal vulnerability. The policy discourse on marriage migration has, so far, been defined by juxtaposition of fraudulent marriage and the vulnerability of marriage immigrants, with debates centering on which aspect is in a more urgent need of protection. This chapter’s central goal is to demonstrate how the debate between vulnerability of versus vulnerability by marriage has only justified more state intervention in the regulation of transborder marriages. I build on the insight of feminist legal scholars that marriage and state are mutually constitutive (Cott 1995; Fineman 1991; Stevens 1997). To shed a comparative light on understanding how the issue unfolds within Korea’s cultural and legal contexts, I first review how the “fraudulent” marriage discourse in the United States and Europe is linked to the vulnerability of borders that is caused by vulnerability of marriage. Then I briefly review Okin’s concept of vulnerability by marriage and discuss how citizenship, because of its intricate connection with marriage, is an important source of vulnerability by marriage. In the main section of the chapter, I delve into how the fraudulent marriage discourse has deepened immigrant spouses’ vulnerability by marriage in Korea in the past two decades by analyzing relevant laws and court cases. Paying particular attention to how the law is reconfiguring marriage and citizenship in multicultural Korea, I contend that state intervention, for the purpose of protecting the border, or the marriage itself, or the individuals in the marriage, undermines the
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individual autonomy of immigrant wives and pushes the principles of liberalism to their limits.
Fraudulent Marriage and Vulnerability of the Border I use the term vulnerability of marriage to mean a liberal state’s lack of legitimacy to regulate individuals’ choices regarding when to enter or exit a marriage and whom to marry. The vulnerability of marriage is a result of the liberalization of marriage norms, both legal and social, that has accrued since the mid-t wentieth century (Abrams 2012). The introduction of no-fault divorce, which allows a person to end a marriage for any or no reason at all (even when one partner vehemently opposes the divorce), is a primary example. When entering and exiting marriage has been made easy, the state has lost control over the marriage process; when an individual can elect to pursue transborder marriage without the input of the state, the state has also lost some control over the border, making it more porous, or vulnerable to marriage decisions made by citizens. Over the last decade, the Korean courts have made several decisions that signified a weakening of state regulation. First, in 2005, Civil Code 7427, which prevented divorced women from remarrying for six months, was eliminated. The second decision ruled that Criminal Code 304 was unconstitutional (Case no. 2008HUNBA58, November 26, 2009). This long-standing law had allowed women to sue men for enticing them to engage in intercourse under false pretenses, such as a marriage proposal.2 The Constitutional Court ruled against the code, citing that it “restricts men’s sexual autonomy and rights to privacy and freedom” and “treats women as if they are minors and the state unduly denies w omen’s self-determination under the name of protecting w omen.” Third, in 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled Article 2 of Civil Code 844 partly unconstitutional. The article stipulates that babies born within three hundred days of a divorce are assumed to be children of the ex- husband. The ruling stated that the article “violates the mother’s human rights and basic liberty in regard to marriage and family life.” Finally, in the same year, after almost a decade of legal debate, the Constitutional Court ruled that Criminal Code 241, which held adultery to be illegal, was unconstitutional (Case no. 2009HUNBA17, February 26, 2015). In ruling against it, the judges declared that it “was beyond the bound of the state’s purview to restrict the sexual freedom and self-determinacy of individuals.” These rulings collectively indicate the emerging legal (and social) norm that regard entering and exiting marriage as a matter of individual choice in K orea. In this age of international migration, the state’s lighter rein on marriage could give way to lax borders. It is against this background that the term fraudulent marriage became a significant part of the immigration policy lexicon. Since marriage is first and foremost a legal institution, it is only the state and its legal authority that has the power to declare a union authentic or fraudulent. As a means of
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protecting the border, states have increasingly assumed the role of marriage police and have intensified scrutiny of transborder marriages (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; Eggebø 2013; Foblets and Vanheule 2006; Lan 2008; Schmidt 2011; Yeoh and Huang 2010). This contrasts sharply with the state’s involvement in marriage between two individuals from the same state, wherein the state intervenes minimally and only in the entering (marriage license) and exiting (divorce) stages (Abrams 2007, 2012; Jones 1997). Legal judgment of what makes a marriage authentic or fraudulent is based on culturally and historically specific ideas of marriage (see, for example, Leinonen and Pellander 2014; Pellander 2015; Wray 2006; West 2011), in a similar way to how socio-legal norms construct “illegal” or “deviant” behaviors. Various European countries share the common assumption that marriage is based on individual autonomy and choice (Giddens 1992). This view stigmatizes arranged marriage, as well as the commercially mediated one common among transborder marriages. The Korean legal interpretation of authentic marriage is somewhat different from that of Europe.3 Korea is not especially concerned about arranged marriages per se, possibly b ecause arranged marriage was common in K orea until recently. It is also because a typical transborder marriage in Korea involves a male Korean citizen bringing in an immigrant wife, and the Korean state has placed much importance to male citizens’ right to have a wife and family. Still, the concern that marriage immigrants are taking advantage of a vulnerable institution, thus making the borders more vulnerable, is pervasive in Korea as well as in Europe. I explain in more detail how the discourse of fraudulent marriage has developed and reproduced in K orea in the following sections. First, though, let me turn to the flip side of the vulnerability dichotomy: the vulnerability imposed on marriage immigrants by marriage.
Vulnerability by Marriage In her book, Justice, Gender, and the Family, Susan Okin brings family through the lens of justice and argues that marriage and f amily practices “constitute the pivot of a social system of gender that renders women vulnerable to dependency, exploitation and abuse” (1989, 136). The source of vulnerability by marriage is systemic, including family laws and social welfare policies. Although Okin does not mention citizenship within her critique, marital status has historically been entangled with citizenship, especially for women. W omen in the United States did not enjoy independent citizenship u ntil the passage of the Cable Act in 1922, and instead derived it from their relationship to men, primarily their husbands (Bredbenner 1998; Gardner 2005; Kaufman and Williams 2004; Munday 2009; Nicolosi 2001). Derivative citizenship denies a woman’s w hole and independent personhood and can place w omen in vulnerable situations, since their citizenship may be taken away against their w ill or preference. Even a fter women gained “nationality of her own” (Bredbenner 1998), subsequent legal changes, even those intended to increase
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gender equality, have perpetuated vulnerability by marriage for women.4 Increased gender equality meant women would gain more benefits upon entering a marriage and retain those benefits despite leaving one. Given the limited ways to control marriage itself (vulnerability of marriage), liberal states adopted two options when it came to transborder marriage: reducing the benefits available for immigrant wives and demanding more strict proof of authenticity of marriage. Descent-based citizenship—jus sanguinis—is another institutional arrangement that renders women dependent on marriage and their husbands. Both the husband and wife can transmit their citizenship to the offspring of a legally acknowledged marriage. In most countries, c hildren born out of wedlock are assumed to be the dependent of the mother, but not necessarily of the biological father. Conversely, children born in a legally acknowledged marriage are assumed to be the c hildren of the husband u nless clear evidence suggests otherw ise. It is the (state-endowed) status of husband, not of biological father, that gives one the privilege to control “the labor of women’s bodies (children)” (Stevens 1997, 69). For a father to confer his citizenship to c hildren out of wedlock, he has to acknowledge his parentage by recognition (acknowledging c hildren as his own) or legitimation (marrying the mother). Some scholars (such as Vink and de Groot 2010) consider this discriminatory toward men, b ecause the father cannot automatically transmit his citizenship to his child but must take an extra step to do so. Although it may be inconvenient for some unwed fathers, this treatment reveals the legal construction of motherhood and fatherhood: the former as biological and the latter as social and a choice. For a child born abroad and out of wedlock, acquiring citizenship in their father’s country often depends on the father’s willingness to acknowledge the c hildren as their own.5 If the father refuses to acknowledge paternity, family relationship can be established by judicial decision after official documents and other forms of evidence are submitted. The burden of proof, however, falls on the offspring and decisions are subject to legal authorities’ discretion.
Vulnerability of and by Marriage in K orea As of 2016, marriage immigrants in Korea numbered about 260,000. While about 7 percent of all newly issued marriage certificates are between Koreans and foreign- born spouses, about 84 percent of the foreign-born spouses are female (KIS 2017, 597). In the following section, I review changes in family, citizenship, and immigration laws and related court cases in K orea, to demonstrate how the laws privileged men’s right to have a wife and to choose his family over immigrant women’s need for secure residency.
