ABSTRACT
Migrant Experience and Strategic Self-Identification of the Korean Chinese in South Korea: Focusing on the Factory Workers and the Repatriates
Lee, Joowhee
Department of Cultural Anthropology
The Graduate School
Hanyang University
...
ABSTRACT
Migrant Experience and Strategic Self-Identification of the Korean Chinese in South Korea: Focusing on the Factory Workers and the Repatriates
Lee, Joowhee
Department of Cultural Anthropology
The Graduate School
Hanyang University
Including migrant workers and migrant spouses, there are diverse immigrant communities in Korean society. Among those communities, compared to other migrants, overseas Koreans are considered to receive special privileges in policies related to entrance to Korea, period of stay, and employment. This is because from the perspective of migrants, Korea differentiates between migrants based on the standards of "foreign ethnicity" and "native ethnicity". But the truth is, even among overseas Koreans, not all have access to the same rights of stay in Korea. At the entry stage, based on the law and a system of regulations, overseas Koreans also have different conditions of stay.
In order to enter Korea, JoseonJok(overseas Koreans from China) and CIS regions (the former Soviet Union) must fulfill conditions different from overseas Koreans from Japan or the USA. They must either have a relative in Korea, pass a Korean language test, have restrictions placed on their areas of employment, and sometimes even take a DNA test in order to fulfill the requirements necessary to be recognized as an overseas Korean. So even in the case of overseas Koreans, differentiations are made based on their country of origin, including differences in their rights to stay in Korea. After the implementation of the 2007 Visiting Employee system, Korean Chinese migrants workers entered the country en masse and entered the work force. They entered on visiting employee visas which only allowed them to work within 36 types of manual labor jobs and allowed them to stay in Korea for a maximum of five years. In contrast, those in the country for study abroad, business investment, or classified as professionals are able to receive a overseas Korean visa right away and can enter the country and seek employment freely. Different entry conditions based on nationality creates discrimination based on nationality, as well as carries an element of a class hierarchy.
The main subjects for this are Korean Chinese with relatives in Korea or those who have repatriated. Compared to other migrants, the level of discrimination they face in regards to entry, settlement, and employment is the lowest so they can be seen as being in an advantageous situation. However, in reality, even these migrants are not free from sociocultural discrimination. Even in the case of those who have repatriated, within Korea they end up living within the lower working class, unable to be free of the discriminatory label of "Joseon Jok". Even JoseonJok factory workers who receive conditions for stay, guaranteed health insurance, and guaranteed wage levels, a minority, end up doing the labor that most Korean nationals avoid, such as textiles, painting, steel manufacturing, and similar lines of work. In other words, for those entering Korea as migrants, regardless of their community, cannot be free of discrimination based on citizenship, ethnicity, and class.
But for those migrants, entry into Korea is not the end of the story. For those who migrate to Korea and repatriate, they live on the minimum standard of living in order to bring their children or other family members to Korea. For those that are maintaining the international relationship between China and Korea in this way, they do not have a strong vested interest on just one side. First, living in China they faced discrimination as an ethnic minority, and even after coming to Korea, they faced discrimination based on nationality and class. However, through the expansion of their roles within the transnational networks between Korea and China, they find themelves in diverse positions which they are able to utilize.
In this , through factory participant observation, I will examine how members of the "JoseonJok" community both perceive and respond to the discrimination they face. In addition, by examining the perceived discrimination and responses to that discrimination in the lives repatriated ethnic Koreans, I want to show the still unresolved problems of "ethnicity" and "class", and "cultural citizenship". In order to justify the positions they face in Korean society, they utilize all the positive cultural property they have at their disposal and based on the situation, they command "strategic self-identification" in order to change their position. Through various strategies, "Chinese JoseonJok" justify their position within Korean society. For example, they contrast themselves favorably from ethnic Chinese who "are lazy and unable to speak Korean well", emphasize that they are overseas Koreans compared to Southeast Asian migrant workers, reiterate that they are the same ethnicity as native Koreans, emphasize their transnational and cosmopolitan scope as compared to native Korean of the working class who have "a narrow, limited scope". In addition, through concepts of "regionalism" they equate discrimination as that against "someone from a different region", weakening the meaning of "citizen" and "ethnicity".
This strategic self-identification points out that migrants perceive the nation-state's exclusive properties, as well its ethnic and class problems. At the same time we can also see that when migrants cross borders, they strategically use their cultural property in order to overcome these forms of discrimination. We can see their strategic self-identification as ethnic minorities, minorities, and culturally weak persons within the nation-state, which is achieved by expanding their transnational lifestyles and roles and relativizing discrimination.
<Key words>: Korean Chinese(Joseonjok), Overseas Korean factory workers, repatriation, citizenship, ethnicity, class, migration, transnational migration, strategic self-identification
，韩语论文，韩语毕业论文 |
