Study Abroad U.S.A.: South Korean Educational Migrants and their Labor and Learning Practices in the United States

• In Event: 242 - Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 15. Temporary Migration

Abstract

This project examines new trends in the educational migration of South Koreans to the United States. Specifically, it seeks to explain how global educational pathways are increasingly used as a political and economic strategy for nonelite South Koreans. Past research on student migration has focused on the cultural practices of elite children and young adults studying abroad in the Anglophone West and Non-West. Studies on “flexible citizenship” have illuminated family-based strategies for foreign economic investment in sending their children abroad yet similarly prioritize the upwardly mobile and family unit. However, since the 1990s, the liberalization of trade relations among Global North countries has consequently opened up new and creative migratory pathways in tourism and education, creating overseas study and work opportunities for people from socioeconomically and academically average backgrounds. Many South Koreans, especially women, have adopted educational migration as a life enhancement strategy to escape oppressive structures, gender segmented labor markets, and limited educational ladders. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2006-2008 and 2013, I examine the expectations and experiences of recent educational migrants using a case study of South Korean foreign language students in Los Angeles. I complicate existing frameworks by analyzing the role of education as a strategy for migration and how the intersection of learning, labor, and leisure practices across class and gender lines. I argue that South Korean women strategically use educational migration to escape oppressive gender structures only to paradoxically find themselves facing racialized, gender-segmented labor markets in the U.S.

Author

• Carolyn Choi, University of Southern California