Vulnerabilities of Marriage and the Border Until 1998, w omen’s citizenship in K orea was mainly derivative: a Korean w oman’s citizenship was rescinded when she married a foreign man, and foreign-born women were immediately given Korean citizenship on their marriage to Korean
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men citizens. A foreign-born wife of a non-Korean was not eligible for Korean nationality u nless the naturalization request was filed in conjunction with her foreign-born husband’s naturalization application. She was granted Korean citizenship, regardless of her preference, when her foreign-born husband became a naturalized Korean citizen. Further, one had to be fathered by a Korean man to be eligible for Korean citizenship; having a Korean m other was not enough, and the children of the now-naturalized husband w ere not eligible for Korean citizenship. Under the pre-1998 law, transborder marriage was not considered to pose a threat to the institution of marriage or to the border; even if the state did not have a legitimate way to control transborder marriages and immigrant wives, the husbands did. The discourse around transborder marriage began to change in 1997 with a set of amendments proposed to increase gender equality. The 1998 nationality law ensured equal rights for Korean women so that their offspring, regardless the nationality of the husband, could automatically become Korean citizens. Also, the law now required a foreign spouse, either male or female, to meet the two-year residency requirement and secure approval from the Ministry of Justice. The changes in nationality requirements made the 1998 act more gender-neutral, but the act was also motivated by the need to control the border while respecting the husband’s right to have a wife (thus allowing only “worthy” wives to become citizens). The vulnerability of the border is in part caused by the vulnerability of marriage; the Korean state cannot decide whom a citizen can or cannot marry, but it can decide who can become a citizen. Indeed, then Minister of Justice Kim Dongkyu explained that the rationale for revoking automatic citizenship for migrant w omen was “to prevent foreign women from using marriage to Korean men as an easy way to gain Korean citizenship.” 6 In early 2000, given the unprecedented number of foreign brides immigrating to K orea, some migrant advocacy organizations argued that the naturalization tests w ere too difficult for many marriage immigrants. In response, a Ministry of Justice official defended the requirement, arguing that “easy access to citizenship may cause serious social problems in the context of the increasing number of foreign brides [entering] fraudulent marriage for the purpose of coming to K orea.” 7 Nonetheless, the 2003 revised nationality act exempted migrant spouses from the nationality test. The 2003 revision made immigrants whose marriages were terminated for reasons beyond their control, such as death of the spouse, eligible for naturalization but required them to pass a naturalization test for citizenship.8 The law, though, did not cite domestic violence as a cause for involuntary termination of a marriage, and marriage immigrants who escaped an abusive marriage were not eligible for Korean citizenship. In 2005, a group of assembly members proposed adding it to the measure. But a member of the legislation review committee argued that “if the law allowed the naturalization of foreign spouses whose marriage ended just because of domestic violence, regardless of whose fault that violence might have been, it goes against the principle of the Korean f amily law that holds keeping the f amily
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together as a top priority,” and warned that “the proposal would invite more dissolution of families and encourage fraud marriages.”9 As these remarks make clear, the key concern for the lawmakers was the vulnerability of the Korean citizen husband. Thus, honoring the husband’s right to have a wife was prioritized over the potential vulnerability (i.e., domestic violence) that migrant wives might face. Bear in mind that the Korean state cannot prohibit wives from leaving their husbands. However, it does fall u nder legitimate purview of the state to decide who is eligible for citizenship, and by declaring divorced migrant spouses ineligible, the state functions as the marriage police. Presently, domestic violence is included in a list of reasons for involuntary termination of marriage, but marriage immigrants still carry the burden of proof. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the courts to dismiss the request for divorce due to domestic violence, citing lack of “objective evidence to prove [the husband’s] violence and infidelity.”10 The burden of proof deepens immigrant wives’ vulnerability by marriage, as discussed in the following section. The assumption underlying concerns about vulnerability of marriage is that marriage is an easy way to acquire citizenship. The changes in the nationality laws require marriage immigrants to do increasingly more work to prove the authenticity of their marriage and ultimately to be eligible for citizenship. Another example of this trend is the introduction of the Korean Immigration and Integration Program (KIIP). In 2009, the Ministry of Justice announced its plan to revoke the naturalization test exemption for marriage immigrants and to require them take a two-hundred-hour civic integration course—the KIIP.11 The ministry’s plan was put on hold, however, mainly b ecause marriage immigrant advocacy organ izations in Korea opposed it. They argued that not e very immigrant spouse was in a position to commit to the required two hundred hours. Although enrolling in the KIIP remains optional, the ministry promises an easier and quicker citizenship application review process (one year versus at least two years) for marriage immigrants who have taken and completed the KIIP. In 2018, about 35 percent of KIIP participants (17,645 participants) w ere marriage immigrants.12 Concerns over fraudulent marriages entered the l egal discussion yet again with the nationality amendment of 2010, which allowed dual citizenship for the first time in Korean history. The 2010 law states that continued marriage to a Korean spouse is a precondition for dual citizenship. Further, although it allows marriage immigrants who remain married to keep both their original citizenship and Korean citizenship, it forces those who are no longer married, no matter the reason, to choose a single nationality. The rationale for excluding marriage immigrants from full eligibility for dual nationality is remarkably similar to that for making their access to Korean citizenship conditional on their commitment to remain married (as expressed in debates over the 2003 and 2005 nationality law amendments). As a member of the legislation review committee remarked, “given the high divorce rates among international marriage couples, there have been some serious concerns that allowing dual nationality for all foreign brides w ill actually exacerbate
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the dissolution of those families [after achieving citizenship].”13 Once again, the state exerts control over the marriage as a proxy for controlling the border, by denying marriage immigrants the protections of Korean citizenship if they leave their marriage. It is not hard to see how this measure would penalize female migrants from leaving an undesirable marriage. Even a fter a marriage immigrant has become a Korean citizen, the 2008 nationality law amendment made it possible for that citizenship to be revoked if it is proved that she acquired it illegitimately, such as in a fraudulent marriage.14 In 2009, proposals to exempt marriage immigrants who give birth to a child from the citizenship repeal clause and to place a five-year limit on Korean citizenship annulment w ere up for consideration in the National Assembly. Both w ere rejected on the grounds that they would “legalize the status of those who have acquired Korean citizenship via illegitimate means and may increase the number of illegal immigrants.”15 This statement clearly indicates that the discourse of fraudulent marriage is an expression of the state’s anxiety over the vulnerability of the border, and the possibility that “unwanted” immigrants may become citizens of K orea.
