Competing Subjectivities: a Comparative Study of Low-Paid Care Workers in Greater Seoul

Competing Subjectivities: A Comparative Study of Low- Paid Care Workers in Greater Seoul and the Los Angles

Yang-Sook Kim

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology University of Toronto

Competing Subjectivities: A Comparative Study of Low-Paid Care Workers in Greater Seoul

and the Los Angeles Koreatown

Yang-Sook Kim

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Sociology University of Toronto

2020 Abstract

This dissertation examines how low-paid care workers, who are stratified into different sectors of the care labor market along gender, ethnicity, migration, and citizenship, form agentic political subjectivities. Through a comparative analysis of four different groups, I analyze how low-paid care workers who do similar work but are unequally positioned within social contexts give meaning to their work and cultivate a sense of worth, entitlement and dignity in relation to other care workers as well as vis-à-vis the state. Through multi-sited ethnographic research, including 98 in-depth interviews with workers in domestic service and eldercare sectors in

Greater Seoul, South Korea and the Koreatown community of Los Angeles, California, I find that care workers develop distinct political subjectivities in response to their continuing precarity. This subject formation is a multi-level process that is mediated by three contexts: policy regimes, labour markets, and organizations, such as labour unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). At the policy regime level, state policies sort and channel marginalized women into the low-paid care market through targeted forms of recruitment that rely on discourses such as “co-ethnics,” “self-sufficient women,” and “care experts.” These discourses define the kind of care that different groups of workers are expected to provide, yet workers complement and further articulate the meanings of policy discourses through their own re-

ii interpretations of policies. In doing so, they contribute to and reinforce the structure of inequality that hierarchically divides care workers along ethnicity, migration and citizenship. In this process, organizations play a significant role in translating state policies in different ways, providing workers with sources of pride, alternative language and sense of entitlement as legitimate right-bearers. Each empirical chapters of the dissertation focuses on a specific care worker group to elaborate how divergent configurations of state policies, labour organization and labour market dynamics shape multi-level processes of subject formation. By analyzing distinct subjectivity building projects, this dissertation shows that care workers’ struggles for survival and dignity are often linked to boundary drawing practices against other care workers, limiting the possibilities for cross-ethnic solidarity and the emancipatory potential of their struggles.

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Acknowledgments

My academic endeavor for this thesis would not have been achieved without the support of many people. First, I would like to thank the leaders and members of the Korean Women Workers Association, the Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers, the Joseonjok Coalition, and the Korean group in the L.A. SEIU 2015 for their invaluable time, hospitality and generous insights. I am especially thankful to Jinkyung Bae, Yunok Lim, Maria Chol-Soon Rhee, Kyung Sook Choi, Pongsun Yoo, Pokcha Chin, and Sook Lim. Not only did they graciously let me into their offices, protest sites and homes, but by studying their lives devoted to social justice, I was able to keep reflecting on the meanings and the weight of sociological research of peoples’ struggles at the margin.

Second, I am deeply indebted to my committee of three amazing women. Over these years, my academic supervisors, Cynthia Cranford and Jennifer Jihye Chun, have shown me what it means to be a sociologist with integrity and a specialist with spirit. They are scholars who are passionate about social justice, supervisors who are nurturing, and human beings who are profoundly caring. They have always been the greatest support throughout my graduate life, and their guidance will always lead me through my academic journeys ahead. When I started my program, I did not know what kind of sociologist I wanted to become, but after spending all these years with my amazing supervisors, I now wish I could become scholars like them. To Hae Yeon Choo, I cannot thank her enough for all she has done for me as a scholar, a mentor, and a friend. From my very first day in Toronto to the day of my oral defense, I have been privileged to have learned from her vast knowledge and mentorship.

Many people have read and discussed the rough drafts of the chapters throughout my journey, giving me insightful comments and advices. My special thanks go to Pei-Chia Lan for reviewing this dissertation and providing such insightful comments. It was my honor and great pleasure to have discussed my work with someone I have been admiring for so long. I am also grateful to Sharmila Rudrappa and Heidi Gottfried, and to the participants of the 2016 Exploratory Workshop at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for their comments on early drafts of empirical chapters. Yi-Chun Chien and Sohoon Yi have been my writing mates, conference roommates and fieldwork buddies, and they have greatly helped me get over some mentally draining stages of graduate life with their support and comradeship.

I was fortunate to meet so many kind-hearted people during my journey. Ever since they were in my comprehensive examination committee, Anna Korteweg and Patricia Landolt have always paid attention to my work and gave me inspiring comments and encouraging words. Hyun-Sook Ha showed me great hospitality and kindly connected me to many workers and agency owners. Mi-Young Gu helped me with recruitment as well as gave me opportunities to learn more about care market in Korea. Minyoung Gye and Si-Hwa Kim unburdened me from transcribing interviews, and in doing so saved my frail wrist.

This multi-sited project would have not been completed without generous institutional support. I would like to acknowledge the funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant “Gender Migration and the Work of Care”, No: 895-2012-1021 (P.I. Ito Peng, project led by Cynthia Cranford with Jennifer Chun and Young Shin from Asian Immigrant Women Advocates “Immigrant Labour Markets for Personal Care Work”) for supporting my fieldwork in L.A. I would also like to acknowledge the Ford Foundation for supporting my fieldwork in Korea as part of the multi-country comparative research project, “Informal Construction and Domestic Work: Collaborative Research on Institutional Influences on Job Quality” (Chris Tilly, PI; Jennifer Jihye Chun, South Korea country coordinator, 2015-2018). My fieldwork in Korea was also greatly supported by the Doctoral Associate Program funded by the Centre for Global Social Policy under the project titled “The Micro Politics of Care: A Comparative Study of Co-ethnic and Local Women Workers in the Domestic and Long-term Care Market of South Korea.” I am grateful to Ito Peng for her support of my studies since my earlier years in Canada. Centre for Study of Korea (CSK) and Yoon Kyung Lee have also supported this study in enormous ways. CSK provided me with financial support as well as intellectual stimulations, which have been greatly helpful and alleviated isolation during the later years of my study. I was lucky to have worked with Yoon Kyung Lee, another great mentor who has always been there for me when I needed her advice and help.

To my parents, I dedicate my thesis for their endless love and trust. Their love and trust have been the source of energy for me to continue my journey thus far. Last but not least, my partner Andrew Ma so much deserves the last statement. He was always there to help me maintain my physical and mental well-being by feeding me well and cheering me up when I struggled with anxiety every day. I deeply thank him for being such a loving and caring partner and for being always there. v

Table of Contents

Table of Contents……..……………………………………..……………………………….vi

List of Tables…………………..…………………………………………………………….ix

List of Figures…………………….……..……………………………………………………x

List of Appendices…………………..……………………………………………………… xi

Introduction………………………..………………………………………………………….1

Chapter 1 Context…………………………………………………………………………...20

1.1 The Rise of Care: State’s Gendered Response to Capitalist Expansion……………..20

1.1.1 South Korea’s Care Sector: Resurgence, Diversification and Changing Meanings…………………………………………………………………….20

1.1.2 Korean Chinese Workers: Capitalist Integration of Co-Ethnic Migrants……..30

1.1.3 Co-ethnic Care Economy in the Shadow of the Welfare State: the Los Angeles Koreatown…………………………………………………………………...40

1.2 Workers’ Response: Situating Study Participants within the Context……………….42

1.2.1 The Faces of Care Workers: Who Are They?...... 42

1.2.2 Becoming Care Workers: Opportunity, Crisis and Women’s Entry into the Care Sector………………………………………………………………………..46

1.2.3 Organizational Context………………………………………………………..48

1.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...56

Chapter 2 From Domestic Service to House Manager: Redefining the Worth of Domestic Work……………………………………………………………………………………..59

2.1 What is Work?: Dismantling Gendered Assumptions in Domestic Service Work….59

2.2 What is Skill?: Reconstructing Domestic Service as Skilled Work…………………65

2.2.1 Domestic Service is Labour-intense yet Skilled Work………………………..66

2.2.2. Domestic Service is Not Just Backdoor Chores: Emotional Management Skills………………………………………………………………………...71

2.3. Good Domestic Service Guarantees Customer Satisfaction: Performance Tells…...79

2.4 “We are house managers”: Connecting Professionalizing Discourses to Rights Claims……………………………………………………………………………….81

2.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...82

Chapter 3 National Care Experts: State-Certified Eldercare Workers……………………...84

3.1 Outsourcing Filial Piety: An Illusion of Socializing Care…………………………...84

3.1.1. Formalizing Care through Marketization…………………………………….84

3.1.2 Workers’ Responses to Illusionary Policy Discourses: The Seoul Supporting Center for Elderly Careworkers……………………………………………..87

3.2. “We are Government Certified Experts”: National Care Expert Subjectivity………90

3.2.1 Dirty Work with Dignity: Choice Narratives…………………………………90

3.2.2 We are not Ajumma or Aunty: “Call us Yoyangbohosa”……………………...94

3.2.3 The State-endorsed Care Expert………………………………………………97

3.3 “We Have a State-issued Certificate.” and “They are Chinese.”…………………...104

3.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….108

Chapter 4 Joseonjok Imo: Care Worker subjectivity based on fictive kinship…………….110

4.1 Entry to Care Market through Migration and Magnified Precarity………………...111

4.1.1. Magnified Precarity…………………………………………………………113

4.1.2. The Choice Narrative………………………………………………………..124

4.2 The Joseonjok Coalition: Ethnic Mobilization of “Colonial Returnees”…………...126

4.3 Wholehearted Care………………………………………………………………….129

4.3.1 Capitalist Lip Service is Not Good Care…………………………………….132

4.3.2 Detouring Gatekeepers: Beyond Instrumental Informality and Personalism..135

4.4 Conclusion: Production of Joseonjok Imo………………………………………….141

Chapter 5 The Paid-Daughters: Korean IHSS workers in the L.A. Koreatown…………..144

5.1 Unionized Immigrant Homecare Workers in a State-funded Program……………..145

5.1.1 IHSS Work in Koreatown: “The letter is just a letter.”……………………...145

5.1.2 IHSS in the Ethnic Care Economy…………………………………………..146 vii

5.1.3 An Ethnic Network within the SEIU………………………………………...150

5.2 Becoming Paid-Daughters………………………………………………………….158

5.2.1 “We are not Sikmo”: Unsettling Class Assumptions………………………...158

5.2.2 “The government pays us, not you.”………………………………………...162

5.2.3 “I call her mom.”…………………………………………………………….166

5.3 Production of Korean……………………………………………………………….167

5.3.1 Redefining Korean…………………………………………………………...167

5.3.2 Unfit Others………………………………………………………………….169

5.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….170

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………172

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….179

Appendices…………………………………………………………………………………184

Interview quotes in Korean………………………………………………………………...186

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List of Tables

Table 1. Groups of workers in South Korea in this study…………………………………..19

Table 2. Age and educational level………………………………………………………….43

Table 3. Working conditions……………………………………………………………..…44

Table 4. Comparation of the four groups in this study………………………………….....173

List of Figures

Figure 1. The mechanism of care workers’ subject formation……………………………...11

List of Appendices

1. The NHMC Domestic Servie Mannual………………………………………………....184

2. Historic Shift of Domestic Service in Korea……………………………………………185

Introduction

On May 16th, 2016, the South Korean National Assembly passed an amendment to the country’s Long-Term Care Insurance program for senior citizens (LTCI), mandating that government at both the local and national levels should improve the working conditions of state-certified elder care workers1. Members of the Seoul Supporting Center for Elder Care Workers had fought since 2011 to secure greater employment protections for yoyangbohosa (the official workforce of the LTCI) through such efforts as pushing for regulations against exploitative intermediary agencies, conducting numerous press conferences, staging public protests, and organizing political delegations. To celebrate their hard-fought victory, yoyangbohosa gathered at their center that evening over food and drinks. They also engaged in their weekly stretching exercises and attended a workshop about musculoskeletal disorders, which is a common ailment among many yoyangbohosa.

In the midst of this celebratory atmosphere, one worker initiated a side conversation about bad business owners and Korean Chinese migrant workers, commonly referred to by South Koreans as joseonjok2. “Have you heard about the D nursing home?” she asked. “Things are terrible there. Workers get ready to sleep at 7 pm. They don’t care about the elders,” she continued.

1 The Legislation and Judiciary Committee passed the amendment on May 16th, 2016, and it was formally confirmed in the National Assembly meeting on May 18th, 2016. Care workers and their advocates, as well as agency owners were all came to the National Assembly to see the results on May 18th, because the decision made by the Legislation and Judiciary determines success or failure of the amendment.

