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Show PSYCHOLOGY SENIOR THESIS SPRING 2013 Andrew Young Choi Kim Korinek 182 AN EXPLORATION OF THE TRANSNATIONAL MARRIAGE MIGRATION SUBJECTIVITIES OF FILIPINA WIVES IN GWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA Andrew Young Choi (Kim Korinek) Department of Sociology University of Utah The increasing international "marriage migration" of "foreign brides" into South Korea (henceforth referred to as Korea) has become a focus of contemporary scholarly attention and interest (e.g., Belanger, H. Lee, & H. Wang, 2010). For many blue-collar, widowed, and/or disabled men of both rural agrarian and urban backgrounds, there is increasing unavailability of marriageable Korean women. This social decoupling has collected a variety of labels, including "wife shortage" (H. Kim, 2010), "marriage squeeze" (Hugo & Nguyen, 2007), and the "foreign bride phenomenon" (Belanger, 2010). Marriage between Korean men and Southeast Asian w o m e n from nations such as Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand continues to grow in popularity, counterintuitive to the preeminent cultural archetype of ethnic homogeneity (H. Kim, 2010). However, less research concerns these relationships often referred to as the "Mail Order Bride" (MOB) phenomenon (Lu, 2005). As the majority of the literature on migration and Korea examines macro-level impacts of labor flows, w e aimed to address the paucity that exists regarding the subjective narratives of Southeast Asian migrant wives (M-W. Lee, 2006). Through a gendered perspective (Pessar & Mahler, 2003), w e attempted to illustrate how wives ascribe meaning and structure to their transnational experiences, including initial motivation, agency, social readjustment, and identity resubjectification. Twenty-three in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with Fili-pina migrant wives and key informants drawn from a southerly Korean metropolis and surrounding provincial communes. Our approach entailed inductively analyzing each narrative, and then conducting a "constant comparison analysis" (Strauss, 1987), consolidating interviews to distill emergent themes grounded in empirical data and theoretical constructs. Findings indicate that there is 1) a lack of cultural knowledge on Korea and rapid processing of marriage prior to immigration, 2) simultaneous motivation for intimacy and socioeconomic aspirations, (e.g., Constable, 2009), 3) negotiation of contradictory statuses (e.g., Lan, 2003) in context of Korean familial patriarchy and wider community, and 4) salient awareness of being in between multiple social spaces that create new possibilities as well as systemic oppression (e.g., Bhabha, 1994). Implications are discussed regarding further research on the intersection of feminized migration and global social change (Schuerkens, 2005). Landscape of Gwangju Local Filipina establishment Local international matchmaking agency |