Dependency and the Limits of Threat of Exit Despite the loss of automatic access to Korean citizenship for marriage immigrants under the 1998 amendment, marriage still carries certain privileges and, for some, is the only feasible option for migration. An analysis of 105 naturalization litigation cases filed in the Seoul Administrative Courts by marriage immigrants provides some support for the “marriage benefit” (for more detailed analysis, see Kim 2016). Among the fifty-eight cases that the Ministry of Justice rejected on the grounds of marriage inauthenticity, only nineteen plaintiffs were still married, while thirty-nine were divorced, widowed, or separated. Marriage immigrants are not only more likely to pass the scrutiny of the Ministry of Justice but also more likely to get a favorable ruling if they appeal. Among the fifty-eight cases, the court ruled in favor of immigrants who w ere currently married 37 percent of the time (seven of nineteen cases) but only 13 percent of the time (five of thirty-nine) when the marriage had already ended. Although carrying some benefits, the institution of marriage increases immigrant w omen’s vulnerability by rendering them dependent on the cooperation of their husbands and in-laws. I use court cases to illustrate the nature of the vulnerability. To acquire Korean citizenship, marriage immigrants first need to convince immigration officials that their marriages are authentic; for this the cooperation of the Korean husband and in-laws is essential. The case of Ms. Na shows how the need to prove the authenticity of a marriage creates vulnerability.16 Although the Ministry of Justice initially rejected her naturalization application, the ministry decision was then revoked by court order. Ms. Na’s appeal was successful in large part b ecause her brother-in-law submitted an affidavit confessing that he had testified falsely to a ministry official when he stated that he had not met Ms. Na or been aware of her marriage to his brother, which led the ministry
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to reject Ms. Na’s application. The brother-in-law explained that he had lied b ecause he did not like that his brother married a Chinese w oman. He decided to change his testimony a fter seeing Ms. Na taking good care of his brother. “I am so delighted that my brother met my sister-in-law,” his new affidavit states. “He’d lived a tough and lonely life after he got divorced [from his first wife]. I feel really sorry that my sister-in-law has to work twenty-four hours at the hospital to make enough money to cover medical bills and other expenses for my b rother.” The court also noted that “Ms. Na visited her husband over the weekend [when she was not working] and took care of him.”17 The judges based their decision on Ms. Na’s gendered per formance, such as taking care of her husband. Ms. Na “earned” her citizenship by convincing her brother-in-law and the court that she is a good wife and caregiver of her husband. Immigrant women’s gender roles as wives, daughters-in-law, mothers of f uture citizens, and sisters-in-law are the price they pay for Korean citizenship (see, for example, Kim 2013; Lee 2008). The case of Ms. Na also illustrates another aspect of vulnerability by marriage. Recall that Ms. Na’s brother-in-law’s testimony played a major role in the ministry’s and the court’s decisions. Immigrant w omen like Ms. Na assume the burden of satisfying not only their husbands but also their in-laws. Marriage immigrants are vulnerable even a fter they have acquired citizenship or permanent residency, if the state determines that the marriage is not genuine after all. Ms. Ny, a Vietnamese woman, is a case in point. She came to Korea in June 2003 as a marriage immigrant, but her Korean husband left for Canada in December 2005 and never contacted Ms. Ny a fter that.18 B ecause Ms. Ny maintained the marriage with her absent husband for two years, from June 2003 to December 2005, she was eligible for naturalization. She applied for and gained permanent residency in December 2010 and filed for divorce in July 2011. Sometime after her husband’s disappearance and before the divorce was finalized (the court document does not provide specifics of the timing), Ms. Ny began dating a Viet namese man. They had a baby together in April 2011. In February 2013, the ministry notified Ms. Ny that her permanent residency had been revoked. The judges stated that “the Ministry’s decision to grant her permanent residency was made without knowing that she had been dating another man and had given birth to an illegitimate child, and that it was highly unlikely that the Ministry would have approved the application, had the Ministry been informed about the fact.” Similarly, Ms. Ge had her permanent residency status revoked when she remarried less than two months after her divorce from her Korean husband. Based on how quickly she remarried, the ministry concluded that her marriage to the Korean ex-husband must have been fraudulent.19 The two cases illustrate how vulnerability by marriage permits scrutiny of her life before, during, and after a marriage. According to Okin (1989), although “threat of exit” can be a strong protection for w omen against vulnerability by marriage, the capacity to exit is l imited by economic dependency. Okin’s argument is later criticized for undermining w omen’s agency in initiating divorce and overemphasizing the significance of economic
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resources at the expense of psychological and emotional factors (see, for example, Ferguson 2016). In the case of marriage immigrants in Korea, Okin’s argument holds mostly true, and the threat of exit is severely weakened by the legal arrangement wherein an exit from marriage often entails a change of immigration status from legal to illegal. The law allows t hose whose marriages w ere dissolved before meeting the residency requirement to be eligible for naturalization if the marriage ended through no fault of their own (such as the husband’s death or disappearance). Nonetheless, it is extremely rare for marriage immigrant w omen to benefit from this law, because Korean courts apply a strict interpretation of no- fault termination of marriage. One frequently cited court statement is “the article ‘termination of marriage due to no fault of one’s own’ should be interpreted in a limited sense, such as death or desertion of a spouse.”20 Indeed, among the 105 court cases that the author reviewed, only one naturalization case successfully challenged the ministry’s rejection on the basis of marriage termination for no fault of their own.21 Even when a marriage immigrant secures a verdict from a family court stating that the marriage was a no-fault termination on the wife’s part, the administrative court (in which the decision regarding naturalization and visa issues is disputed) often dismisses the f amily court’s verdict, especially when the decision was reached in the absence of the husband. A review reveals that in most divorce-related cases, husbands simply do not show up at the hearing, rendering the family court’s verdict of limited use for marriage immigrants. A woman may get her divorce, but it w ill cost her Korean citizenship. Some ethnographic studies have illustrated the quandary w omen face with regard to the option of exit from marriage. Marriage immigrants in Korea find “the threat of divorce” an “effective negotiating strategy” but face additional restrictions when using this threat, because “when they do, they are blamed not only for the dissolution of [the] marriage, but also for allegedly unscrupulous motives for marriage” (Kim 2010, 723). State authorities are not sympathetic to immigrant women at the margin of conventional marriage. Marriage immigrants take numerous factors into consideration when deciding w hether to stay in Korea a fter divorce (see chapter 7). One especially impor tant consideration is custody of c hildren, which limits the leverage of the threat of divorce for marriage immigrants. The family court in Korea rarely awards primary custody rights to marriage immigrants, citing their lack of familiarity with Korean society or language as reasons (Lee 2013, 171). Even if a divorced mother managed to get visitation rights, she could not exercise them in a meaningful way, because the state refuses to extend visas for divorced women to stay in Korea.22 For this reason, when an immigrant woman decides to end her marriage, she has the added burden of deciding whether she is willing to give up her children. The lack of realistic options for exiting undesirable marriages, combined with their dependence on Korean husbands to secure their Korean citizenship, puts marriage immigrants in an extremely vulnerable position.
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Ms. Park’s story illustrates various aspects of marriage immigrant vulnerability. Ms. Park married a Korean man and gained Korean citizenship in February 1996, before the 1998 nationality law amendment, when foreign wives had immediate and automatic access to Korean citizenship. She lost that citizenship, however, b ecause she did not renounce her Chinese citizenship during the period when Korea did not permit dual citizenship. In 2006, Ms. Park applied for restoration of her Korean citizenship. The court denied her application on the grounds that she had lived in Korea as an illegal immigrant for almost three years since ending her marriage in 2002. In the court’s eyes, her decision to choose the life of an illegal immigrant proved that “coming to Korea [not the marriage itself] might have been her main intention.”23 Ms. Park’s account is a bit different, however. She came to K orea with a sincere intention to marry in 1996, but she found that her husband had lied about his financial status. He was also unwilling to help her restore her Korean citizenship in fear that she might leave him after she got it. She endured her unhappy marriage u ntil 2002, when she finally decided that she could no longer live with him. She was in the process of returning to China, only to find out that she could not, b ecause her Chinese citizenship had been revoked when she had married a Korean. Ms. Park was in a vulnerable situation b ecause her citizenship depended on her marital status. Nationality rules, based on the patriarchal structure of marriage and family, had deprived her of her original Chinese citizenship (regardless of her preference). Moreover, the new restrictions—including the requirement that the husband initiate the naturalization application—which were imposed because of concerns over the vulnerability of marriage, had blocked her from regaining Korean citizenship a fter she divorced her Korean citizen husband.