2 In terms of romanization, I have followed the Principle of Romanization instructed by the National Institute of Korean Language. The term Joseonjok (朝鮮族 or Chosŏnjok) originated from Joseon (1392~1910), the last dynasty in Korean peninsula that lasted until the Japanese colonial era (1910~1945). People migrated from Joseon to northeastern China (Qing dynasty) were officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China as one of 55 ethnic minorities later. The term Joseonjok is widely used among Korean Chinese themselves, however, some Korean Chinese, especially younger generation in Korea prefer other terms that refers to co-ethnics or overseas Koreans, such as dongpo and gyopo. Following workers’ own usage, I use Joseonjok and Korean Chinese interchangeably.

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Another worker responded, “I know. The owner does not follow the law, and the workers are all terrible. You know, they hire so many people from China there.” Curious why these workers seemed fixated on the issue of Korean Chinese migrant workers at their celebration, I asked, “So which nursing home hires a lot of people from China?” The two workers who started the conversation answered by describing many harmful practices taking place at the D nursing home, including the fact that it hired “ill-trained” Korean Chinese migrant workers who “work 24 hours and seven days a week, eating and sleeping [at the nursing home].” When I expressed sympathy for their long work hours and tough working conditions, another worker quickly intervened, stating that “They [Korean Chinese migrant workers] earn a lot, anyway. You know, they will do anything for money.”

I left with a set of questions. Issues regarding migrant workers have never been part of the agenda in yoyangbohosa workers’ struggles, notwithstanding the prevalence of migrant workers doing lower-wage work in the long-term care industry in Korea. And yet, the subject of Korean Chinese migrants experiencing poor working conditions arose at such an unlikely moment and in unexpected ways: why did the yoyangbohosa workers bring up Korean Chinese migrants while celebrating their victory? What logics render these migrant workers visible in the conversation? What is wrong with such workers seeking greater income? Why do these yoyangbohosa see Korean Chinese migrants as “ill-trained” others who are only interested in money rather than their fellow workers with whom they could ally? I was there to understand how these workers’ struggled to find their subjectivity and self-worth as care workers, but I quickly realized that any analysis of their struggles must include various others in their discourses around who they are and the value of their work.

Soaring Demand and Continuing Devaluation

This dissertation examines how low-paid care workers, who are stratified into different sectors of the care labor market according to gender, ethnicity, migration, and citizenship, form agentic political subjectivities. Low-paid care work, such as domestic service and eldercare, has been women’s work, and it continues to be devalued despite soaring demand in many societies. While scholars have debunked structural factors that shape the marginality of care workers, I was most interested in workers’ responses to the ongoing devaluation they experience: How do low-paid care workers, who are predominantly immigrants, people of color and women, make sense of

3 their continuing devaluation, and how do they navigate the constraints of their jobs? Scholars have highlighted how marginalized women workers who do devalued and stigmatized work resist through informal “dissent,” identity “negotiation,” discursive “contestation,” and collective actions through organizing. However, a key point that requires further attention in these scholarly conversations around marginalized women workers’ resistance is the subjectivity that fuels this resistance. Stacey Clare (2011) points to the tendency in care literature to view emotional labor as detrimental, arguing that workers develop a sense of a “caring self” based on their bond with clients. These studies allude to neoliberal state policies which result in outsourcing and austerity, causing workers to develop coping methods in response. However, we know little about how worker responses to the toxic neoliberal ideology and practice go beyond reactionary coping mechanisms and develop into a part of their selves. How can one become a subject of right claim making as a worker? What does it mean to be employed in care work, which is a highly gendered and moralized type of work?

The opening vignette gives us a glimpse of how workers’ understanding of their work constitutes their sense of self and how this subjectivity is formed in relation to others. Rather than remaining contained by their everyday struggles for survival as autonomous individuals, these workers came forward and asserted their rights as care workers by pushing the state to augment labor protections. However, the vignette also reveals the other side of their struggle. In accusing the D nursing home of failing to provide appropriate care, the workers indicated their professional and moral standards defining “good care” and “good care workers.” For them, the D nursing home was a moral and legal offender because it did not abide by the law concerning provision of LTCI services and because it hired migrant workers who, according their standards, were “ill-trained” and therefore unable to provide good quality care. These workers, organized around a strong sense of themselves as care professionals, simultaneously engaged in othering practices that excluded migrants, constructing themselves as professional while deeming migrants and moral offenders.

Inequality among Women in Care Work

While my primary interest was how worker subjectivity plays out in the struggles of low-paid care workers, I soon realized that the heterogeneity within the workforce matters in our understanding of their views about the world they inhabit, themselves, and others. Indeed, care

4 work is a site where emerging patterns of inequality among marginalized women are evident. A variety of services are now available for those who can buy themselves out of care work. Among women, less desirable care work is delegated to those with less power, based on such attributes as citizenship, race, and ethnicity. The market incorporation of care work came about through uneven processes of commodification. Some types of care work are not only paid but recognized as public or skilled work, while others are relegated to the informal cash market, being devaluated as unskilled work that any woman could do. Domestic work has been detached from the home and incorporated into the service economy, but people think that the state is responsible for neither its provision nor its protection. Eldercare, on the contrary, is included in the public health care system in many societies (Boris and Klein 2015; Cranford 2020; Lan 2018). However, the boundary between domestic service and eldercare is blurry, as long-term eldercare requires a combination of diagnostic/medical and ancillary services to assist elderly people’s everyday lives. In a context where reproductive labour is allotted on a global scale, the categorization and uneven formalization of care work is particularly important in terms of emerging inequality among women. While existing legal categories seek to clearly define which types of work deserve better recognition and who is allowed to perform more valuable work, this study shows that these matters are always under social contestation.

The state indeed plays an integral role in the stratification and segmentation among care workers. The state enables the market to supply marginalized groups of workers by directly shaping immigration policies or indirectly encouraging middle class women to seek private sources of care. Public health care in particular has been viewed by neo-liberals as a major cause of inefficiency and corruption, while declining revenues and rising demands for service call for “catalytic,” “customer-driven,” “market-oriented” and “smart” government (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). In the United States, Canada and Korea, a new neo-liberal strategy to deal with the supposed inefficiency of public health is to minimize the role of government to that of a managerial state by marketizing the provision of healthcare services (Armstrong et al. 2006; Cranford 2020; Michel and Peng 2012). And a consequence of outsourcing public services is that for-profit actors can now recruit those with the least power to extract more profit. The state also facilitates the employment of migrant women workers in low-paid care jobs by more direct policy means, such as creating separate immigration paths for the care workforce (Canada) or channeling certain preferred ethnic groups into the care industry by targeted immigration

5 policies. Consequently, it is marginalized groups of women, such as the poor or/and racialized and migrant workers, who predominantly perform this kind of work at minimum wage and in poor working conditions.

Structural power and state policies may have determined the path of the commodification of women’s labour, but they did not do so without contestations. In Korea, care has become a field of massive low-paid job production for women, yet it also has emerged as a strategic site in which several forms of resistance occur: feminists oppose the intensifying precariousness of women’s labour; co-ethnic migrant workers, who are overrepresented in the informal care market, challenge the utilization of cheap and exploitable co-ethnic labour by drawing on their political subjectivity based on ethno-national belonging, which is reaffirmed through care work; and in the Los Angeles Koreatown, immigrant workers resist exploitive working conditions shaped by laissez-faire welfare policies by deploying a two-pronged strategy to assert their workerhood.

Following the social constructivist tradition of understanding the state legal edifice, I see state policy as “a set of ends that actors envision and measures that they consider or adopt when they are authorized to act on behalf of a state or states (Adams and Padamsee 2001:15)”. I acknowledge state power, but by saying that state policy “shapes” workers’ strategies, I do not mean that state policies are simply enacted or dictate actors’ behavior. Rather, I mean what Adams and Padamsee call “recruit subject” (Adams and Padamsee 2001) in signifying processes in a policy regime. Subjects are “prescribed” by policies, not dictated to. Official discourses in state policy “invite” some “kind of” actors to “recognize themselves in its rhetorical claims and to join in forwarding them” (Adams and Padamsee 2001). For example, discourses around the LTCI in Korea prescribe yoyangbohosa, who are predominantly mid-aged and non-migrant women, as care specialists who are integral to rapidly ageing nation’ economic growth. State policies also position these women workers as upholders of nation’s morality, defining their work as practicing filial piety in public sector. While the state does not treat these workers accordingly, yoyangbohosa embrace such policy discourses, actively touting their quality as good care workers who deserve better treatment.

To understand heterogeneity within the low-paid care workforce in an analytical frame, this study compares four groups of care workers who do similar work but occupy distinct social

6 positions in terms of occupational status, citizenship, and ethnicity. Through a comparative analysis of four different groups of care workers, I analyze how low-paid care workers who do similar work but are unequally positioned within social contexts give meaning to their work and cultivate a sense of worth, entitlement and dignity in relation to other care workers as well as the state.

Workers actively construct their care worker subjectivity in different ways by deploying moral standards. Standards that define a “good care worker” are essential to these women to navigate their low-paid and unprotected jobs, offering them a way to maintain dignity and a sense of self- worth. Non-migrant domestic and eldercare workers in Korea find their care worker subjectivity and self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves to perform skilled and symbolically appropriate care for their recipients. Korean Chinese workers from China find their moral ground in their capacity to provide affectionate care that is not dictated by capitalist market logic. Korean immigrant IHSS workers in in the L.A. Koreatown find dignity and self-worth in their ability to care for vulnerable co-ethnic elderlies within the government subsidized program. However, each group of workers also defines moral offenders by drawing boundaries demarcated with criteria charged with their gendered, ethicized and racialized understanding of “good care.”

The main title of this study, Competing Subjectivities, encapsulates two pivots of my argument around emerging patterns and logics of inequality and resistance. First, it takes the centrality of subjectivities as a driving force of the processes by which care workers build an alternative sense of self and gain pride and confidence, which empowers them to challenge structural constraints. It highlights these workers’ agency in actively asserting meaning, thus mediating state polices through their interpretations, but it also recognizes power relations that affect workers agentic actions. Second, the word “competing” points to relationality in the construction of subjectivity: workers’ own interpretations of structural barriers, policies, and organizational discourses and the processes by which they come up with alternative ideas and practices in relation to others surrounding them.

Theoretical Frame

Care work serves as a useful case to study the construction of subjectivity. Under a culture that normalizes the deeply perpetuated devaluation of care work, workers themselves are not immune

7 to this devaluation. Low-paid care workers often do not see what they do as work, rather they see it as their moral duty and an expression of their altruistic selves (Chun and Cranford 2018; Glenn 2010; Solari 2006; Stacey 2011b). When workers perceive the low value attached to their work as natural, and when they do not find language to make their right claims as workers, they lose political leverage to exercise their collective voices. Resisting deeply entrenched and even internalized marginality and claiming their rights as workers, therefore, calls for creative strategies to instill transformative inner politics.

While scholars tend to use the term subjectivity without defining it, Anna Korteweg succinctly defines subjectivity “as the socially reinforced conceptualizing of self that informs action.” She adds that “subjectivity also indicates being a subject, which in turn connotes both the presence of an agentic self and being an object, however temporarily, of others’ actions” (Korteweg 2006:189). Influenced by the Foucauldian notion of ubiquitous and capillary power, scholars like Korteweg and Judith Butler (1997) view human agency as not existing outside the matrix of power as a form of pure resistance. Rather, one can shape the course of action differently through subjectivity within the structure. Critical sociological inquiries into subjectivity have therefore delved into two aspects of subjectivity, namely objectification and the agentic self, to identify structural constraints and emancipatory potential. In this regard, sociologists have studied how our sense of self is organized by various structures, such as consumer society (Lan 2003), nationhood (Lan 2008), welfare reforms and related social discourses around dependency (Korteweg 2006), citizenship (Choo 2016) and global production (Lee 1995; Salzinger 1997). However, scholars have also examined conditions under which the agentic self emerges.

The Centrality of Gender in Subjectivity

Feminist scholars have emphasized gender as a central axis of subjectivity construction. These scholars have observed that in many cultures, one’s sense of self and self-worth is closely tied to socially imposed gender ideologies and gender relations. For example, a mother-in-law in a Taiwanese heterosexual family finds her value and a sense of control by helping her son’s family with care work; her daughter-in-law finds her sense of self and her rightful location in the family as a wife and mother by performing a range of work that builds up the family (Lan 2001).

