Monday, May 25th, 2015 Split Lives: Home and Work among Korean Chinese Migrants

Description

In the early 1990s, Korean Chinese began to visit South Korea, long considered a forbidden homeland during the Cold War era. Many overstayed their visas to become undocumented workers in search of the “Korean dream.” In 2005 the South Korean government granted amnesty to them, while requiring migrant laborers to move back and forth between China and Korea in complex ways. Based on the ethnographic research in Seoul, Korea and Yanbian, the Korean Chinese Autonomous Prefecture, China, for the last few years, this presentation examines how the impact of amnesty and the governmental aspects of the migratory rhythm have fashioned a new order of home and work for many Korean Chinese. I develop two inter-related arguments. First, I argue that the rhythm sets limits for the bodies, money, and futurity of Korean Chinese migrants. Second, I argue that the rhythm has reorganized the concepts of “work place” and “home,” working time and non-working time, between Korea and Yanbian—forming a transnational mode of living that I term split lives.
~
Dr. June Hee Kwon received her PhD from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University in 2013. Her research and teaching focuses on diaspora and citizenship, transnational migration and human rights, kinship and ethnicity, affect and compassion. Her area of expertise spans contemporary Korea (North and South), China, and Japan, including postcolonial and post-Cold War East Asian inter-connections.

For further information: anthro.officeofthechair@utoronto / 416-946-3318