Privileging Korean Husband’s Choice While portraying Korean husbands and the Korean nation-state as victims of opportunity-seeking immigrant wives who exploit vulnerabilities of marriage and the border, the fraudulent marriage discourse has justified privileging men’s choice. The difficulty that rural bachelors experienced finding wives was framed as a serious problem in the 1980s and 1990s—one the state should address (Freeman 2011). In response, some regional governments launched rural bachelors matching drive campaigns. The state’s complicity in soliciting the migration of brides from China and Southeast Asia indicates their role in prioritizing the men’s perceived right to have a wife and family. Although its control over marriage is waning, the state takes various measures to ensure that marriage remains a patriarchal institution. Like other countries, legally recognized marriage plays a significant role in establishing a father-child relationship and thus determining citizenship in K orea. Yi v. the Minister of National Unification is illustrative of this pattern.24 Mr. Yi appealed the decision when his application for North Korean defector status was rejected on the grounds that he
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was the child of a Chinese man and a North Korean woman, conceived when his mother was in China a fter escaping North K orea. The judge ruled in f avor of Mr. Yi, citing Civil Code Section 844.1, that children conceived during one’s marriage are assumed to be the children of the husband. Because Mr. Yi’s mother was still legally married to her husband in North K orea and was only cohabitating with a Chinese man, the law assumed that Mr. Yi was fathered by the North Korean husband, not by the Chinese partner. This case testifies to the significance of legal marriage, in which husband status trumps the paternity claim of a biological f ather. On the other hand, establishing paternity outside of marriage is mainly up to a father’s willingness to acknowledge it. This is well illustrated in Korean Vietnam ese paternity recognition court cases. T hese plaintiffs are mainly the offspring of Vietnamese women and Korean soldiers and were conceived during the period of Korean involvement in the Vietnam War (1964–1973). The issue drew media attention in the late 1990s when some Korean Vietnamese came to Korea as migrant workers and began to file paternity recognition claims. In July 2002, the Seoul Family Court ruled in f avor of Mr. R, a Korean Vietnamese man working as a trainee in Korea, affirming that he was the son of Mr. Lee. Mr. R was fortunate in being able to demonstrate to the judges that “Mr. Lee and Mr. R’s mother were married in 1974, according to Vietnamese law.”25 Mr. Lee decided not to appeal the decision and, a fter the court ruling, “willingly acknowledged that Mr. R was his son.”26 Had Mr. R’s mother not been legally married to Mr. Lee, Mr. R would have had far more difficulty in winning the case. Not everyone was so fortunate. In some cases, the Korean father refused to acknowledge the child or to provide samples for DNA testing.27 In 2006, when the Korean government began implementing immigrant incorporation policies under the banner of multiculturalism (damunhwa jooui), the Presidential Advisory Committee on Social Inclusion, then chaired by Lee Hye Kyung, recommended that Korean Vietnamese be eligible for Korean citizenship when enough evidence proved the paternal relationship (such as family pictures and written correspondence), even if the father refused to recognize the relationship. The committee decided not to include DNA tests as a part of the required evidence on the grounds that “the cost of a DNA test is too expensive as many overseas mixed Koreans live in poverty.”28 The recommendation, however, met with criticism from legal practitioners and scholars. Judge Suh at the Seoul High Court argued that “at least a DNA test should be required, which is the commonly used piece of evidence in domestic cases,” and Professor Jang Yongsoo at Korea University warned that “this proposed measure could be used as a means to circumvent immigration and citizenship laws.”29 The committee’s recommendation did not lead to any tangible policy changes. That is, the father’s willingness remains the key element in paternity recognition cases. Although t hese two cases do not involve marriage immigrants per se, they nonetheless highlight the centrality of marriage, and the Korean husband’s privilege, in determining paternity and access to citizenship. Honoring men’s choice in acknowledging paternity of c hildren outside of a marriage further weakens
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women’s position, given that immigrant women have to stay in a marriage not only to secure citizenship for themselves and their c hildren. The vulnerability by marriage for immigrant w omen is thus created and sustained by the state’s reliance on marriage as a key institution to decide who gets citizenship and by patriarchal laws that honor men’s rights to choose.
Conclusion Scholars and activists in K orea have demanded and secured significant changes to marriage migration and incorporation policies. They have succeeded in exempting marriage immigrants from naturalization tests and in postponing the Ministry of Justice’s attempt to make KIIP mandatory. Further, they have pressured the Ministry of Justice to extend the legal stay for immigrant divorcees who have children so that they can exercise their visitation rights. However, in this chapter, I argue that some of the demands such as the minimum income requirement for Korean spouses, although proposed to protect immigrant women, called for more government intervention in regulating transborder marriages and as a result diminished the autonomy of the immigrants and, to some extent, of their Korean citizen spouses. Drawing on an analysis of relevant laws and court cases over the recent decades, I offer two reasons for this backlash. First, the activists, while assuming the role of protectors, have largely ignored the agency of immigrant wives. Korean activists were successful, in part, because they presented marriage immigrants as innocent victims of greedy commercial marriage brokers or of chauvinistic husbands and in-laws. However, as Ms. Na has illustrated, marriage immigrants are aware of legal requirements and perform accordingly to gain citizenship. In fact, previous research has shown that marriage immigrants exert agency when they make decisions to undertake transborder marriages (Cheng 2013; Constable 2003; Faier 2009). Second, activists have not challenged the vulnerability of marriage framework and instead have worked within, and to some extent legitimated, the paradigm of border control. Activists’ depiction of marriage immigrants as “innocent” victims has rendered women who enter transborder marriages for the purposes of economic gain and access to Korean citizenship (which many w omen do take into consideration) guilty of committing what the Korean state perceives as fraudulent marriages. This binary construction serves to justify that protection from the Korean state be conditional, upon one’s commitment to perform the roles of a wife and a mother. With a tacit permission from the activists on behalf of marriage immigrants, the Korean state, mainly concerned about vulnerability of the border, has increasingly assumed the role of transborder marriage police. The recently introduced minimum income requirement for Korean male citizens to be eligible to apply for a marriage visa confirms the value placed on the traditional conceptualization of marriage, in which the husband is financially responsible for his family. For activists, minimum income requirements purportedly serve to
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protect immigrant women from being tricked into financially strapped households and to bring immigrant w omen into more economically secure households. The measure reflects the underlying assumption about marriage immigrants as victims of poverty and underdevelopment, who enter a transborder marriage as a last resort, despite the high risks of domestic abuse and unhappy marriage; the minimum income requirement would reduce the chance of domestic abuse that economic hardship may cause. This new measure also clearly illustrates the dominance of the vulnerability of marriage framework in Korean policy discourse. For the Korean state, the measure is one way to curtail transborder marriages with an assumption that male citizens who are in financial difficulty might be more tempted to enter a contract marriage with a migrant woman who is willing to pay for a marriage visa. This kind of direct intervention in marriage not only pushes the limitations of a liberal state, but also raises the issue of double standards in the context of changing legal norms for non-transborder marriages in Korea. As Okin (1989) stated, the idea of traditional gender-structured marriage is the root cause of vulnerability by marriage. Migrant spouses are vulnerable not only because of their status as migrants but also b ecause of the standard against which the authenticity of marriages are evaluated and judged. The vulnerability of marriage framework expresses concerns about marriages that may deviate from traditional gender-structured marriages. Challenging the traditional gender-structure idea of marriage, therefore, should be an important pillar in the effort to address the vulnerability of marriage immigrants.
NOTES
The writing of this chapter was supported by Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of K orea and Korean Studies Promotion Serv ice of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-L AB-2250001). 1. I thank the editors of this volume and Hae Yeon Choo for pointing out how “vulnerability of marriage” could be a reflection of the underlying “vulnerability of the border.” 2. Not all women w ere eligible for this provision, however. Women who had multiple sexual partners were not eligible. 3. Socio-legal interpretation of transborder marriage is not a primary focus in this chapter (for a more in-depth discussion, see Kim 2016; Kim and Kim 2020). 4. For example, although the introduction of no-fault divorce was a liberal change, increasing the freedom to end a marriage for both men and women, it increased vulnerability by marriage “by depriving w omen of power they often exerted as the ‘innocent’ and less willing party to the divorce, have greatly reduced their capacity to achieve an equitable division of the couple’s tangible assets” (Okin 1989, 162). 5. The dichotomous construction of mother/natural and father/legal reinforces the idea of “women as sexually responsible m others and men as sexually irresponsible philanderers” (Augustine-Adams 2000, 112). 6. Cited in the 7th Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the 185th National Assembly Meeting, 1997, 15. http://likms.assembly.go.k r/record/m hs-1 0-030.d o.