Gendered subjectivity, however, is always incomplete and temporal. Because we are living in a

8 society where our “competence as members of society is hostage to” the production of gender, we cannot avoid constantly displaying our gender identities to accomplish gendered selves (West and Zimmerman 1987). West and Zimmerman’s theory of doing gender has been criticized as a theory of maintenance of gender. However, seeing gender as a reoccurring accomplishment also implies its instability, as it suggests that one’s gender identity is always under a suspicious gaze and pressure to perform socially appropriate femininity to secure one’s sense of womanhood. Judith Butler (1997) also sees gendered subjects as unstable, pointing to the agency which comes from individuals’ ability to engage reiteration and citational practices differently, therefore unsettling gender. This instability also means that the gendered self is easily exposed to threats when there are competing femininities, and for this reason domestic labour has garnered feminist scholars’ attention, as the presence of a woman worker in the family exposes underlying power dynamics around gender in family life that are otherwise invisible.

A Multi-level and Interactive Approach

In West and Zimmerman’s original formulation, the subject of doing gender is an individual in their everyday life. However, sociologists have expanded the analysis of subject formation into a multi-level analysis that includes various institutions, examining subjectivity formation throughout various kinds of interactions: interactions between migrant domestic workers and employers in a family (Lan 2001); between women workers and customers and management in the beauty section at a department store (Lan 2003); between women workers and managers and male-workers on shop floors (Salzinger 1997); and between welfare-reliant women and front- line workers in government workfare programs (Korteweg 2006). In Korteweg’s study, interactions between front-line workers at welfare offices and welfare-reliant women modified the interpellation of welfare-reliant women as future workers, constructing feminized worker- citizen subjects.

Gender ideology that defines class and race specific femininity shapes our subjectivity, but this process is intermediated through local culture and institutions. Family as an institution is a key site where women positioned in different social locations negotiate their subjectivity by deploying various strategies to safeguard their class, race and gender identities (Lan 2006; Lan 2001). When a foreign domestic worker enters a family and performs tasks that were previously undertaken by her employer, the employer’s gender identities, which are based on firmly

9 imposed gender ideologies that define the appropriate wife, mother and daughter-in-law, need to be negotiated. The employer, who used to perform all the domestic chores, now sorts out some essential work of family construction, such as preparing the husband’s coffee, and performs these core tasks by herself to reaffirm her qualification and worth as a wife and mother.

The second type of intermediate level analysis looks at how women’s identities become part of a system of production (Lee 1995; Lan 2003; Salzinger 2003). In her case study of women workers in a department store cosmetic section, Lan (2003) analyzes how managerial control enforces “appropriate subjects” in the beauty industry to women workers, constructing workers bodies’ as “embodied subjectivities in the beauty industry.” In a similar vein, with a comparative case study of three shop floors, Salzinger (2003) shows that popular gender discourses are not directly imposed to oppress workers uniformly but are instead mediated by managerial subjectivities and practices (localized subjectivities). According to Salzinger, labour controls that draw on popular gender discourses vary across three shop floors because of different managerial responses to the market and discursive circumstances. These varying managerial subjectivities then lead them to enforce distinct labour controls and gendered meanings on different shop floors. In shop floors where the managerial practice of sexualizing women is normalized, women are constituted as “desirable objects” by male managers, and “to come to work is to be seen, to watch, and so to watch and see yourself” (Salzinger 2003:556). What is key in Salzinger’s analysis is women workers’ response. Enjoying their male line-workers’ emasculated masculinity in the factory, young women factory workers “take pleasure in the experiencing of being desirable,” embracing their gendered identity.

Lastly, organizations like civil society advocacy groups and quasi-government bodies play a role in subject formation. The role of organizations is particularly prominent in the political subject formation of marginalized people who do not have the language to claim their rights. In her analysis of migrant citizenship, Choo(2016) examines how different migrant advocacy groups translate state policy language around migrant subjects in distinctive ways and how their translations shape migrants’ view of themselves. What is particularly relevant to this study is the comparative component in Choo’s work that shows how these advocacy groups’ alternative discourses about migrant workers’ rights are entangled with gender ideology, circumscribing morally stigmatized women workers’ right claim making. Throughout everyday encounters with staff and fellow workers in migrant advocacy groups, factory workers cultivate pride and a sense

10 of honor, but hostesses, whose work is not recognized as dignifying work by advocacy groups, do not develop such a sense of self.

Subjectivity and Boundary Work

While unpaid or low-paid care work has long been taken for granted as women’s work, workers come to understand their value in society with their newly born subjectivity. This self- recognition and re-valuing of their work functions as political leverage by which workers exercise their right claims as collectives. Instead of staying in low-paid jobs as “caring selves,” these workers actively seek for rights and state protections.

As workers regain the authority of defining themselves by alternative worker subjectivities, they reinterpret various others in their lifeworld. Morality then becomes the “structuring principle” of these workers’ views on others (Lamont 2009). Their moral standards enable them to draw boundaries against those they label “bad” or “unprofessional” care workers. Yet the criteria with which they demarcate “good care workers” are often conflated with ethnic boundaries. Non- migrant care workers in Korea employ Chinese stereotypes against Korean Chinese workers, classifying them as undisciplined, untrainable, dirty, and morally inferior because they only care about money. On the contrary, Korean Chinese workers depict non-migrant workers as materialistic, uncaring, and coldly capitalistic. In constructing others in relation to each other, different forms of boundary work emerge because each group applies their own “measuring stick”(Lamont 2009) to re-value their work. In The Dignity of Working Men, Lamont (2009) uses the analogy of a measuring stick to describe how African American workers develop alternative definitions of economic success based on their self-worth as caring selves. Likewise, the four groups of workers who do similar work define “moral offenders” by drawing boundaries demarcated with their alternative measuring sticks charged with gendered, ethicized and racialized understandings of “good care.” In doing so, they try to elevate their positions above others in the hierarchically organized labour market. However, by justifying the poor working conditions the others encounter, these workers contribute to the reproduction of an unequal structure.

Figure 1. The mechanism of care workers’ subject formation

Building on lines of scholarship that takes a multi-level and interactive approach to the study of subject making, I develop an analytical framework that captures the process of the construction of care worker subjects. I structure my analysis within a framework that consists of three interrelated levels of analysis. At the policy regime level, I provide the context of how state power sorts and channels marginalized women into low-paid and stigmatized sectors of the care market through intersecting care work and migration regimes. For example, discourse about LTCI policies in Korea positions yoyangbohosa workers as care specialists who are integral to the economic growth of a rapidly ageing nation. While the state does not treat these workers accordingly, they embrace this discourse, actively touting their quality as good care workers who deserve better treatment. Joseonjok workers are essential to sustain the LTCI, but they are not recognized in public policy. These informal workers thereby draw the symbolic building blocks of their subjectivity and legitimacy from diaspora policies that see their political subjectivity as co-ethnic. IHSS policy in L.A. lacks explicit gender or ethnic vocabularies, but its laisses-faire approach invites ethnic communities to make use of the IHSS according to their own rules.

The second, intermediate level of my analysis examines how organizations (NGOs and unions) and labour markets mediate the interactions between the policy regime and workers’ subjectivities. These subjectivities emerge from workers’ lived experiences but organizing experiences into a narrative is challenging for those who work in isolation. Organizations synthesize workers’ scattered lived experiences into a coherent story of shared experience and diffuse it back to them, augmenting workers’ self-recognition of their experiences. Organizations also help workers with framing their problems. They do this by seeking alternative targets for claim making, so that workers are equipped with vocabularies to articulate the re-valuation of their work (see Table 1 below). For instance, house managers in Korea learn feminist theories that explain the devaluation of women’s work and recognize that house managers themselves can rightly express the characteristics of their own work. They come to find it unjust that they are placed in a residual category under labour law, thus they engage in legislative struggles with the state.

Organizations and the labour market mediate interactions between the policy regime and care work. Organizations translate policy discourse into language that advocates for workers’ rights. They often re-interpret or complement state policies, offering specific vocabularies that workers can deploy in their subject building. Organizations also provide workers with material resources such as physical spaces where workers can gather and share their experiences, learn about their rights, and receive vocational training. Throughout collective activities workers solidify their collective subjectivity, which would otherwise remain as individual processes. While organizations supply symbolic and material resources to workers, the labour market affects how workers perceive other groups. A gendered and racialized labour market structure, along with competition among workers on race/ethnic lines, forces workers into the hierarchy within the market. Workers’ structural location in the labour market heavily shapes their positional interests, which affect their views of other groups of workers.

The third or micro level analyzes workers’ own accounts of themselves and Others. By embracing and re-interpreting policy discourses, care workers who do similar work but are marginalized on different bases develop new political subjectivities in response to their increasing precarity, which empowers them to challenge the long-lasting devaluation of their work and to establish themselves as legitimate right-bearers. These workers actively engage in meaning making around who they are and the value of their work. They coin new terms to

13 represent their collective worker subject, such as “house manager,” yet in these subjectivity building projects, workers draw boundaries against diverse others, limiting the emancipatory potential of their struggles.

Research Questions Though the capacity of individuals to maneuver within structural constraints has become further limited in the neoliberal era, people, especially those in marginalized groups, contest exiting power relations in pursuit of survival and dignity. Working-class men develop their moral subjectivity to maintain their dignity and self-worth in an era when the American Dream is out- of-reach (Lamont 2000), and care workers develop “caring selves” (Stacey 2011a) and moral accounts (Baines 2016) to protect their sense of value in poor working conditions. Yet what has been insufficiently scrutinized in examining marginalized people’s struggles around meaning making in their everyday lives is the conditions under which these new subjectivities emerge. Therefore, I propose an overarching research question.

Research Question 1: Under what conditions and how do care workers in South Korea and California develop contrasting subjectivities when it comes to their sense of value and contributions as care workers?

We know that the deeply harmful neoliberal ideology has weakened individuals’ capacity to recognize each other as fellow humans (Somers 2008). As for care workers, we have learned from previous studies that the historical and structural continuity of the devaluation of care work has contributed to alternative identities for workers that allow them to find dignity. For instance, Lan (2006) finds that domestic workers dissent from their clients’ attempts to deny their femininity and motherhood, and Baines (2016) shows that paid homecare workers are morally coerced to provide unpaid labour, yet they value their unpaid work by emphasizing its practical and moral value to their clients. What this study further examines is how these struggles that involves their sense of self develop into a collective-level.

The second aspect of this enquiry into workers’ resistance at the micro-level is how individual workers’ subjectivities are elevated to become part of a collective identity. To further elaborate on the main research question focusing on the emergent logic of processes, I propose the second

14 research question.

Research Question 2: What role do organizations, as well as the labor market context, play in influencing the formation of workers’ subjectivities?

Lastly, reconstructing worker subjectivities does not occur in a vacuum but always involves navigating an existing power matrix. To define who you are and to delineate who we are as a collective entail drawing boundaries against who we are not, namely others (Lamont 2002; Lamont and Lamont 2009). Therefore, workers’ struggles in building alternative subjectivity entail relational processes. However, these othering practices within marginalized groups of workers have gained scant academic attention due to the tendency to focus only on one group or view care workers as homogenous, such as immigrant women or women from the Global South. In elucidating how care workers see themselves and the rest of society, this study answers the following research question.

Research Question 3: How do care workers categorize others in their subject building projects?

Data and Methods The design of this research is based on what Choo and Ferree (2010) call a “process-centered model.” Rather than examining how multiple social categories, such as gender and race, are combined in distinctive ways and magnify oppression for certain groups of women, an analysis using the process-centered model of intersectional analysis “highlights dynamic forces more than categories—racialization rather than races, economic exploitation rather than classes, gendering and gender performance rather than genders—and recognizes the distinctiveness of how power operates across particular institutional fields” (134). This perspective embraces a social constructivist approach by focusing on how categories are constructed in “mutually transformative processes” and being sensitive to context (2010,134). This approach requires multi-level data to capture “both the agency of individuals in making the world they inhabit and the enabling and constraining forces of the world as it has been produced” (Choo and Ferree 2010: 134).

Such a social constructivist view also requires a critical re-examination of the concept of interests that are structurally defined by categories. The conventional concept assumes that certain interests exist prior to actors' subjectivities. As they explain: “‘interest’-signaling ideological dispositions that are held to derive directly, without cultural mediation, from social positions of one sort or another-is no longer tenable for sociological analysis, although it remains very important as a possible construction of the actors themselves” (14). In other words, categories and meanings are always under construction in discursive terrain, and thus, so are interests. Therefore, an important topic of inquiry is not competing interests based on the structural locations of actors, but rather a sign, or a discourse, which can mobilize subjects.

