Friday, November 9th, 2007 Global Citizens in the Making: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families

Description

Changes in the form and function of the Korean family at the beginning of the 21st century are inextricably related to the process of globalization. The kirogi family is one of several novel family types that have emerged since 1990. In this paper, we define the kirogi family as a split-household transnational family with the mother and children moving to an English speaking country for education and the father staying behind in Korea to work and support the family. The kirogi family phenomenon is a response to the challenges of rapid globalization, English as the hegemonic language in the global economy, Korea’s economic success and democratization, and the tremendous development of transportation and communication technology.

Kirogi families are engaged in a long term project that can last a decade or more, and often requires considerable flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. Many families are kirogi families for only a portion of the time they are educating their children. On the one hand kirogi families are deeply traditional, in that they seek to maintain or improve family status through education, and assume a traditional Korean family structure with an indissoluble marriage and the strongest bonds being between a mother and her children. On the other hand, they take advantage of the latest technology for maintaining communication among dispersed family members, and the entire project is strongly future-oriented in that it seeks to maximize children’s opportunities for the 21st century.

There is a considerable diversity within the category of kirogi families, and the project inevitably reshapes family dynamics as it proceeds. The temporary migration that was begun by parts of families for a specific purpose can become permanent as people are affected by a variety of factors as individuals and as members of families. Based on surveys and interviews with kirogi families in the Washington metropolitan area, our project examines the motivations, processes, and results of these families’ pursuit of success through education in the global arena. We see this transnational, education-motivated family as engaged in a process of creating global citizens, and, by implication, redefining such basic social ideas as family, nation, and individual.

Seung-kyung Kim is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and an affiliate faculty of Department of Anthropology, Department of American Studies, and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has served as a founding Director of the Asian American Studies Program from 2000-2004. Her research expertise includes Women and Work, Gender and Labor Politics, Gender and Development, Ethnography, Feminist Theory, and women in East Asia and Asian America. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Korea during 2004-5. Her publications include: “Class Struggle or Family Struggle?: Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea” (Cambridge University Press, 1997); “Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspective” (Routledge Publishers, 2003). She has written articles and book chapters that were published in various journals and anthologies. She is currently working on two book manuscripts: Women’s Movements in Democratic South Korea: The Trajectory of Institutionalization and the Loss of Autonomy which was funded by the Korea Foundation, and Global Citizens in the Making?: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families, which was funded by the Social Science Research Council.