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7. Cited in Dong A Daily, “A Rocky Road to Naturalization,” January 29, 2002. 8. Foreign-born brides are also exempt from the two-year residency requirement when they have a child from the terminated marriage. 9. “The 10th Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the 256th National Assembly Meeting,” 2005, 20 (emphasis added). 10. See, for example, Case no. 2014GUDAN15088, Judge KIM Suyeon. The immigrant woman in this case submitted a family court statement showing that the couple divorced due to the husband’s frequent violence and infidelity and that the husband should pay ₩5,000,000 to the wife as alimony. Nonetheless, the judge dismissed the immigrant woman’s appeal, citing lack of sufficient evidence to prove that the divorce was due to the husband’s violence and infidelity. 11. The course consists of two parts—the Korean language and understanding Korean society—and is divided into five levels. At each level, marriage immigrants must pass a test to move to the next level. Understanding Korean society includes various topics, including economic literacy suitable for Korea (see chapter 2). 12. Korean Statistical Information Serv ice (2019), “Social Integration Program Participation Rate by Region and Immigration Type,” http://kosis.k r/s tatHtml/statHtml.do?o rgId =111&tblId=DT_ 1B040A27 (accessed September 6, 2019). 13. The 2nd Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the 287th National Assembly Meeting, 2010, 3. 14. The case of Ms. Ny (Case no 2013GUHAP11420) mentioned later in this chapter demonstrates the devastating effect of this provision. 15. Assemblyman Hong Junpyo, “The 3rd Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the 281st National Assembly Meeting, 2009,” 60. http://likms.assembly.g o.k r/record/m hs-10 -030.do. 16. All the names in this chapter are pseudonyms. 17. Judges Park Taejoon, Ahn Seounghoon, and Gwak Sangho, Case no. 2011GUHAP38766, May 10, 2012. 18. Case no. 2013GUHAP11420, October 15, 2013. 19. Case no. 2013GUHAP17770, May 15, 2014. 20. Judges Lee Gwangbyeom, Kim Woohyun, and Lee Dongwook, Case no. 2010GUHAP5776, July 1, 2010. 21. I used the Supreme Court Library serv ice (library.scourt.go.kr), using the search terms “naturalization” (gwihwa) and “visa.” The successful challenge case was a Korean-descent Chinese female immigrant whose husband “became physically and emotionally abusive and started to demand that she earn money when his business started to struggle” (Case no. 2014GUHAP6441, July 22, 2010). 22. After activists had raised issues on this problem, the Bureau of Immigration now grants visa extension for divorced w omen with visitation rights. 23. Seoul Administrative Court, Case no. 2007GUHAP2258, August 22, 2007. 24. Seoul Administrative Court, Case no. 2008GUHAP211, October 24, 2008. 25. Cited in “One Favorite Court Ruling a fter Another in Paternal Recognition Cases,” Kyunghyang, July 22, 2002 (emphasis added). 26. Cited in Segye Daily, “I have finally found my father a fter 30 years of searching,” July 27, 2002. 27. Reported in Kukmin Daily, “Korean-Vietnamese Won the Court Case, Similar Suits Expected to Follow,” July 27, 2002.
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28. Cited in Kukmin Daily, “A Quick Glance at a Picture and Now You Have Citizenship: Government’s Mixed Korean Policies Met Criticism,” May 2, 2006. 29. Cited in Kukmin Daily, “A Quick Glance.” REFERENCES
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Jones, James A. 1997. “The Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments: Sham Marriages or Sham Legislation?” Florida State University Law Review 24 (3): 679–701. Kaufman, Joyce, and Kristen P. Williams. 2004. “Who Belongs? Women, Marriage and Citizenship.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 6 (3): 416–435. Kim, Minjeong. 2010. “Gender and International Migration.” Sociology Compass 4 (9): 718–731. ——— . 2013. “Citizenship Projects for Marriage Migrants in South K orea: Intersecting Motherhood with Ethnicity and Class.” Social Politics 30 (1): 455–481. Kim, Nora Hui-Jung, and Hyemee Kim. 2020. “From a Spouse to a Citizen: The Gendered and Sexualized Path to Citizenship for Marriage Migrants in South Korea.” Law and Society Review 54 (2): 423–452. Kim, Nora Hui-Jung. 2016. “The Janus-Faced Court of Naturalization: Marriage and Kinship in Naturalization Litigation in South K orea.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (9): 1536–1557. KIS (Korea Immigration Statistics). 2017. Annual Immigration Statistics. Seoul: Ministry of Justice. Lan, Pei-Chia. 2008. “Migrant Women’s Bodies as Boundary Markers: Reproductive Crisis and Sexual Control in the Ethnic Frontiers of Taiwan.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33 (4): 833–861. Lee, Cang-Kyu. 2013. “A Legal Study on Foreign Immigrant Women’s Divorce Cases.” Kyung Hee Law Journal 48 (3): 157–188 (in Korean). Lee, Hey-Kyung. 2008. “International Marriage and the State in South Korea: Focusing on Governmental Policy.” Citizenship Studies 12 (1): 107–123. Leinonen, Jogabba, and Sarah Pellander. 2014. “Court Decisions over Marriage Migration in Finland: A Problem with Transnational F amily Ties.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 4 (9): 1488–1506. Munday, Jennie. 2009. “Gendered Citizenship.” Sociology Compass 3 (2): 249–266. Nicolosi, Ann Marie. 2001. “We Do Not Want Our Girls to Marry Foreigners: Gender, Race, and American Citizenship.” NWSA Journal 13 (3): 1–21. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the F amily. New York: Basic Books. Pellander, Sarah. 2015. ‘ “An Acceptable Marriage’: Marriage Migration and Moral Gatekeeping in Finland.” Journal of Family Issues 36 (11): 1472–1489. Schmidt, Garbi. 2011. “Law and Identity: Transnational Arranged Marriages and the Bound aries of Danishness.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (1): 257–275. Stevens, Jacqueline. 1997. “On the Marriage Question.” In Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader, edited by Cathy J. Cohen, Kathleen B. Jones, and Joan C. Tronto, 62–83. New York: New York University Press. Vink, Maarten P., and Gerard-Rene de Groot. 2010. Birthright Citizenship: Trends and Regulations in Europe. Florence: EUDO-Citizenship, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute. Wang, Hong-zen, and Shu-m ing Chang. 2002. “The Commodification of International Marriages: Cross-B order Marriage Business in Taiwan and Viet Nam.” International Migration 40: 93–116. West, Mark D. 2011. Lovesick Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wray, Helena. 2006. “An Ideal Husband? Marriages of Convenience, Moral Gate-Keeping and Immigration to the UK.” European Journal of Migration and Law 8 (3/4): 303–320. Yeoh, Brenda S. A., and Shirlena Huang. 2010. “Sexualised Politics of Proximities among Female Transnational Migrants in Singapore.” Population, Space and Place 16 (1): 37–49.
7 Integration, Mobility, and Well-Being after Divorce Patterns and Strategies of Social Relationships among Intra-Asia Marriage Immigrants in South K orea H S I N-C H I E H C H A N G
Across Asian countries that are new immigrant destinations, the prevalence of divorce has been higher in cross-border marriages than in marriages between locals (Choi and Cheung 2017; Yang and Lu 2010). South Korea (hereafter Korea) is no exception to this trend (The Chosun Ilbo 2012; Kim 2007, 2010). In 2009, t here were 3,227 divorces between native-born Koreans; 5,562 between Korean men and Chinese women; and 1,292 between Korean men and Vietnamese women. From 2006 to 2016, the number of newly divorced immigrant women in Korea was larger than the number of newly divorced local w omen (Statistics K orea 2016). Although these figures have decreased slightly in recent years, it is crucial that welfare resources be made available to divorced women (both native-born and foreign-born) at local and national government levels. Some marriage immigrants returning to their home countries after divorcing face challenging processes related to reintegration into the labor market and the demeaning societal perception of having had a failed transnational marriage (Kim et al. 2017). For those who choose to stay in the host society, issues related to integration and prospects for improved quality of life are central for these immigrants, their children, and the host society. Regardless of where these w omen choose to live, getting a divorce is a stressful process. For t hose who may have to move or migrate a fter divorcing, the pro cess may lead to dramatic changes in their living arrangements and adaptations to new social and work environments (Kunz and Kunz 1996; Schwartz and Kaslow 1997). In cultures that emphasize the unity of the patrilineal family and co- residence with in-laws, such as those found in some East Asian societies, marriage immigrants are expected to strive for integration into the marital family and the host society a fter separating from their natal family in their homeland. For a marriage immigrant, divorce then implies experiencing another separation 150
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phase—this time from the members of the marital family, a fter making efforts to build these familial relationships. As described in chapter 6 by Nora Hui-Jung Kim in this volume, ironically, current laws in K orea that intend to support women in this difficult situation may actually add to their vulnerability in several ways. Consequently, compared with the experiences of local women, who may have easier access to support from their natal families and from more established social networks, divorce may be more taxing for immigrant women, who often lack supportive relationship networks in the host society (Chang 2017). Scholars are in the early stages of addressing the legal, economic, and other aspects of the divorce pro cess for intra-A sia marriage immigrants, whether these w omen choose to return to their home countries or remain in the host societies (Kim et al. 2017; Lim 2016). Our current understanding is limited regarding how divorced immigrant women build, maintain, and activate relationship networks to facilitate their post-divorce integration and mobility in host societies. In this chapter, I use a mixed-methods approach to explore factors that may influence intra-Asia marriage immigrant w omen’s post-divorce integration, mobility, and well-being, with a specific focus on the patterns and strategies of their social relationships in K orea. This chapter has three aims: (1) to depict the social patterns of divorced immigrant women’s social relationships; (2) to illustrate strategies for maintaining active social relationships and sources of support in the process of divorce; and (3) to examine how t hese relationship networks affect divorced immigrant women’s post-divorce integration, social mobility prospects, and various dimensions of well-being.