Three sets of data will therefore support the analysis in this study: (i) semi-structured in-depth interview data to analyze individual workers' discourses and subjectivities; (ii) semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts and activists to understand the organizational and policy context; (iii) public text data to explore other discourses and workers’ responses to these discourses; (iv) data from ethnographic observation to capture non-verbal cues that might not emerge in the interviews. I conducted in-depth interviews with 98 care workers (18 Korean-born domestic workers, 16 Korean-born state-certified eldercare workers, 22 Korean Chinese care workers in Korea and 28 Korean immigrant IHSS workers in Los Angeles, California) and 16 experts and activists, 10 sessions of focus group interviews with 45 workers (40 Korean Chinese workers and five Korean-born domestic workers) from May 2015 to January 2017, inconsecutively. In the summer of 2015, I started working at the Korean Women Workers Association and the Joseonjok Coalition as a volunteer, doing administrative work four times a week. Korean-born domestic worker participants were largely recruited through the NHMC (National House Managers Cooperative) branches near Seoul, and I interviewed domestic workers affiliated with the YWCA and KDWA. In 2016, I began participant observation at the Seoul Supporting Center for Elderly Careworkers, attending their events such as forums, training sessions and stretching classes. All yoyangbohosa workers in this study were recruited from the center using snowball sampling methods. All Korean Chinese workers were recruited through the same method. All Korean IHSS workers in this study are members of a Korean group within the SEIU, and the leaders of this group recruited workers for the interviews.

The data collection from L.A. was initially conducted as part of another research project led by

Jennifer Jihye Chun and Cynthia Cranford3. The project was about intersectional dynamics that shape immigrant women workers’ trajectories into homecare in California and the mediating role of unions and communities. I joined the project to conduct interviews with Korean immigrant IHSS workers in Koreatown, and soon I found that this group constituted an interesting case in comparison with care workers in Korea. My task as a research assistant was doing interviews, but I also accompanied workers to their workplaces, union meetings, and informal gatherings to observe how they interacted with each other. However, because my research in LA. was not a part of the original design of this dissertation project, my short fieldwork there lacks the depth and extent of my research in Korea.

Organization of the Dissertation

This study makes a comparative examination of how care workers develop their worker subjectivities and devise new discourses and practices that reassert their sense of value and self- worth in doing care work. The dissertation is organized with empirical chapters that highlight different groups of marginalized yet unequally positioned care workers’ struggles for survival and dignity in two field sites. The greater Seoul area in South Korea and Los Angeles in the United States are two sites that illuminate the deepening commodification of care, where the state outsources care to marginalized groups of women, namely poor and working-class as well as racialized immigrant women. While they are all care workers who fight against poor recognition, their marginality is shaped differently depending on their locations in the matrix of power relations.

This dissertation begins with an introduction that situates the case within two broad trends that have contoured the social organization of care work in South Korea and the United States: first, the expansion of market-oriented and contract-out welfare policies funneled poor and working-

3Cranford, Cynthia and Jennifer Jihye Chun. 2017. “Immigrant Women and Home-based Elder Care in Oakland, California’s Chinatown.” Pp. 41-66 in Gender, Migration and the Work of Care: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Pacific Rim, edited by Sonya Michel and Ito Peng. Palgrave; Chun, Jennifer Jihye, and Cynthia Cranford. 2018. "Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women and the Changing Worlds of Work, Care and Unionism." Critical Sociology 44(7-8):1013-27.

17 class women to care sectors; and second, ethnocentric immigration policies and a racialized labour market that exacerbated the concentration of vulnerable women workers in low-paid care sectors. The larger context then reveals how market logics manifested in state policies utilize differences among women to gain profit in the era of government contracting-out services. A political consequence of this is that stratification and segmentation among women workers along power lines weakens what power that women as a group can possibly have in feminized care work.

To analyze how divergent configurations of state policies, labour organizations, and gendered morality shape worker subject formation, I introduce unequally positioned women workers in different care sectors. The first group is what I call National Care Experts, state-certified eldercare workers employed by the Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) program in South Korea. They are all non-migrant women workers. The second group consists of non-migrant and organized domestic workers in South Korea who are pursuing legal recognition of their status as workers, whom I call House Managers. Joseonjok Imo is the third group. They are migrant workers from China (PRC) with Korean ancestry (Joseonjok), and they do the hybrid work of domestic service and eldercare work in the shadow economy of South Korea. The last group in this study is made up of Korean immigrant workers who do publicly funded care work (In-Home Supportive Service) in the L.A. Koreatown. I call them Paid-Daughters to encapsulate their dual worker subjectivity reflecting the distinct conditions of their work, which is shaped within their ethnic community.

Chapter 2. “From Domestic Service to House Manager: Redefining the Worth of Domestic Work” is about organized domestic workers who, because Korean law denies their formal workerhood, work without legal protections. This chapter analyzes how domestic workers’ new political subjectivity emerges by collectively challenging the gendered construction of work. I also critically examine the exclusion of migrant workers in their feminist vision-driven struggles. Chapter 3, “National Care Experts: State-certified Eldercare Workers”, analyzes how state- certified eldercare workers (yoyangbohosa) see themselves as national care experts whose value and skills are endorsed by the state. Here I highlight the workers’ professional project, centered on meaning-making processes, that dismantles the androcentric definition of skilled work and re- values their work, analyzing how this enables their right claims with the state. However, I also show how the professional project opens a space for these national care experts to draw rigid

18 ethnic boundaries against migrant workers who do not share a sense of workerhood based on professionalism. Chapter 4. “Joseonjok Imo: Care Worker Subjectivity based on Fictive Kinship” explores the lifeworld of migrant care workers as they understand it. Joseonjok workers are an essential workforce to sustain LTCI in South Korea, yet they are not recognized within the program. On the other hand, their identity as Koreans has been endorsed by state policies in the context of capitalist incorporation of diaspora in South Korea. These informal workers thereby draw symbolic building blocks of their subjectivity and legitimacy from diaspora policies that see their political subjectivity as co-ethnic. Rejecting South Korean-born workers' definition of good care as professional care, co-ethnic migrant workers assert their ability to provide wholehearted care that hinges on fictive kinship relationships with recipients. In doing so, these workers differentiate themselves from non-migrant workers, attempting to hold dominant positions at least within the informal economy where they can minimize competition. The last empirical chapter, Chapter 5. The Paid-Daughters: Immigrant IHSS workers in the L.A. Koreatown, opens up a broader perspective by comparing care workers in different configurations of care policies and advocate organizations. The chapter’s subject is Korean immigrant IHSS (In-Home Supportive Services) workers in the L.A. Koreatown. Because it is an ethnic economy among older groups of immigrants, and because no one—neither the state nor the union (SEIU)—intervenes in the labour process, cultural norms take dominant positions in defining “good IHSS service” for Korean elders. Unlike yoyangbohosa workers who are touted as “care specialists” in policy discourse, the lack of such discourse opens possibilities for IHSS workers to adopt the symbolic and material recourses that are available to them—one from the ethnic community and the other one from the union. In this chapter, I document the seemingly contradictory dual subjects that have emerged among Korean immigrant IHSS workers. The first one (daughter) is centered on a very gendered and ethnicized subject who provides culturally specific care to vulnerable co-ethnic immigrant elders. This caring ethnic self has some similarities to that constructed by Joseonjok in Korea. Yet, like yoyangbohosa, these workers are part of a state-subsidized program which is unionized in L.A. In this context they also develop subjectivity as public sector workers who provide a valuable service to elderly immigrants.

The dissertation concludes by comparing the different ways these four groups of care workers develop a sense of self-worth and dignity given the intermediate, labour market and organizational, and policy regime contexts in which they find themselves. I flesh out how this

19 multi-level, interactional framework contributes to our understanding of subjectivity by illuminating low-paid care work as a site of discursive and material boundary-marking, a term that I use to refer to the process in which the structure of inequality is reinforced through competing worker subjectivities.

Groups Affiliated Organizations Description National care expert Seoul Supporting Center State-certified eldercare workers for LTCI in South for Elderly Careworkers Korea. All South-Korea born and South-Korean nationals (n=16). House manager NHMC South-Korea born and South-Korean nationals (National House Managers domestic service workers (n=18). Cooperative) Joseonjok Imo Joseonjok Coalition Migrant care workers with Korean ancestry who came from China and are working in homes and hospitals in Korea (n=22). Paid-daughter SEIU 2015 Korean immigrant workers who provide state- (Service Employees funded eldercare services (IHSS) to co-ethnic elders International Union ) in Koreatown (n=28).

Table 1. Groups of workers in South Korea in this study

Chapter 1 Context

In this chapter I explain how the care sector emerged as a strategic site where growth of the national economy is fueled by women’s employment. As I will describe in what follows, the state plays an integral role in setting a context where vulnerable groups of women—poor and older groups from host countries and migrant women—are channeled into the burgeoning care sector under the rubric of social services, workfare, and women’s empowerment. The state also plays a role in categorizing care work. While the boundary between domestic service and eldercare can be murky especially when it comes to in-home services, the state defines the two, assigning different meanings, values and treatments to each. I situate the state’s move within the intensifying neoliberal structuring of the welfare system in the aftermath of crisis and economic downturn.

This chapter provides an analysis of the systemic link between women workers’ experiences and structural conditions, by situating study participants’ experiences within a broader context of the feminization of survival in the neoliberal era. Feminization of survival refers to an emergent phenomenon whereby an individual or community’s survival increasingly depends on women under capitalist expansion (Sassen 2000). Although all groups of women workers in this study share a commonality, namely that they are the main actors in the feminization of survival, there are differences in how they manage the burdens on their shoulders. Various groups of marginalized women enter the care sector under different circumstances; thus, the care sector illuminates the different strategies they employ, allowing us to understand how these strategies are constructed in relation to each other.

1.1 The Rise of Care: The State’s Gendered Response to Capitalist Expansion

1.1.1 South Korea’s Care Sector: Resurgence, Diversification and Changing Meanings

Historical Context: The Resurgence of Domestic Service

The sociologist Lewis Coser argued that the premodern master-servant relationship in domestic work would decline as democratic doctrines replace religion and more alternative occupations become available to women (Coser 1974). Unlike his prediction, domestic work remains a major occupation for women in many advanced and democratic capitalist countries such as the United States, with intensifying commodification of reproductive labour. The seemingly premodern occupation persists, although the form of the work and the composition of workers has greatly changed. Granted, there are no servant girls who are poor peasants’ daughters or slaves at present, but we are seeing a “resurgence, or at least not a decline” of the domestic service sector, as the occupation is filled with an abundant supply of immigrant women and local women from less privileged classes (Wrigley 1991).

The general trend of the resurgence of domestics observed in the U.S. is similar in Korea.4 Like many other countries, domestic (or servant) work has long been common for women from marginalized groups in Korea. The relationship between servants and their masters was based on their status in a caste system until the early 20th century. As the slavery system5 in Korea was officially abolished in 1896, the master-servant relationship gradually transformed from a status- based relationship into one based on employment.

Working in private homes came to be women’s paid work throughout the Japanese colonial period (1910~1945), as Korea went through industrialization and subsequent rural-urban migration during this period. In feudal times, men and women worked as servants in aristocrats’ homes. There was also a division of labour among female servants: one who cooks, another who does laundry, and others who do sewing and baby care etc. However, former male servants

4 There are a few historical studies on domestic service jobs in Korea. I largely draw on the historical studies conducted by Kang (2009), Moon (2014) and Lee H.K. (2004) for this section.

5 “Slavery system” is a crude translation of nobi jaedo from the Joseon dynasty. It is a crude translation because the two are embedded in very different contexts. While racial others composed the labour force of slavery in Europe and the Americas, nobi were not racial others. Some types of nobi were considered quasi-family, and there were live-in and live-out nobi. To delve into the different contexts is beyond the scope of this study, thus I utilize this crude translation.

22 moved into other jobs during industrialization, and servant work gradually came to be a paid job for one women in the home who was required to manage all the house chores (Moon 2014). The dearth of employment opportunities available for women in rural areas pushed them, barely educated and economically marginalized, to seek out survival strategies on their own. Moving into an affluent family’s home, living there without paying rent, and providing domestic service in exchange (haengrangsari) became a common way of living for poor women. Those who were educated and thereby able to speak Japanese, worked in Japanese homes in Korea, receiving a salary. According to Kang (2009), the number of women workers in factories was around thirty and forty thousand in the 1930s, whereas the number of domestic workers was more than ninety thousand in the same period. As a large number of women were channeled into domestic work, Imperial Japan in Korea initiated a public campaign calling for “modernizing the practices” around haengrangsari (Moon 2014). The media backed this modernization project by promoting the new term sikmo to replace eomeom and halmeom, pejorative terms that referred to older women in the lower classes (Moon 2014: 137).6 Over the 1930s and 1940s, haengrangsari, originally a hybrid quasi-family and employment relationship, changed into live-in paid work.

