Asian Middle-Class Migrant Women’s Gender Status Change after Transnational Spousal Separation: Korean Wild Geese Mothers

• In Event: 469 - Section on International Migration Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Gender and Migration

Abstract

Conducting in depth interviews with 31 Korean wild geese mothers who migrated with their children to North America (the U.S. and Canada) in order to provide them with better educational opportunities while leaving their husbands in Korea, this study investigates how Asian middle-class migrant women’s gender status has changed. While transnational spousal separation generally puts patriarchal gender relations into renegotiation, my study demonstrates that their outcomes depend on the migrant woman’s successful incorporation into the host society. In particular, the intersection of their legal status, employment, re-education in host societies, and access to their immigrant community’s social networks provides critical structural conditions in promoting wild geese mothers’ bargaining power and gender equality. By analyzing Korean wild geese mothers, my study overcomes the previous literature’s unitary and peripheral portrait of middle-class Asian migrant women who go abroad for their children’s education as passive victims of Asian patriarchal culture who suffer through transnational migration.

Author

• Se Hwa Lee, State University of New York-Albany