Divorce, Social Relationships, and Well-Being: The Case of Intra-Asia Marriage Immigrants Research has indicated that marital u nions are less stable when the marriage partners are from two different countries than when both partners are from the same country, both in traditional Western immigrant societies and in new immigrant destinations in East Asia (Kalmijn et al. 2005, Kim 2007; Lim 2016; Obućina 2015). However, unlike in Western societies, where integration policies for immigrants are generally better established and social acceptance of divorced women is relatively high, in East Asian societies, divorced w omen—especially intra-Asia marriage immigrants—may have a more difficult time for two main reasons. First, although East Asian societies have become common immigration destinations in recent years, the governments of these countries are in the early phases of integration policy making. Additionally, the persistence of patriarchy, gender stratification, and other emerging forms of structural inequalities such as ethnic stratification may create additional difficulties for divorced immigrant w omen from less-developed countries who have l imited social, economic, and cultural capital to improve their well-being a fter getting divorced.
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Marriage immigrants encounter some marital struggles that are similar to those seen in marriages between locals, including abuse and violence, personality differences, and affairs outside the marriage, all of which may lead to both types of unions becoming unstable and sometimes dissolving (Choi and Cheung 2017). In the context of Hong Kong, Choi and colleagues (2012) compared the experiences of marriage immigrants from China with local women, finding that younger and newly arrived marriage immigrants are more vulnerable to integration-related abuse (e.g., husbands limiting wives’ opportunity to seek employment), b ecause they have limited social networks with the native population through which they can access resources and protection. In the case of Korean women marrying Japanese men and residing in Japan, Lim (2016) proposed four elements explaining marital dissolution: failure to negotiate cultural differences; domestic violence; financial restrictions; and social isolation caused by the husband’s worry about losing face (because of marrying a foreign woman). Taken together, this past work indicates that patriarchal traditions and attitudes, social and cultural differences, and imbalanced power dynamics between immigrant wives and native-born husbands are common causes of the breakup of marriages for intra-Asia marriage immigrants. In proposing the two-step social integration model, Chang (2017) used four dif ferent case scenarios to describe the integration trajectories of Vietnamese marriage immigrants, two of which are related to divorced immigrant women. In one scenario, “my life is better without my ex-husband,” Vietnamese marriage immigrants in Taiwan experienced divorce as a relief and were well supported by co- ethnics and local friendship networks (Chang 2017). Importantly, this group of divorced immigrant women also had marital family members who were somewhat supportive, despite the dissolution of their marriage, and marital family-related factors were shown to be important for marriage immigrants’ well-being (Chang 2016). In the other scenario, “the importance of social protection and welfare resources,” divorced Vietnamese immigrant women in Taiwan or Korea tended to have met their husbands through untrustworthy brokers. Some of these women were never accepted by their parents-in-law and w ere thus treated with minimal or no respect; others tolerated their husbands’ abusive behaviors. In addition to lacking supportive marital family members, the divorced immigrant women in this scenario also lacked the opportunity to establish relationship networks with co- ethnics or the local people until they w ere in the process of divorcing or until they experienced severe abuse (Chang 2017). Participating in a broad range of social relationships is associated with good health and well-being (Brissette et al. 2000). Relationship networks not only provide different forms of social support that promote health and well-being, but also serve as a buffer for one’s health and well-being when encountering life adversities (Berkman et al. 2000; Berkman and Glass 2000). Researchers have been interested in examining whether immigrants have more social interactions with people from the host society or with their co-ethnics, or w hether both groups are represented in their social networks. In the context of the United States, Kimbro,
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Gorman, and Schachter (2012) found that, compared with Chinese immigrants, Vietnamese immigrants had significantly more co-ethnic ties but received less social support. In ethnically homogeneous K orea, Korean Chinese marriage immigrants were found to have more types of relationship networks with Koreans than with their co-ethnics, whereas Vietnamese immigrants were more often involved in co-ethnic relationship networks (Chang and Wallace 2016). Quantitative work laying out divorced immigrant w omen’s patterns of social relationships is limited, especially in emerging migrant societies with a shorter history of immigration and where welfare resources, immigration policy, and the nature of interpersonal and familial relationships may differ from t hose found in traditional immigrant societies. Furthermore, most existing research on this topic has looked at “what went wrong” in t hese marriages instead of asking “what works” for divorced immigrant women. The present study aims to contribute to filling the knowledge gaps regarding divorce, social relationships, and well-being among divorced women in the context of intra-Asia marriage immigration. A fter all, intra- Asia marriage immigrants who can integrate into the host society through employment or other social networks after getting divorced may gain increased autonomy and advancement in various life prospects that would not have been available to them in their home country.
Methods Research Design In this study, I used a mixed-methods approach to examine the patterns and strategies in the social relationships of divorced immigrant w omen in K orea and to explore how different relationship networks influence these women’s post-divorce well-being. Researchers promoting the use of mixed methods in social sciences believe that, through combining quantitative and qualitative methods, social scientists can examine and explore different dimensions of social paradoxes and controversies, compensating for the limitations of using one type of method alone (Creswell 2009). Moreover, a mixed-methods approach is useful when researchers are concerned with the lived experience of marginalized, oppressed, or disadvantaged populations, who may be difficult to reach in large-scale surveys b ecause of language barriers or employment conditions, and whose voices are less heard and not well understood by the mainstream population (Hesse-Biber 2012). Of several possible ways to design mixed-methods research, I selected the “dominant–less dominant mixed-method design,” which is also referred to as the “embedded mixed-methods design,” to address the study aims (Creswell and Clark 2007). This means that, in this study, the quantitative analyses used to contextualize the findings played a dominant role, and the two case studies embedded in the survey’s data structure provided nuanced portrayals of the immigration and divorce processes. More specifically, first, unlike a typical quantitative study, the descriptive survey results including four ethnic groups in this chapter not only
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serve as background information for regression analysis but also provide an overview of the general patterns of divorced immigrant w omen’s life circumstances. The results of the regression analysis show how the various dimensions of social relationships and social contact experiences are associated with marriage immigrants’ post-divorce well-being. Then, I present two atypical cases of Vietnamese marriage immigrants to provide more nuanced analysis for divorced marriage immigrants in K orea. T hese two cases illustrate the paradoxical roles of marital family members throughout the divorce process, which may be counterintuitive to the media’s portrait or general perception. As the largest marriage immigrant group without ethnic or linguistic ties to K orea, a description of Vietnamese immigrant w omen’s relationship network structure and its crucial roles to their well-being may inform policy makers to design relevant community-level interventions to support marriage immigrants’ post-divorce integration. Finally, going beyond the two well-being outcome measures in the survey, I integrate qualitative evidence on dimensions of well- being such as increased autonomy; continuities and changes in relationship networks before, during, and after the divorce; and divorced immigrant w omen’s new life possibilities in the host society.
Survey Data The quantitative analyses are based on a subsample of the 2009 National Survey on Multicultural Families (NSMF) in South Korea, which was undertaken by the Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs to study the living conditions and welfare needs of marriage immigrants. Survey agencies recruited interviewers to conduct face-to-face interviews through home visits. The questionnaire was available in ten languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Tagalog. Of the 130,001 marriage immigrants identified by the survey agency, 73,669 completed questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 56 percent. The analytic subsamples used in this research were the four largest ethnicity or country-of-origin groups of divorced immigrant women: total N = 2,370; Korean Chinese n = 1,903; Han Chinese n = 300; Vietnamese n = 70; and Filipina n = 97. I excluded the other immigrant groups because of their relatively small sample sizes.