From the 1960s to the late 1970s, the acceleration of industrialization and urban-bound migration after the Korean War changed the landscape of domestic work. The war produced a large number of poor widows and girls, roughly estimated at 550,000, and the government established an “employment solution for widows” (mimangin jigeopdaechaek) in partnership with the YWCA7 in 1962. In the 1960s, young women and girls from rural areas were attracted to the domestic service sector. The industrialization of Korea was still in its infant stage in the 1960s, and jobs in factories were not enough for both men and women. Consequently, women from rural areas, largely under age 20 and eager for jobs in factories, ended up finding jobs in private homes as sikmo. By the 1960s, sikmo had come to be a stigmatized job, yet it was also

6 Today sikmo is perceived as a denigrating term, but it was originally introduced as a “modern” and “respected” term.

7 The YWCA coined the terms “help sister” ( sugo eonni,수고 언니) and “help mom” (sugo umm,수고 엄마) during the 1960s to attach positive meanings to the stigmatized job.

23 seen as a “safer choice” for those young women who were in great danger of moral corruption by falling into the sex industry (Kim 2002; Kim 2006). Given the notion that home was the safest place to cultivate these young women and girls, along with the lack of factory jobs, made domestic service one of the major jobs for women. In the 1965 census data for South Korea, domestic service ranked as the fourth most common job for women (Kang 2009).

Though the country was still poor, the Korean economy grew throughout the 1960s, and poor women flooded into the burgeoning manufacturing industries to fill the labour shortage. Yet labour supply from urban-bound migration was not indefinite, so the Korean government began to actively recruit women to work in factories from the late 1960s (Kang 2009). The supply of domestics from rural areas declined, but to have a sikmo8 at home was still prevalent. For instance, in 1965, the police estimated the number of sikmo in Seoul as 50,000 (Kim 2002). In 1967, 60% of double-income urban households employed domestic workers (Lee H.K. 2004).

In the 1980s, part-time domestic service replaced the live-in sikmo (Kang 2009, Lee H.K. 2004). Socioeconomic factors affected the decline in demand and supply of domestics. These factors included women’s growing participation in diverse occupations, the termination of urban-bound migration, changes in family structure and housing conditions, the development of technology, and the diffusion of the idea of democracy. While the practice of hiring domestics was prevalent among double-income urban households in the 1970s, around 50% of such households were employing domestics in 1984, and the figure declined to 30% in the 1990s (Lee H.K. 2004:130). The form of domestic service changed as well: in the 1980s, part-time domestic service became dominant in the market. Lee H.K. (2004, 133) finds that a maid room (MR) was included in blueprints of apartments until the early 1980s, but the idea of the MR disappeared as the live-in type of domestic service job waned.

Domestic service in Korea has changed quantitatively and qualitatively with the influx of migrant workers since the late 1980s, as migrant women emerged as a new source of domestic

8 Unlike servants in feudal times who were from all age groups, sikmo were single young women and girls. This is because their families in villages wanted to unburden themselves by sending their young daughters to relatives or acquaintances as sikmo, while they kept the pillars of the family, namely their sons.

24 service (Kang 2009, Lee H.K. 2004, Lee J.Y. 2004). Although employing foreign nationals in private homes was illegal until 2002, affluent families in Seoul began to hire highly educated young women from the Philippines as live-in domestic workers. Such workers were an attractive option for wealthy Korean women employers since they could hire live-in (and English speaking) workers at a lower cost. However, the popularity of Filipina domestic workers did not last long. Since the 1990s, Korean Chinese women workers quickly replaced Filipina workers, utilizing their linguistic and cultural advantages.

In recent years, the landscape of the domestic service market in South Korea has been shifting along two streams. First, since the early 2000s, South Korean (non-migrant) workers, in solidarity with civil society groups, have organized themselves. They established their own social cooperatives with government subsidies and administrative support from NGOs, developing movement-oriented non-profit agencies. However, big corporations expanded their business to the domestic service sector through online platforms that matched customers and workers. Domestic service through mobile applications fundamentally negates the notion of an employment relationship, as it simply matches customers and workers with an extremely flexible timeframe and fee. With the online platform for domestic service, the service is divided into very specific micro-tasks, such as organizing closets and cleaning washrooms, so that the customer can choose a specific service with the lowest cost and without any accountability as an employer. Platform service is rapidly growing. According to the Korea Employment Information Service, it is estimated that around 470,000 to 540,000 workers were doing platform work in 2018 in Korea, and the majority of women workers who find their work through online platforms are restaurant workers (23.1%), domestics/childcare workers (17.4%), and elderly/patient care workers (14.0%). On International Domestic Workers Day in 2019, the KWWA (Korean Women Workers Association) released an official statement condemning the inhumanity of platform work and its negative impacts on domestic workers (Korea Employment Information Service 2019).

Emphasis on Women’s Autonomy in the Aftermath of the Crisis

The Korean state’s hands-off attitude towards care work greatly changed throughout the 1990s. Since the late 1990s, the state has begun to see the care sector as a strategic site where new driving power for the nation’s sustainable growth is generated. I situate the state’s strategic and

25 gendered intervention in the care sector within a broader context in which the liberal democratic state’s promise to realize the welfare state fails in the face of intensifying neoliberal capitalist expansion. Korea achieved political democratization and dramatic economic growth in the 1980s. But the fruit of economic growth, including the formation of a strong middle class backed by the male breadwinner system, was shattered during and in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis (known as the IMF crisis in South Korea), which was called a “national bankruptcy” and “national humiliation” (Song 2009). It was a national bankruptcy with the Korean government requesting a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), regarded as a sign that the state-led and conglomerate-centered economic development model had turned out to be a failure. The crisis was also a national humiliation, because the skyrocketing unemployment rate, which reached double digits, and the explosive increase of homeless people on the street, had been something unimaginable for most Korean people who had lived in the prosperity that the democratic state had realized up to then.

The crisis revealed the loopholes in the welfare system, putting the newly elected democratic government into a predicament. Economically vulnerable populations who had been under the protection of families, such as the poor, elderly citizens, and women, were pushed out onto the street, revealing how poorly prepared the state was to protect its citizens during the crisis. To maintain its legitimacy, overcoming the collective trauma of the crisis and finding a new engine of economic growth became a central goal of the Korean state. External forces, namely pressure from the IMF to restructure the economy, also pushed the Korean state to begin a search for a new strategy for sustainable growth in the accelerating competition of the era of neoliberal globalization. At the same time, a major demographic transition, that is, the rapid ageing of the population, as well as a shift in family structure, also called for the state to intervene to create a new drive for economic growth.

At this juncture, the care sector became a springboard for policy discussions around welfare— not the paternalistic protections that the Korean state had provided in the past, but rather neoliberal ways of welfare provision through employment. Throughout the national crisis, the old view that sees women as dependent shifted into a new one: in the competitive world, women also need to be autonomous and self-sufficient, therefore, those who stay at home are an idle labour force which can and must be reactivated immediately. And the work that women have

26 undertaken without payment in the home, namely care work, emerged as a policy alternative to quickly create jobs for women. When care work became employment for women, however, it lost its “status as a labour of love and became regarded as unskilled work that anyone can perform” (Boris and Parreñas 2010:11) (Boris and Parreñas 2010) “Unskilled” care work, therefore, became an ideal terrain for easy massive job creation in a short period of time by recruiting economically vulnerable women with little recognition and remuneration. Indeed, the annual progress report of South Korean administration in 2015 celebrates that the employment rate grew 1.1% compared to the former administration, showing that the increase was led by women and the elderly (Ministry of Employment and Labour 2015).

Eldercare became one of the first arenas of massive job creation for older groups of women. In Korean law, non-medical professional eldercare workers at homes or hospitals (ganbyeongin), were categorized as a subtype of domestic worker (gasasayongin) (Gu 2014). Yet the steeply ageing population and soaring care demand in Korea led the state to turn its attention to eldercare in the late 1990s. The Korean state, in partnership with labour and feminist groups, started recruiting economically vulnerable groups of women for various emergency state projects, such as dispatching them to private homes for medical patients, elders, children, and disability care, in order to give them employment opportunities during the IMF crisis (Chun and Kim 2018). In 2001, the state launched an official task force to develop a system to socialize eldercare. Until LTCI (Long Term Care Insurance) was officially launched in 2008, labour and feminist groups in Korea pushed for a national healthcare service for senior citizens that guaranteed universal access to care with care workers directly employed by the state. However, others argued that involving the market in LTCI would more effectively guarantee an adequate supply of labour. As a result, under the LTCI scheme, the state provides universal coverage for Korean citizens and yoyangbohosa (certification for eldercare workers), who then work for for-profit agencies and facilities. The scheme succeeded in drawing women to “return” to the labour market. In 2007, the Ministry of Health and Welfare set itself a goal of securing 34,000 yoyangbohosa workers and envisioned this target as a major challenge. Within a year, however, 172,889 people obtained the certificate, and the number escalated to 1,100,000 in five years, making yoyangbohosa the fastest growing occupation in Korea (National Health Service 2016).

In 2010, the government launched The Care Service Industry Promotion Plan, targeting home visits for the patient care, elderly care, postpartum care, and disability care sectors. Since the revision of the Framework Act on Social Security in 2012, the social service sector has become a core part of the welfare regime in Korea (Hong K.J. 2014). The Korean government’s efforts to create jobs in the care sector achieved the desired outcome to some extent, as the scale of employment in the care sector has increased since 2008, with a total employment increase from 2.6% to 3.5% in 2012 (Hong K.J. 2014). In 2011, approximately 468,518 workers were employed across six subsectors in the care market (Economic and Social Development Commission 2011). The emergence of the care sector and its contribution to the national economy is reflected in government’s statistical categories. In 2017, the Ministry of Labour amended the Korean Social Occupational Classification Employment (KSOC) classification system, based on the Social Occupational Classification (SOC) System in the United States, by creating a new subcategory of “caring service workers” (dolbomseobiseu jongsawon), recognizing yoyangbohosa (KSOC 42111) and ganbyeongin (KSOC 42112) as different from “domestic chore helpers” (gasadoumi, KSCO 9511).

In sum, the care sector has burgeoned in recent years in Korea, and state policies to create jobs for women have played a pivotal role in this expansion and diversification. As a consequence of the government’s efforts to boost the care sector, a large number of new care jobs have been created. While all sorts of care work has been done by women at homes in the past9 under the murky occupational title of gasasayongin (“employed in private homes”), a considerable part of the work is now being done by various types of workers outside the home, as the care sector is now diversified. The catchphrase that ran through government efforts to boost the care market and women’s economic participation was “sustainable growth,” but the aspiration behind it was not gender-neutral. The deeply entrenched assumption that women are naturally fit for care work and that any woman can do the work, is reflected in the government’s job creation plans in the

9 Moon (2014) argues that domestic work emerged as a distinctive occupation for women during the colonial era in Korea. She explains that industrialization during the colonial era created jobs that were available for male servants, yet women had limited employment opportunities outside the home. Industrialization also reduced the amount of necessary work needed to maintain the household. For instance, making clothes was outsourced to the market, which allowed employers to hire fewer numbers of domestic workers. See Moon, Hyuna 2014. "The Structural Change and Its Meaning of Domestic Workers in Colonial Modern Korea." Journal of Korean Women's Studies 30(2):127-59.

28 care sector. Instead of considering the question of “What is the best way of sharing the care responsibilities we need in this society?” to cope with the alleged care crisis, state policies provided an answer to the question of “what measures do we need to bring all women into care work quickly and with minimum cost?” Given the dominance of the view that economic growth, and only growth, can guarantee the wellbeing of people in Korea, government policies have yielded quantitative progress. However, in the shadow of this quantitative growth, care workers’ precarization intensified.

Diversification of the Care Market and Uneven Formalization

Since the IMF crisis and subsequent welfare restructuring, the care sector has been diversified. However, workers’ demographic composition and the degree of formalization of each subsector of the care sector vary. For instance, eldercare is relatively formalized as it was officially detached from the broad category of domestic work with the establishment of LTCI (Gu 2014; Kim and Lee 2015). The Welfare of Older Persons Act defines the official occupation of yoyangbohosa, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare regulates its working conditions. Though limited, yoyangbohosa workers are eligible for making claims for workers’ rights.

The formalization of eldercare, however, was a double-edged sword as Michel and Peng (2002) aptly point out, as it requires a constant supply of workers, which the LTCI program failed to provide. Korean Chinese, also known as Joseonjok, the largest migrant group10 in Korea, who have been working in the service sector since the 1990s, actively entered the institutionalized market to fill the gap, meeting the growing demand largely as informal workers. Given the lack of official statistical data, estimates of the portion of Korean Chinese working in nursing homes and hospitals vary from 50% (Economic and Social Development Commission 2011) to 90% (Medical Observer 2014). In 2018, The Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (KPTU) estimated that 80% of around two hundred ganbyeongin workers were Korean Chinese workers.

