Migrant Struggles in South Korea and Elsewhere (original) (raw)
Related papers
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In this article, the author discusses how South Korean migrant advocacy that has emerged since the mid-1990s relied on mobilizing the moral responsibility of local civil society and the state on the dehumanizing conditions of foreign workers—most of whom are from China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the former Soviet Union. I ask first, what were the ways that migrant advocacy groups that emerged in the aftermath of the Myongdong protest translated the problem of the human rights of the foreign worker? Second, what can those narratives that became dominant in Korea say about the problem of human rights more broadly? The foreign worker is neither entitled to the national rights of the host country, which Hannah Arendt argued so forcefully is the basis for one’s human rights (1951), nor do the international conventions that recognize the rights of migrants have effective legal force. Under such conditions, and as the author shows in this article, it is the narrative of the suffering of foreign workers and the shame of Koreans that most effectively responded to the state and other actors’ abuses against foreign workers. Overall, this article suggests that the emergent postcolonial ethics of shame and responsibility that appeals to the common history of suffering and hardship between South Koreans and migrants should be rethought as a political process of re-reconciling the claims of rights of the foreign worker under the state’s economic interest and sovereignty.
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Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article investigates the gendered production of migrant rights under the global regime of temporary migration by examining two groups of Filipina women: factory workers and hostesses at American military camptown clubs. Emphasizing gendered labor processes and symbolic politics, this article offers an analytical framework to interrogate the mechanisms through which a discrepancy of rights is generated at the intersection of workplace organization and civil society mobilization. I identify two distinct labor regimes for migrant women that were shaped in the shadow of working men. Migrant women in the factories labored in the company of working men on the shop floor, which enabled them to form a co-ethnic migrant community and utilize the male-centered bonding between workers and employers. In contrast, migrant hostesses were isolated and experienced gendered stigma under the paternalistic rule of employers. Divergent forms of civil society mobilization in South Korea sustained these regimes: Migrant factory workers received recognition as workers without attention to gender-specific concerns while hostesses were construed as women victims in need of protection. Thus, Filipina factory workers were able to exercise greater labor rights by sharing the dignity of workers as a basis for their rights claims from which hostesses were excluded.
Anthropological Quarterly, 2016
In this article, I explore the ways in which the conjunction between the liberal demand for autonomous subjects and neoliberal social responsibility has played out in South Korean migrant advocacy. By focusing on discourses of the " volunteer activist " and migrant empowerment that emerged among " migrant centers, " grassroots advocates, and service providers for migrants, I show that the demands for interdependent society mobilize individual Koreans to give and share on behalf of migrants and mobilize individual migrants to give back by organizing on their own. If lay volunteers are required to see themselves as no different from full-time staff, offering their free labor lavishly, migrant workers, too, are asked to see themselves not as mere recipients of benevolence, but as " leaders " of their own lives and communities. I argue that this is when the ambition, as well as the limit, of the South Korean moral community is rendered visible. This community seeks to convert the have-nots and the socially excluded into subjects of responsibility and reciprocity by enrolling them in a symbolic struggle for recognition and by refusing the idea of charity. It does so, however, by not giving equal attention to the problem of inequality
Tragic Fire Illuminates South Korea's Treatment of Migrant Workers
2007
In the early morning of February 11, around 4 a.m., a devastating fire swept through the locked cells of a migrant worker detention center in the South Korean city of Yeosu, killing 10 detainees and wounding many others. The center staff tried to put out the f lames by spraying f i re extinguishers through the bars of the cells, but in an act that can only be described as barbaric, did not unlock the cell doors to free those trapped inside, out of fear that they would escape. Migrant workers behind the locked doors and barred windows were forced to breath in the toxic fumes emitted from burning mattresses. These fumes were the cause of most of the deaths and injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but the reality is that the roots of the tragedy lie with the Korean government's inhumane policy towards migrant workers.
International Journal of Korean History
In this paper, we approach citizenship as a claims-making process consisting of social construction practices that emerge from ongoing negotiations and contestations. We examine the migrant subject-making process of Korean Chinese migrants in South Korea. We draw on the voices of migrants to discuss how Korean Chinese construct their migrant subjectivity by mobilizing a collective understanding of ethnonational belonging and thereby deploy distinctive strategies to support their claims. Our analysis of the data gathered from ethnographic observations and interviews with Korean Chinese migrant workers, activists, South Korean bureaucrats, and policymakers show that Korean Chinese migrants have called upon blood ties and ethnic affinity, continued allegiance, economic contributions, and human rights to construct themselves as legitimate candidates for citizenship in South Korea. By shifting our analytical focus from the state to the migrant subjectivity that emerges through day-to-day...
Gazing into Indonesian Migrants in Korea .pdf
This is my PPT note that I presented during the 2nd ASEAN-Korea Migration Network Project/International Experts Meeting on “Exploring the possibility of Co-prosperity among ASEAN and Korea through migration” organized by the IOM MRTC - International Organization for Migration - Migration Research International Organization for Migration (MRTC) and Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia -LIPI (Indonesian Institute of Sciences) held in Jakarta on March 13-14, 2017 at the Hotel Santika Indonesia. I talked about my involvement (as a migrant myself in Korea) with other Indonesian migrants in Korea, especially I was using my capacity as a migrant student who has been tutoring Indonesian migrant workers on their Sunday classes at Indonesia Open University in Korea. Apart from that, I was also talking as someone who has been involving myself in several programs held by PERPIKA (Indonesian Students Association in Korea) as well as by ICC (Indonesia Community Center)—a platform to unite all walks of Indonesian migrant workers in Korea. In particular, I was keen on examining (mostly) the worth-sharing positive activities and endeavors that Indonesian migrants have been undertaking. This is a deliberate effort to shed light on the need to leverage their positive image as compared to the mostly (probably) audible and visible news/reports of abuse/harsh treatment/other negative sentiments regarding Indonesian migrant workers.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies( June 2018 )
In 2005 the South Korean government granted a large-scale amnesty to the most predominant undocumented migrant group in the country, Korean Chinese. This change quickly caused Korean Chinese migrants to be exposed to new rhythms of transnational life imposed by work visa time limits. How do the rhythms of migration and temporal regulation—how long to stay and how often to move around—shape and reshape transnational working bodies and transnational spaces subjected to human flows and fluctuations? I argue that rhythms of “free” movement strongly condition the migrants’ temporal relationships with places and affect their ethnic working class subjectivity. This case study of post-amnesty Korean Chinese migrant female workers contributes to research on the actual material forces of transnational temporality as well the visceral dimension of transnational migration, where state-imposed rhythms intersect with market-driven rhythms to reconfigure transnational time-space linkages and transnational bodies, and thereby transnational subjectivities, through rhythms of “free” movement.