Measures: Dependent Variables Well-being. I used self-rated health and life satisfaction to measure the divorced immigrant women’s well-being. Self-rated health is a powerf ul self-assessment of one’s overall health concerning a myriad of factors from several domains of life; it assesses the current level of health and has been found to well reflect respondents’ health trajectories (Idler and Benyamini 1997). I also used a measure of life satisfaction, which captures additional psychological and environmental aspects of subjective well-being. Life satisfaction has been widely used in well-being research (Diener 2013; Veenhoven 1996). For the analysis in this study, I recoded self-rated health into three categories: good (very good or good), average, and bad (bad or very
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bad). Similarly, life satisfaction was categorized as satisfied (very satisfied or satisfied), average, or dissatisfied (dissatisfied or very dissatisfied).
Measures: Independent Variables Social relationships. I utilized the respondent’s local ties and cross-border ties to measure two aspects of social life. First, for the local ties, I considered two types of support networks (i.e., Korean support networks and co-ethnic support networks) in assessing divorced immigrant w omen’s relationship networks in the host society, using information about who the respondents spend time with when they have personal or family trouble, and who they spend leisure time with or do recreation activities with (see Chang and Wallace 2016 for more information about the construction of these variables). Second, for cross-border ties, I included two variables measuring divorced immigrant w omen’s contact patterns with their home country: the frequency of contact with their natal family (ranging from not hether they had ever invited their natal f amily at all to more than twice a week); and w members to K orea.
Measures: Control Variables Demographic characteristics. The marriage immigrants’ level of education in their home country was measured with four levels: primary school or below (reference group), junior high school, high school, and college or above. Age was categorized into three groups: u nder 30 years old (reference group); 30 to 44 years old; and 45 years old or older. In terms of ethnicity or country of origin, four groups were included: Korean Chinese (reference group); Han Chinese; Vietnamese; and Filipina marriage immigrants. Marital characteristics. Variables assessing the self-rated social standing of the natal family and the marital family (range: 0–10) w ere also included in the analysis. Marriage channel gauged how the w omen met their Korean husbands, comparing those who met them through commercial agencies (= 1) to those who met them through other marriage channels (= 0). Finally, I included a variable assessing whether the respondents had at least one child with their Korean husbands (yes = 1, no = 0). Immigrant characteristics. Korean language proficiency was measured with a self-rated three-item scale assessing how fluently the respondent spoke, read, and wrote Korean on a Likert scale ranging from very good (= 1) to very poor (= 5). T hese items w ere reverse-coded and averaged to create a Korean language proficiency score, with higher scores indicating higher levels of Korean language proficiency. The Cronbach’s α value of the three items for Korean proficiency was 0.94, indicating a very high level of internal reliability of the items. The length of stay in Korea was measured by years of residence in K orea, and the citizenship status compared Korean citizens (= 1) to non-Korean citizens (= 0). Other covariates. Perceived discrimination in everyday interaction with Koreans was coded as a binary variable (yes = 1, no = 0) and was conceptualized as potentially indicating respondents’ perception of their contact experiences with
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Koreans. Two types of economic hardship (having to borrow money for living expenses and for health care = 1; and otherw ise = 0) and work status (currently engaged in paid work or not = 1; and otherw ise = 0) w ere adjusted in the models.
Analytic Plan To show both between-group and within-group characteristics, I stratified all descriptive analyses by the four different ethnic/country-of-origin groups: Korean Chinese, Han Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipina. Cross-tabulation results are presented to describe the examined immigrant and marital characteristics, socioeconomic indicators, and patterns of social relationships of all surveyed divorced immigrant w omen and by ethnicity. I use ordered logistic regression for model estimation. Considering the small sample sizes of Vietnamese and Filipina women, I included ethnicity as a control variable in the regression models. The models appended with the letter “A” refer to the first well-being outcome, self-rated health, and those labeled “B” refer to the life satisfaction outcome. In model 1, I included the respondents’ demographic background, ethnicity, and perceived discrimination. Model 2 further considered marital and immigrant characteristics, as well as the economic situation. Model 3 also included all assessed social relationship measures.
Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Fieldwork and data used for this chapter are from a larger project on the long-term integration experiences of Vietnamese marriage immigrants in K orea since 2011. In order to capture the integration experiences of a broad range of Vietnamese marriage immigrants, I intentionally included those who were involved in civic organi zations and t hose who suffered from domestic violence or who had been divorced or widowed as well as those without such experiences. In my fieldwork in 2017, I conducted twenty-one life history interviews; eleven interviewees were divorced, and these stories make up the primary qualitative data on divorced women that informed the findings presented in this chapter. In recruiting participants in 2017, I collaborated with feminist organizations providing services for marriage immigrants, several informants whom I had worked with previously, and both government-funded and non-government-funded community centers. In addition to marriage immigrants, the civic organi zation workers also shared their observations and serv ice experiences on divorced Vietnamese marriage immigrants and multicultural families. Korean officers and social workers from immigrant organizations and centers also provided overviews and personal insights on the divorce phenomenon during my informal, and some recorded, interviews with them. In the interviews, I worked with international students from Vietnam who were fluent English speakers as interpreters. Kim and Yu in chapter 4 of this volume describe how a Vietnamese marriage immigrant became undocumented a fter being divorced by her Korean husband without any notice. Her strategies of living in an industrial complex and
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partnering with another undocumented Viet nam ese immigrant illustrate the precarious post-divorce life circumstances of some marriage immigrant women. Two women’s stories I present h ere offer a rather different picture of divorced marriage immigrants, which c ounters a mainstream narrative like Kim and Yu’s. They exemplify the experiences of marriage immigrants who, despite marital dissolution, were rather well integrated into the Korean society. In addition to stable employment, both w omen volunteered or worked for immigrant-serving organi zations to support other Vietnamese marriage immigrants, and both w ere active in Korean civil society. Also, these two women had been divorced for quite some time before I met them, so they w ere able to reflect on their experiences. A close look at their stories allows a glimpse at marital difficulties, tough negotiations, and empowering moments that women had experienced, and reveals the importance of marital ties for immigrant w omen’s integration, even a fter divorce.
Social, Marital, and Immigrant Backgrounds of Divorced Immigrant Women: Variations by Ethnicity and Country of Origin This section provides a quantitative account of the sociodemographic background, marital characteristics, and social relationships of divorced immigrant women in Korea who were from China (including Korean Chinese and Han Chinese), Vietnam, and the Philippines. Table 7.1 shows patterns of well-being and background information by country of origin and ethnicity. In terms of age, Korean Chinese w omen in the survey w ere the oldest group, with a mean age of 45 years, and Vietnamese women respondents were the youngest group, with a mean age of 30 years. Education levels reflect the economic situation of the natal family as well as the home country’s societal development. The majority of the respondents from China had a high school education, respondents from the Philippines w ere highly educated, and more than half of the respondents from Vietnam did not attend high school. The average length of stay reflects the women’s age and life stage when entering Korea, which may also affect their adjustment and integration processes. The Korean Chinese and Han Chinese women respondents had immigrated when they were in their mid-30s, whereas those from Vietnam and the Philippines had been in their mid-20s when they arrived in K orea. Regarding marital characteristics, a high percentage of divorced immigrant women in the survey met their Korean husbands through commercial agencies. Only around 30 percent of the Chinese women respondents had children with their Korean husbands, which could be partly b ecause they arrived at an older age. In contrast, approximately 73 percent of the divorced immigrant women from Vietnam and the Philippines in the survey had c hildren with their Korean husbands. B ecause these marriage immigrants entered K orea specifically to marry, the difference between their length of stay and their marital duration corresponds to the number of years that t hese w omen had continued to reside in K orea after divorcing.
