Voting as a Gendered Performance: Filipina Marriage Migrants Voting Practices in South Korea

• In Event: 4355 - Regular Session: Immigration and Gender

Abstract

This study examines the gendered political incorporation process of Filipina marriage migrants in South Korea. Drawing on Kandiyoti’s concept of ‘patriarchal bargain’ and in-depth interviews of women residing in both urban and rural Korea, I argue that Filipina marriage migrants engage in bargaining with various levels of patriarchal host country institutions, patriarchal family in particular, in an attempt to gain and maintain membership in the host society through gendered membership in the Korean family. Seen as a family affair, voting decisions are the result of women’s constant negotiation with the gendered norms and expectations they face within the family and community. Thus, I challenge the extant use of voting in immigration scholarship as the primary indicators of immigrants’ understanding and internalization of the host country’s political system. Instead, this study highlights the need to actually examine the gendered context in which immigrants’ political participation is realized, and what meaning immigrants give to this practice.

Author

• Ilju Kim