10 In 2018, Chinese accounted for 45.2% of the total number of resident foreign nationals in Korea (1,070,566 out of 2,368,000), followed by Thais (8.4%) and Vietnamese (8.3%). 82% of these Chinese citizens are Josoenjok people, indicating that co-ethnic migrants are the largest migrant group in Korea (see http://www.moj.go.kr/moj/2412/subview.do).

State policies and official statistics demarcate different types of care work hierarchically: while childcare and eldercare are recognized as distinct occupations, domestic service is not. Korean law denies legal status (geunrojaseong) to domestic service workers, seeing them as disposable, unskilled, and thus not worthy of protections and rights. In everyday practice, however, the clear boundary between care work becomes blurry. Under the murky terms of domestic service, enormous numbers of workers are still providing all-in-one service that meets various employers’ needs. This is particularly true among unregulated and unorganized workers in the shadow market, largely Korean Chinese migrants who are filling the lower strata of the domestic service sector as an informal11 workforce. While organized and certified non-migrant workers draw a clear boundary between their work and other types of care work, these informal migrant workers, especially those who work in private homes, fuse their multiple roles as cleaners, baby sitters, caregivers for the sick and elderly, and cooks, under the umbrella term of domestics (gajeongbu).

The presence of a large pool of cheap, multi-purpose, and unregulated labourers is a pillar of the Korean care market undergirding the formalized and formalizing care sectors. Korean Chinese workers account for a considerable portion of the labour force in the domestic service market. Although it is impossible to get a precise figure given the lack of statistical data, there are estimates that allow us to map out this sector. Korean Chinese workers are legally obligated to report to the immigration authority within 14 days of employment.12 According to employment report data, 15% of employed Korean Chinese are in the domestic service sector. In 2002, even though it was illegal for individual households to hire foreign nationals, around 70% of the 10,000 migrant women who were working as domestics were Korean Chinese women (Lee H.K. 2004). Lee (K.Y. 2006) also found that around 30% of Joseonjok were working as domestic workers in 2006, and that job is particularly common (60%) for undocumented Korean Chinese women in their fifties and above. Previous studies also point out that although there were a handful of Filipina domestic workers in the early 1990s, Joseonjok women workers came to be

11 By informal work, I mean paid yet unregulated and unprotected work.

12 Despite legal penalties, 166,971 out of 296,592 employed Josoenjok reported their employment to authorities in 2010 (Human Resource Development Service of Korea, 2010).

30 the major labour pool for domestic service jobs after the 1990s (Kang E.S. 2009; Lee H.K. 2004). Lee and Son (2010) also report that young Korean mothers hire Korean Chinese women, but do so reluctantly, because it is difficult to find live-in domestic workers among native Korean women. Moreover, native workers’ salaries are normally much higher than those for Korean Chinese women when the job is a live-in type. I will explain some key characteristics of workers in the domestic service market in the following sections.

1.1.2 Korean Chinese Workers: Capitalist Integration of Co-Ethnic Migrants

A unique feature of the Korean case that distinguishes it from other countries is the prevalence and the utilization of co-ethnic migrant workers in state policy, largely those who are Korean descendants with Chinese (PRC) nationality. Ethnic and racial diversity in migrant domestic workers is meager in Korea, as the labour force in the market is split into non-migrant South

Korean national workers and Korean Chinese migrant workers.13 Scholars see this unique feature as a by-product of Korea’s ethnocentric immigration policies, which prefer co-ethnics over non- co-ethnics to guard the notion of ethnic nationhood (Michel and Peng 2012; Seol and Skrentny 2009), but this seeming preference needs to be critically examined within a specific historical context. Eschewing simple assumptions around this apparent preference, I explain below how Korean Chinese women emerged as a solution to the soaring demand for care in Korea. In doing so, this section situates the formation of another pillar of the Korean care market, namely Joseonjok women workers, within the broader context of an emerging transnational Korea through capitalist integration of diasporic communities.

13 By no means do I deny the presence of non-co-ethnic migrant workers in Korea. There are care workers with foreign heritage. For example, the YWCA had a team of domestic workers consisting of women from Japan and Vietnam at the point of my fieldwork. These workers are non-co-ethnic but are allowed to work in the care sector as they immigrated through marriage. There are also a handful of non-marriage-migrant domestic foreign nationals as well, as Korean law allows foreign embassies to hire foreign national domestic workers. I excluded them from my study as they are numerically scant and thus do not change the general landscape of the market. When broadly defined, care work can include sex workers, and there are a considerable number of migrant sex workers in Korea. Discussions around these workers are beyond the scope of this study, as it is focused on domestic service and eldercare.

Historical Context: Reparation Politics in Capitalist Expansion

The view that sees Korean Chinese as a preferred labour force is a historically specific one. The

Korean diaspora has a long history stretching back over centuries,14 but despite its long history and considerable scale, ethnic Koreans residing outside Korean territory gained scant public attention until the 1980s.15 Overseas Koreans were historically denied permission to enter Korea. They were instead encouraged to settle in the countries where they resided rather than return

(장헌일 2011).16 The lack of attention to overseas Koreans was particularly true for those who migrated to communist countries, such as China (PRC) and the Soviet Union. While overseas Koreans living in Japan and the United States maintained ties with the Korean government, those who resided in communist countries were virtually unrecognized by Korean society until the late 1980s (오타 2004). In the late 1980s, Korea was in the middle of an economic and social transition. The labour shortage was dire, but Korean society also experienced a strong labour movement, which constituted one part of the democratization movement in the 1980s (Choi 2012). This strong labour movement brought about increases in real wages after democratization in 1987 (Kim 2008, Lee and Park 2009). The previous labour supply from rural areas and from the younger population was cut off with the decline in urban-bound migration, demographic shifts to an ageing society, and the improvement of education levels in the general population. At the same time, the service industry expanded, and Korean workers’ growing reluctance to work

14 According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Korea, around 7,012,492 overseas Koreans (Jaewae Dongpo) resided in 181 countries in 2013. This figure corresponds to 14% of the Korean population. Following China, Israel, and Italy, Korea ranks fourth in terms of its diasporic population and first in terms of the percentage of its homeland population Kim, Nora Hui-Jung. 2008. "Korean Immigration Policy Changes and the Political Liberals’Diellemma " Internatinal Migration Review 42(3):576–96..

15 Therefore, I disagree with N.H. Kim's (208) opinion that the existence of a large number of co-ethnics abroad per se pressured the state to lean toward ethnic-based immigration policies.

16 장헌일 (2011) argues that the main agenda of the Korean government's overseas Korean policies has shifted over time: abandon policy (gimin jeongcheck, First Republic ∼ Third Republic); encourage emigration policy (imin jangryo jeongcheck, 1960s~1970s); localization policy (hyonjihwa jeongcheck, Rho administration); new overseas Korean policy (shin kyopo jeongcheck, Kim Young Sam administration); act on overseas Koreans (Kim Dae-Jung administration); working visit policy (bangmun chiup jaedo, Rho Mu-Hyeon administration); suffrage and double citizenship of overseas Koreans ( Lee Myung-Bak administration).

32 in so called 3D (dirty, difficult, and dangerous) jobs led to labour shortages for low-skilled jobs (Yang 2010).

Migration within Asia emerged as a solution to alleviate the dire labour shortage. Migrant workers from neighboring Asian countries such as the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Nepal started migrating to emerging Korea to seek out better economic opportunities after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Korean Chinese people who resided in rural areas near the border between North Korea and China also started coming to Korea through various informal channels, such as smuggling, tourist visas, and arranged marriages. Korean Chinese people resided in rural areas with limited employment opportunities, which led them to move to neighboring communist countries such as the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea until the 1980s. Then the economic rise of South Korea and the end of the Cold War outside the Korean peninsula attracted Korean Chinese people. Furthermore, Korea’s diplomatic relations with Russia and China were normalized in 1991 and 1992, creating a more favourable atmosphere for overseas Koreans to visit Korea. The Korean government relaxed immigration regulations for overseas Koreans in China so that they could visit their relatives in Korea. This began with visiting relatives, but soon more and more overseas Koreans rushed to Korea to seek out the “Korean Dream” (Freeman

2011; Yang 2010).17

The Same Workers but in a Different Context: Korean Chinese and Racial Others

Once vanished into oblivion, Korean Chinese people came back to their homeland as missing “relatives,” though many of them came to Korea as workers who would alleviate the dire labour shortage for 3D jobs in Korea. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, their Korea-bound migration was packaged with distinct meanings in public discourses, as their “return” symbolized the incomplete decolonization of the divided nation (Park 2015). Yet Korean Chinese workers, in fact, were one of many groups of migrant workers who were working in Korea without permits, alleviating Korea’s labour shortage issue in the late 1980s. Since Korea

17 In 2008, Joseonjok workers in Korea earned six times more than they did in China. Park and Woo argue that the huge wage gap between China and Korea draws many Joseonjok, despite downward social mobility, family separation, and discrimination. Park, Woo, and Jean-Yung Lee. 2009. "A Study on the Formation of Korean- Chinese Workers in Korea." 한국동북아논총 51:99-119.

33 had been a labour-sending country until then, there was no systematic policy on low-skilled migrant workers. To deal with the increasing number of undocumented workers, the Korean government launched the Industrial Trainee System (ITS or ITTP: Industrial Technical Training Program) in 1991. The ITS was designed to recruit a temporary labour force abroad without recognizing their status as workers,18 but the system ended up a total failure both in regulating migration flow and securing workers’ human and labour rights.19 As (Gray 2004) aptly points out in his article “The ‘Underclass’ of Migrant Workers in Korea,” migrant workers under the ITS not only occupied the lowest economic strata, they were actively constructed as “underclass” labourers; a racialized, cheap and freely exploitable group of workers.

The creation of the underclass cannot be explained without the primacy of race and ethnic homogeneity in the construction of Korea as a nation state in public and policy discourses. Korean society is neither experienced with nor willing to embrace people from sending countries, especially people from racialized groups. The institutionalized exploitation of migrant workers was not only useful for supplying a cheap and controllable labour force, but it also bolstered hegemonic discourses on ethnic and racial homogeneity in Korea. As Gray (2004) argues, the Korean government’s efforts to prevent migrant workers from settling in Korea and therefore maintain the racial homogeneity of the country stands on the assumption, which follows Japan, that racial others’ settlement will “threaten the moral foundation of the Korean

18 Under the ITS, migrant workers were brought into Korea as “trainees” (연수생), not as workers. Therefore, their rights as workers were denied. Workers under the ITS were brought into Korea on three-year-long temporary visas and obliged to work in designated workplaces only. They were “trainees” or “students” on immigration documents, but they received scant and sometimes no training. Once they were allocated, they did not have the right to change their workplace. NGOs and scholars in Korea criticized the ITS, calling it a “modern slavery system” (Gray 2004).

19 For example, out of 367,158 migrant workers, around 78% were undocumented in February 2003. Seol, Dong- Hoon, and Geon-Soo Han. 2004. "Foreign Migrant Workers and Social Discrimination in Korea " Harvard Asia Quarterly VIII(1):45-50. Long work hours with wages under the minimum, verbal and physical abuse, and a lack of protection from industrial accidents prevailed under the ITS, and workers chose to be undocumented to escape the harsh work environment in which were indentured. Gray, Kevin. 2004. "The 'Underclass' of migrant workers in Korea." The Journal of Asiatic Studies 47(2):97-128, 정귀순. 2003. "기획 : 인권 문제의 실상과 과제 ; 한국에서

이주노동자의 삶 -과거,현재 그리고 미래." 기억과 전망 3(0):179-98..

34 race” (2004:107). In other words, the exploitive policy is a by-product of the government’s two goals: achieving a cheap and docile labour force and maintaining racial/ethnic homogeneity in the construction of the Korean nation.

Despite an extremely restrictive migration regime that explicitly banned racial others’ entry into the labour market, co-ethnics, who were already present in Korea in considerable numbers, emerged as a promising alternative (Kim 2008). Indeed, Korean Chinese people’s location within the ITS illuminates how reparation politics and the capitalist logic of using migrant labour work together, granting co-ethnic migrants a status between Korean citizens with full membership in the nation and racialized migrant workers who are complete others. The Korean government established a principle that privileged overseas Koreans over other foreign workers (Seol 2002), and a bigger quota was allotted to Korean Chinese workers under ITS.20 They also received higher wages than other migrant workers (Be´langer, Lee and Wang 2010 ; Seol and Skrentny 2009). Nevertheless, not all Korean Chinese came to Korea through the capped official channels. Some came with tourist or visitor visas and then remained. Others were smuggled or married Korean citizens to work in Korea. In fact, Korean Chinese were more likely to be undocumented than other migrants, because they have better linguistic fluency and a denser personal network in Korea compared to non-co-ethnic migrant workers (Seol 2002). By the time the Korean government recognized the seriousness of the issue and tightened immigration controls targeting Korean Chinese, almost one fifth of the total population of Korean Chinese in China was working and living in Korea, largely without authorized visas (Seol 2002).