College and above
9
28.3
56.2
High school
6.5
Jun ior high school
Primary school
Education level
44.5 (8.4)
Age
11.1
51.5
32
5.4
40.1 (7.6)
14.8
46.5
51.4
15.7
Average
38.7
Dissatisfied
Satisfied
21.8
42.7
35.5
300
Han Chinese
32.9
38.7
34.4
Average
Bad
Life satisfaction
26.9
1,903
Good
Self-rated health
N
Korean Chinese
3
43.9
34.9
18.2
30.1 (7.6)
22.1
48.5
29.4
13.2
54.4
32.3
70
Vietnamese
54.3
42.6
1.1
2.1
35.9 (7.0)
26.3
48.4
25.3
15.5
42.3
42.3
97
Filipina
Sample Characteristics by Ethnic/Country-of-Origin Group
TA BLE 7.1
P < .001
P < .001
P = 0.26
P < .001
Chi-square/ANOVA
10.9
54.7
27.9
6.5
43.1 (8.8)
16.2
50.6
33.2
31.4
39.8
28.8
2,370
Total
32.4
Had children in this marriage
8
1.7
7.6
Severe m ental disorder
Other
9.6
7.7
3.9
25
9.6
5.8
19.2
19.2
72.4
45.6
3.1 (2.5)
47.8
5.3 (3.5)
Vietnamese
3.6
2.4
8.4
20.5
18.1
13.3
19.3
14.5
74.7
82
5.6 (3.4)
63.8
7.8 (3.9)
Filipina
P < .001
P < .001
7.7
1.9
8.2
12.9
19.6
6.5
31.5
11.8
35.3
85.6
4.8 (3.4)
P < 001 P < .001
70.5
8.8 (4.1)
P < .001 P < .001
Total
Chi-square/ANOVA
Note: Percentages are presented for categorical variables, and means with standard deviations in parentheses are presented for continuous variables.
Source: The 2009 Survey on Multicultural Families in South K orea.
9.2
1.9
10.3
16.2
11.7
Abuse and violence
Drinking and gambling
6.3 16.2
6.2
22.9
16.9
31.2
80.3
4.1 (3.4)
76.2
6.3 (4.1)
Han Chinese
20.4
Economic problems
Conflict with marital f amily
10.7
33.7
Extramarital affairs
Personality differences
Main reason for divorce
88
4.9 (3.4)
75.4
9.3 (3.9)
Korean Chinese
Commercial agency
Marital channel
Marital duration (years)
Korean citizenship
Length of stay in K orea (years)
TA BLE 7.1 (continued)
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Vietnamese respondents had the shortest mean marital duration of 3.1 years, while the mean marital durations for Korean Chinese, Han Chinese, and Filipina respondents w ere 4.9 years, 4.1 years, and 5.6 years, respectively. Regarding reasons for divorce, “personality differences” was the most common reason, and economic problems and extramarital affairs w ere two other common reasons. Although the questionnaire did not specify w hether it was the immigrant wife or the Korean husband who had an extramarital affair, it is reasonable to suspect that the Korean husband, who is local and native-born, may have wider social networks in Korean society, and men’s extramarital affairs are more common in Korea’s patriarchal culture. Taking a closer look at the main reasons for divorce among the marriage immigrants from Southeast Asia, 25 percent of Vietnamese w omen and 21 percent of Filipinas filed for divorce because of their husbands’ abuse and violence. This is a concerning finding for multicultural families in K orea b ecause, in comparison with Korean wives, immigrant wives have fewer resources and less social support to recover from spousal abuse and violence and to cope with conflict with their marital families, which is another reason for divorce. Marriage immigrant women’s social lives in the host society may change substantially a fter getting divorced, and the findings show that they reduce the frequency or even stop interacting with their former spouse and his f amily members. As shown in T able 7.2, the w omen respondents from Vietnam and the Philippines had higher levels of engagement in Korean support networks, in comparison with Korean Chinese and Han Chinese women. T hese findings differed from an examination of support networks among marriage immigrants in another study, which found that Korean Chinese women had the highest number of Korean support networks, whereas Vietnamese women had the fewest local networks (Chang and Wallace 2016). In terms of contact frequency with the natal family, a somewhat surprising finding was that, excluding Korean Chinese women respondents, the other three groups did not have very frequent contact with their natal families. Less than 8 percent of Vietnamese women and less than 13 percent of Filipinas and Han Chinese w omen respondents contacted their natal families more than once or twice a month. Regarding inviting natal family members to Korea, two out of three Korean Chinese w omen reported having done this, compared with only about one out of three women in the other three groups.
Local Social Ties and Cross-Border Family Ties Matter The results of the ordered logit models demonstrate the important roles of pre- and post-migration socioeconomic structures, local social ties, and cross-border family ties in contributing to divorced immigrant w omen’s self-rated health and life satisfaction. Table 7.3 shows the associations between divorced marriage immigrant respondents’ well-being outcomes and key covariates. Here, model 1A shows an educational gradient in health, with odds ratios (ORs) increasing with education
TA BLE 7.2
Social Relationships of Divorced Immigrant W omen in K orea
N
Korean
Han
Chinese
Chinese
Vietnamese
Filipina
Chi-square/
1,903
300
70
97
Total 2,370
P = .018
Perceived discrimination Ever
ANOVA
49.8
41.4
46.2
39.6
48.3 P = .525
Korean support networks None
59.7
63
59.6
68.3
60.5
One aspect of social life
19.7
15.8
23.1
14.6
19.1
Two aspects of social life
20.7
21.3
17.3
17.1
20.5 P < .001
Co-ethnic support networks None
46.1
42.5
28.9
25.6
44.4
One aspect of social life
25.6
22.1
26.9
25.6
25.2
Two aspects of social life
28.3
35.4
44.2
48.8
30.4 P < .001
Contact with natal f amily Not at all
17.7
30.1
23.5
22.1
19.7
Once a year
24
29.8
29.4
21.1
24.8
Two or three times a year
33.9
27.7
39.7
44.2
33.7
One or two times a month
10.4
5.5
1.5
7.4
9.3
4.1
3.4
2.9
2.1
3.9
3.4
2.9
3.2
8.7
Once a week More than twice a week
10
P < .001
Invited natal family to Korea Ever
59
36
36.4
30.4
Source: 2009 Survey on Multicultural Families in South Korea Note: The numbers presented are percentages.
54.3
0.38***
≥ 45 years
3.00***
College and above
Once a year
Contact with natal f amily (Not at all)
Yes
Had c hildren in this marriage (No)
Agency
1.02
1.06
1.21**
Korean-language proficiency
Marriage channel (Other)
1.14***
0.67***
2.87***
1.98**
1.59
0.52*
0.86
Marital f amily’s SES
0.53***
2.28***
High school
Perceived discrimination (Never)
1.89***
Jun ior high school
Education (Primary school and below)
0.59**
1.09
1.12
1.11
1.32***
1.13***
0.66***
2.41**
1.84*
1.72*
0.53*
0.84
0.56***
1.76**
1.88***
1.50*
1.15
0.92
0.61***
1.42*
1.08
1.15***
0.68***
1.23
1.51
1.42
1.25
1.14
2B
Model
3A
2A
1A
1B
Model
Model
Model
Model
Life satisfaction
Self-rated health
30–44 years
Divorced migrant w omen’s age (< 30 years)
Ever
TA BLE 7.3
Associations of the Covariates with Divorced Immigrant Women’s Well-Being Outcomes
0.68
0.61***
1.39*
1.16*
1.14***
0.70**
0.89
1.22
1.23
1.25
1.21
3B
Model
0.99
Two aspects of social life
0.113
1,285
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001
0.103
0.018
2,235
0.065
1,419
0.083
1,277
1.77***
1.56**
1.03
0.92
0.85
1.64*
1.56*
1.11
0.95
3B
Model
Notes: The ordered logit regression results are presented as odds ratios. SES: socioeconomic status. Model 1 also controlled for divorced migrant women’s ethnicity/country of origin. Model 2 also controlled for economic situation, length of stay in Korea, citizenship, and natal family’s SES.
Psuedo R 2 0.036
1.64**
Two aspects of social life
N
1.11
One aspect of social life
Korean support networks (None)
1.05
One aspect of social life
Co-ethnic support networks (None)
Ever
1,428
1.71*
More than twice a week
2,255
1.63*
Once a week
0.67**
1.53
Invited natal family to K orea (Never)
1.03
One or two times a month
2B
Model
3A
2A
1A
1B
Model
Model
Model
Model
Life satisfaction
Self-rated health
Two or three times a year
TA BLE 7.3 (continued)
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level. Such findings indicate that education in the home society remains impor tant in protecting marriage immigrants’ health after divorce. The marital family’s socioeconomic status is also important for divorced immigrant w omen respondents’ health, as seen in model 3A, which shows the role of social relationships in explaining variations in self-rated health. Compared with not contacting the natal family at all, contacting them once a week (OR = 1.63, P