Navigating Transpacific Liminality: Korean American Leaders’ Radical-Transformative Agency

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Engagement and Civic Identity With Asian and Asian American Communities (Table 9)

Abstract

This paper examines the racialization and radical-transformative agency of Korean American community leaders, focusing on their transnational experiences and transpacific liminality within U.S. society. Using a Transpacific decoloniality perspective and AsianCrit, we explore how these leaders navigate their identities amidst racial and imperialist power structures. Through life history methods, our findings highlight their potential to build solidarity with diverse ethnic and racial groups based on critical consciousness from the transpacific liminal space. Detailed experiences were captured through interviews, observations, and artifact collection. This approach advances social justice understandings, broadening the horizons of social change learning and providing a foundation for future exploration and understanding in Asian/Korean civil society.

Authors

• Soo Bin Jang, University of Delaware

• Taeyeon Kim, University of Nebraska - Lincoln