Korean Chinese workers’ Korea-bound migration and their struggles in the Korean labour market cannot be reduced to economic migration propelled by push and pull factors or Korean society’s racism. As Choo (2016) points out, South Korean laws and policies have shaped the conditions of migrant citizenship in a distinctive way for each group, and Korean Chinese workers occupy a distinctive social location. While state policies have consistently viewed non-

20 Nora H. Kim, however, argues that the ITS gave few benefits to Joseonjok. She maintains that the higher portion of Joseonjok among the recruited trainees under the ITS is not because of the Korean government's preferential treatment, but rather because of Joseonjok workers' better human capital. Kim, Nora Hui-Jung. 2008. "Korean Immigration Policy Changes and the Political Liberals’Diellemma " Internatinal Migration Review 42(3):576–96.

35 co-ethnic migrant workers purely instrumentally, as disposable, exploitable, and temporary, policy and public discourses around Korean Chinese have changed over time. In the initial stage of their Korea-bound migration, and in their discursive struggles for more rights in Korea, their migration was repackaged as colonial victims’ “return” to the homeland, evoking the state’s responsibility for its unprotected and uprooted people. As Park (2015) aptly points out, the reparation politics around Korean Chinese Korea-bound migration envisages the capitalist integration of Korean Chinese as decolonization politics, relocating them from migrant workers’ struggles to the center of reparation politics in the early 1990s.

The unique circumstance of the divided nation played a role in linking reparation politics to capitalist logic. The loyalty of overseas Koreans in Japan and the U.S. has always been a testing ground for the state’s legitimacy in which the two Koreas compete with each other (Park 2015). Koreans in the United States and Japan have also been asking the Korean government since the 1980s to relax immigration regulations towards them and to expand their business opportunities in Korea (Yoon 2012). In the aftermath of the IMF crisis, Kim Dae-Jung’s administration (1998.2.~2003.2.) accepted their request by establishing a policy that guarantees an equivalent legal status to Korean citizenship for overseas Koreans, in order to attract foreign investment from co-ethnics in developed countries.21 In 1999, the Korean government enacted the Act on Entry and Exit and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, the very first systematic policy regulating overseas Koreans. In accordance with the law, people who are legally recognized as “overseas

Koreans” (jaewae dongpo) were bestowed with an F-4 visa, which enabled them to work22 and stay in Korea as long as they wanted. Korean Chinese are the largest group among overseas

Koreans,23 but the law tactically excluded them from the legal category of overseas Koreans by

21 "국민에 준하는"

22 F-4 holders were strictly banned from having jobs in low-skilled manual fields when the policy was created, but in 2010 the government made exceptions for the care sectors. F-4 holders can work in four areas: domestic work, childcare work, patient careers (ganbyongin,간병인), and assistance in welfare facilities (boekji sisoel bojowon,복지시설 보조원). Workers in these areas are eligible for permanent residence (F-5) if they work in the same workplace for more than three years.

23 Overseas Korean population by regions. 2007 2009 2011 2013 Percentage (%)

36 defining overseas Koreans as those who had Korean nationality before emigration as well as their descendants. Given the fact that the majority of first-generation Korean Chinese emigrated to China before the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948, and therefore never possessed Korean nationality, Joseonjok were automatically excluded from the category.

The exclusion of Korean Chinese from the legal category of overseas Koreans brought about a heated public debate over the question of who an overseas Korean is. This question has been at the heart of the political struggles of Korean Chinese in Korea regarding the issue of their return migration and working conditions. Although both Korean Chinese and other migrant workers have suffered from restrictive immigration policies and poor working conditions in Korea, they took different approaches in their struggles to overcome them. While human rights and workers’ rights were at the centre of migrant workers’ struggles (Gray 2004), Korean Chinese did not band together with migrant workers, but instead tried to change the legal status of overseas Koreans to improve their working conditions. As Piao (2011) shows in his historical discourse analysis, the Korean Chinese political struggle in Korea was a struggle for recognition: to attain legal and social recognition as overseas Koreans (Dongo), members of the Korean nation (Piao 2011).

Total 7,041,684 6,822,606 7,167,342 7,012,492 100 Japan 893,740 912,655 904,806 892,704 12.73 East Asia China 2,762,160 2,336,771 2,704,994 2,573,928 36.70 Subtotal 3,655,900 3,249,426 3,609,800 3,466,632 49.44 South Asian Pacific 384,474 461,127 453,420 485,836 6.93 North U.S.A. 2,016,911 2,102,283 2,075,590 2,091,432 29.82 America Canada 216,628 223,322 231,492 205,993 2.94 Europe 645,249 655,843 656,707 615,847 8.75 Other regions 122519 130605 140354 146752 2.1 Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013 (jaewae dongpo hyoenwhang), modified from the original. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korea, around 7,012,492 overseas Koreans (jaewae dongpo) resided in 181 countries in 2013.23 The figure corresponds to 14% of the Korean population. Almost half are living in Japan and China, and those who reside in China, Joseonjok, account for 36.7% of the total overseas Korean population. Joseonjok also account for 39.5% of the total foreign population, 87% of the total overseas Koreans residing in Korea in 2011.

From 1994 to 1997, the burgeoning migrant workers’ advocacy organizations fought intensively to abolish the ITS and obtain legal status for their members. However, Korean Chinese workers argued that the ITS needed to be expanded by allocating a bigger quota for co-ethnics (Seol 1995). The workers joined a hunger strike against the deportation of undocumented workers in 2001, but they stopped participating in the strike when they were promised a revision of the Act on Entry and Exit and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans from the government. The migrant workers’ union, which consists of workers from 14 countries, constantly emphasized that Korean Chinese are the same as migrant workers, claiming that policies that privilege Korean Chinese workers are simply part of the government’s divide and conquer tactics by creating a hierarchy among migrant workers. Yet, despite their appeals, Korean Chinese workers did not join the alliance with them. The migrant workers’ movement succeeded in getting the ITS abolished, and the Employment Permit System (E-9 visa) was implemented in 2003. The E-9 visa allowed workers to change their workplace up to three times within three years with the permission of the local immigration office. While migrant workers’ advocacy groups continued resisting the EPS, arguing that its exploitive nature had not been fundamentally changed, Korean Chinese embraced it instead while continuing their struggles for recognition as co-ethnics.

After years of Korean Chinese political and legal struggles, in 2001 the Constitutional Court decided that the Act on Entry and Exit and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans was against constitutional law. The court cited the unfair exclusion of ethnic Koreans in China and the former Soviet Union from the legal category of overseas Koreans as the reason for the law’s unconstitutionality. In response to the decision, the Korean government established the Working Visit program, which issues a visa (H-2) that is valid for five years to overseas Koreans from China or from the former Soviet Union, even if they never had Korean citizenship. Under the program, H-2 visa holders are allowed to find a job in 32 low-skilled occupations. H-2 visa holders may also change workplaces after notifying authorities. Since the first year of the program in 2007, which began with a quota of three hundred thousand, the Working Visit program has become a major path that Korean Chinese use to come to Korea.

The Care Market as a Niche for Korean Chinese Workers

How then did Korean Chinese migrants come to virtually monopolize the informal care market? The prevalence of Korean Chinese workers is not simply a by-product of policies, but rather, the policies responded to what was already happening in the market. When the ITS was introduced, it was designed to bring in temporary foreign workers in industries with severe labour shortages, for example, the manufacturing, construction and fishing industries. The service and care industries were not part of the original design of the program. Yet contrary to the government’s expectations, much larger numbers of Korean Chinese came to Korea and remained as undocumented workers not only in the manufacturing but also in the service industry. According to Seol (2002), 74.7% of Korean Chinese in Korea were undocumented in 2000.

The steadily growing number of undocumented Korean Chinese workers put pressure on the Korean government. Ahead of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, a major international event, the Korean government decided to try resolving the issue of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrant workers, especially undocumented Korean Chinese (Park and Lee 2009). To that end, in 2002, the government opened the door of the service and care industries to co-ethnic migrant workers.24 Furthermore, the new policy allowed Korean Chinese workers in the domestic service sector to obtain F-4 visas if they stayed in the same workplace for two years.25 Gradually, access to the Korean labour market was broadened for Joseonjok people.

Ever since the Korean government opened the doors to Korean Chinese, the number of Korean Chinese immigrants has steadily increased, while the gendered composition of migrant populations has changed. At the early stage of their return migration to Korea, women outnumbered men, due to Korean Chinese women marriage migrants (Be´langer, Lee and Wang 2010 ) and older women who were eligible for a visiting relative visa (Lee and Park 2009).

24 H-2 visa holders could apply for the F-4 visa when they contributed to “national interests such as the manufacturing industry, agriculture, fisheries, nursing, and domestic service, working at the same workplace for over one year” (Korea Immigration Service)

25 The policy was revised in 2013. Under the new policy, Joseonjok cannot change from H-2 to F-4 by working in the domestic service sector. Instead, they can obtain an F-4 visa by working in the childcare sector.

However, a proportion of these groups of women decreased, while the total number of women migrants kept growing, indicating that many Korean Chinese women had started to come to Korea as workers (Be´langer, Lee and Wang 2010 ; Lee and Park 2009).

Although the Korean government is officially bringing in migrant workers through the ETS (E- 9) under the EPS (Employment Permit System) now, Korean Chinese workers far outnumber non-co-ethnic migrant workers from the 15 countries covered by the EPS.26 In addition, while non-co-ethnic workers are tightly bound to the ETS and are strictly monitored, Korean Chinese enjoy relative autonomy due to their visa status, linguistic fluency, and denser ethnic network compared to other migrants.27 It is mandatory for Korean Chinese to report their employment status to the local immigration office, yet many Korean Chinese do not update their status after their arrival. According to the Ministry of Justice of Korea, only 56.3% of Korean Chinese on the H-2 visa are officially recognized, suggesting that they do not know where almost half of 294,493 workers are working.

Although it is hard to measure the size of the Korean Chinese worker population in Korea, previous studies tell us that there is a clear division of work by gender. Joseonjok women are heavily concentrated in the service and care sectors, whereas their male counterparts are concentrated in manufacturing and construction. Previous studies of Korean Chinese women

26 Total number of migrants (1,411,013) Migrant workers Student Marriage others High skilled Low-skilled Undocumented Short-term employment (D-2) Migrant Migrant Workers Workers Etc. (15,407) Workers (490,986) (E-1~E-7) E-9 H-2 C-4 D-3 D-8 E- 63,554 143,915 484,154 45,048 167,614 10 196,493 294,493 1,228 1,766 6,824 6,024 *C-4: short-term employment; D-3: industrial training; D-8: corporate investment; E-10: vessel crew *Source: Korea Immigration Service, Ministry of Justice (2011)

27 Korea is not entirely foreign to many Joseonjok. Park and Lee (2009) show that almost half of H-2 holders have visited before they attained their current H-2 visa. Park, Woo, and Jean-Yung Lee. 2009. "A Study on the Formation of Korean-Chinese Workers in Korea." 한국동북아논총 51:99-119.

40 workers also confirm the partiality of existing statistical data, especially for those who work in informal subsectors in the care market. By informal sector jobs, I mean jobs that are not detected or recognized by the state and thus are neither regulated nor protected. This is because, first, workers find jobs in this sector through personal networks and thus rarely report their employment status to the government; second, both employers and workers heavily rely on verbal agreements instead of standardized contracts; and third, job descriptions do not exist or exist in a vague form. For example, although H-2 visa holders may get help from the government (i.e. the Korean Employment Information Service) to find a job, previous studies report that Joseonjok care workers find their jobs mainly through their personal networks (Lee 2004; Lee, Hong and Son 2010; Yang 2010; 홍세영 and 김금자 2010). Also, employment of Korean Chinese workers in the care sector is more likely to be outside the purview of the state. When Korean Chinese domestic workers are hired by individual households, employers often do not know the bureaucratic procedures that are required by law (Son and Lee 2011). Furthermore, as Um (2012) observes, Korean Chinese care workers (in hospitals) do not want the government to recognize them so that they can avoid taxes and other government interventions, although official recognition grants them some public welfare support. Finally, workers are mobile within the care industry, changing their jobs easily within the care market (홍세영 and 김금자 2010).

With the lack of regulatory measures, Korean Chinese have successfully increased their market share, earning compatible wages. It is estimated that Korean Chinese domestic workers, who take care of infants and do household chores as well, earn between 1,603 to 1,923 CAD per month (MIDRI 2013). In 2014, Korean-born women workers, including both regular and irregular wage workers, earned 2,142.55 CAD on average. A study that analyzed the experiences of Korean mothers who employed Korean Chinese domestic workers reports that the minimum salary of the workers was about 1,461-1,670 CAD in 2010 (Lee and Son 2010). The study also reports that Korean Chinese domestic workers, called Josoenjok imo (Korean Chinese auntie) in employers’ families, demanded a pay raise of approximately 100 CAD within a year, yet employers had to bite the bullet and back down to the demand.

1.1.3 Co-ethnic Care Economy in the Shadow of the Welfare State: the Los Angeles Koreatown

In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) provides government subsidized care for low-income and disabled people. Primarily funded by Medicaid, IHSS in California provides in-home assistance in their everyday lives, including cleaning and housekeeping duties in the homes of aged, blind and disabled people in California. In the U.S., homecare is one of the fastest-growing occupations. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, overall employment of personal homecare is projected to grow by 39 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. In 2016, 2,016,100 workers were employed as homecare workers nationwide (BLS occupational category 39-9021, personal care aides), and over 509,351 IHSS providers served more than 593,000 recipients in California in 2019 (California Department of Social Services). Despite the soaring demand for eldercare, homecare is a low-waged job for women, especially immigrants and women-of-color. More than 90% of in-home workers are women, and are disproportionally immigrants (Shierholz 2013). In 2018, homecare workers’ annual mean wage was $27,210, compared with $51,960 for workers in other occupations (Bureau of Labour Statistics).

According to Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein (2012), state policies have historically shaped homecare, reinforcing racial and gender inequality throughout the twentieth century. Just as jobs in the South Korean care sector appeared in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis to give impoverished women more chances for employment, homecare emerged in the crisis of the Great Depression to provide welfare on one hand and healthcare needs on the other. Combining anti-poverty policies that targeted women—African American women specifically—with a deinstitutionalizing trend, homecare emerged as a distinct occupation that helped the state’s strategies for rapidly discharging long-term and elderly patients from hospitals. Homecare also allowed middle class white women, who could purchase care, to participate in the labour market with better jobs. For new immigrant women, along with U.S.-born women of color, who came into the major homecare labour force, homecare became “a new sweating system” that kept these women in poverty.

Unlike the LTCI program where it is state policy to actively recruit women as certified workers to operate the program, state intervention in IHSS in California is minimal. Given the lack of

42 certification processes and regulatory mechanisms, homecare emerged as an employment opportunity for older groups of women in ethnic communities. For example, the homecare sector in California channelled Filipinx workers with medical backgrounds into opening small homecare agencies and hiring other Filipinx workers (Nazareno 2018). In communities where a strong preference for co-ethnics persists, homecare came to compose “co-ethnic care economy” within ethnic communities, where “immigrants provide care to immigrants” within the ethnic community (Cranford 2020:64). Filipinx workers have more options in the broader labour market with their educational background and fluency in English, thus their work is not strictly contained within their ethnic community. On the contrary, the Korean and Chinese communities not only present a strong co-ethnic preference in care, but they also tend to retain co-ethnic workers within insular ethnic communities (Chun and Cranford 2018; Cranford 2020). Given the dearth of previous studies on co-ethnic care economy in the Korean community, I will provide more Korean community-focused contexts in Chapter 5 based on my empirical findings.

1.2 Workers’ Response: Situating Study Participants within the Context

1.2.1 Faces of Care Workers: Who Are They?

Table 1 (below) shows demographic information on the care workers who participated in this study. They are predominantly women in their 50s and 60s. Although it is hard to say given the small sample size, the table also confirms a tendency that immigrant women workers are older than host country nationals (Nazareno, Parreñas and Fan 2014). While the average age of non- migrant workers is around 55, it is 60 for Korean Chinese workers in Korea and Korean IHSS workers in L.A. The oldest workers are 65 in the South Korea-born group, 68 in the Korean Chinese group, and 67 in the group of L.A. Korean immigrant workers.

The popular image of care workers, namely that they are “uneducated” or “husbandless women” (nampyeoneopsneun yeoja) only reflects the partial truth. Most of the workers have postsecondary educations. Among the three groups, the most educated are the Korean IHSS workers in L.A., as seven workers out of 28 had been to college or university, which confirms the middle-class background of U.S.-bound Korean immigrants. Yet divorced or widowed women accounted for around 26-28% of participants in all three groups. Considering that the

43 divorce rate in Korea in 2016 was 2.1 cases for every 1,000 people (KOSIS 2018), house managers and yoyanngbohosa workers’ divorce rate was significantly higher than the national average.

Note that the boundary between domestic service and eldercare is porous28 among Korean Chinese workers. I have divided the two sections based on workers’ self-identification at the point of interview. South Korean nationals identified themselves with their official occupational titles of yoyanbohosa or house manager (gajeonggwanrisa), while Korean-Chinese workers used various expressions, such as “working at home” (gajeongil), “caregiver” (ganbyeongin), or “domestic” (gajeongbu). South Korea-born Korean Chinese workers L.A. workers workers Domestic Eldercare Domestic Eldercare IHSS eldercare service (n=16) service (n=8) (n=28) (n=18) (n=14) Age (mean) 54.58 60 60 BA or more 3 2 2 0 7 Educatio High school 9 9 6 3 15 n Less than 4 4 5 5 5 post-secondary Missing 2 1 1 0 1 Table 2. Age and Education Level

Seoul

In Korea, non-migrant and Korean Chinese workers work in very different conditions. As Table 2 (below) shows, none of the South Korea-born workers I interviewed worked as live-ins, while 13 out of 21 Korean Chinese workers were live-ins at the point of interview. Live-in workers here include seven Korean Chinese eldercare workers (ganbyeongin) who lived in the nursing hospital. This tendency, for Korean Chinese workers to work as live-ins, was known by both

28 It is porous in that the majority of workers cross the two subsectors frequently. What they do at home is mixed with domestic service and eldercare, especially in the case of live-ins. It is also institutionally blurry, because Korean laws do not recognize the two occupations as separate as long as they work informally. Yoyangbohosa and house managers are distinctive occupations. Workers themselves recognize this, and no house managers worked in the eldercare sector in the past. Yoyangbohosa workers are under state and municipal laws and regulations, being recognized as an occupation.

44 groups of workers, but their interpretations of the phenomenon were different. South Korea-born workers largely had the notion that live-in work was for “people from China,” commonly reasoning that they “do anything for money,” “are cheap,” or “do not have family in Korea and need accommodation.” In reality, however, most Korean Chinese workers I interviewed had their families in Korea. Many domestic workers, in particular, had their spouses and adult children in Korea, either through invitation or marriage, with a status of F-4 (overseas Korean visa), F-5 (permeant resident), or Korean nationality that allowed them to stay in Korea virtually indefinitely.

Korean Chinese workers do care about their working conditions. Mentioning that they used to work as live-ins for six to seven days and then shifted to five or six days of commuting, these Korean Chinese workers explained that their working conditions had improved as they were not willing to accept such poor conditions any longer. Yet even among live-outs, Korean Chinese workers tended to work more days per week, which confirms the previous studies’ findings (Lee 2004; Lee, Hong and Son 2010; Yang 2010; 홍세영 and 김금자 2010).

When it comes to the number of clients per worker, for house managers it ranges from two to six. Seven non-migrant yoyangbohosa worked in senior daycare (three) and nursing homes (four) with multiple clients and coworkers, and the rest (28) were all yoyangbohosa workers who worked for one to three clients. Korean Chinese workers, on the contrary, were more split between those who worked for single clients in homes and those who cared for up to six recipients in nursing hospitals. Those who took care of elders in nursing hospitals got paid around 90 CAD per day from their agencies, a flat rate regardless of the number of recipients. This prompts agencies to allot more clients to workers to maximize their profits.

South-Korea national non- Korean Chinese workers migrant workers Domestic Eldercare Domestic Eldercare service (yoyangbohosa) service (n=8) (n=18) (n=16) (n=14) Work type Live-in 0 0 6 7 Live-out 18 16 8 1 Wage Range 110 - 200 20-150 140 - 220 200-220 Median 111 160

(unit:ten Mean 121.15 161.91 thousand won=approx. 11 CAD) Workdays 7 days 0 0 0 7 per week 6 days 0 0 7 1 5 days 2 5 7 0 Less than 16 11 0 0 5 days Table 3. Working Conditions

Los Angeles

The IHSS workers I met in L.A. are located in the later influx of Korean immigrants since the 1980s. While those who came in the 1960s and 70s had blue collar occupations such as janitors, truck drivers and factory workers due to the language barrier and other disadvantages in the labour market, those who came to the United States in the 1980s were well prepared enough to depend on their own small businesses thanks to the well-established ethnic economy and immigrants’ transnational network (Min 2008; Yoon 2007). Those who came in the late 1980s and later also largely belong to the newly born middle class in South Korea, which achieved rapid economic growth throughout the 1980s.

The workers’ middle-class background is reflected in my sample. All the workers in this study are in a similar age group, but L.A. workers had a higher education level. While college graduates or above accounted for around 10% of the care workers (migrant and non-migrant) I interviewed in Korea, 25% (seven out of 28 respondents) of Korean IHSS workers in L.A. had a BA or higher degree. Most once owned their own small businesses in L.A. before they entered the IHSS, suggesting that they came with capital while Korean Chinese workers immigrated to Korea without capital but with their labour.

The earning level of IHSS workers in the L.A. Koreatown is higher than their Korean counterparts. At the point of interview, the hourly wage of IHSS providers was $11. It is only $0.5 more than the minimum wage, Korean IHSS providers had a relatively larger sum of work hours by recruiting multiple clients. Except for one worker who worked 81 hours for her only recipient, most of these workers had two or more IHSS clients. 10 workers had two, 11 workers had three, and three workers had four clients at the point of interview. Out of 18 workers who

46 disclosed information about their officially allotted work hours per month, eight workers responded that they worked over 200 hours. Nine responded that they worked more that 100 hours but less than 200 hours per month.

The LTCI program in Korea authorizes 20 hours per month for those who take care of their own family members. LTCI also strictly regulates the eligibility of yoyangbohosa who want to take care of their family members, by prohibiting those who work more than 160 hours per month from working for their own families. IHSS in California, on the contrary, does not have such a rule, allowing anyone to be an IHSS provider for their family members. This difference in policy has resulted in a larger number of family providers among L.A. workers: 11 out of 28 L.A. workers had family clients, while four out of 16 yoyangbohosa workers worked for their family members at the point of interview.

1.2.2 Becoming Care Workers: Opportunity, Crisis and Women’s Entry to the Care Sector

South Korean Nationals’ Entry: Gendered Impact of the Crisis

I went for an interview, and they said, “Ah, you are older than we expected. We will

contact you later.” But I ever heard from them. Many times. So, I gave up.1

You-Ju’s life as a full-time homemaker in a middle-class family ended abruptly and in an unexpected way. The Asian financial crisis, also known as the IMF crisis, in 1997 swept away many well-paying and stable jobs that had supported middle-class families in Korea. You-Ju and her husband started a small business with their retirement money, but self-employment was not safe from the severe and drastic economic downturn. After their bankruptcy, You-Ju finally decided to make her return to the labour market as a nurse’s aide. However, though she applied for countless jobs, she always encountered the same reaction from employers, namely that she was too old. She was 40.

Crisis triggered women’s entry into the care market. Like Yu-Ju, around one third of the 34 non- migrant workers I interviewed in Korea entered the care market when they faced an economic crisis like their partner’s job loss or the bankruptcy of their family business. Nine workers who were divorced or widowed entered the sector either right after their personal crisis or after

47 working in various precarious jobs. This suggests that care work was one of very few employment options for middle-aged women in Korea.

The state played a role in pushing women into the already gendered labour market. The Korean government at various levels, such as the city government or social workers at the local welfare department, connected these economically vulnerable women to care sectors. For instance, after failing in her job search, You-Ju learned about “social service work” available at city hall. She said:

I learned at church one day that there is a thing called “social service work” (sahoejeok iljari) at the city hall, and I might be able to get a home care job there. My kids were small back then; they were first and third year in elementary school. I could not even think of working at night…The officers brought me to an apartment where elderlies lived alone,

asking me to work for two hours per day.2

Some workers, including You-Ju, directly entered through local governmental job creation programs, which typically pay women for in-home care services for poor elderlies who live alone or with small grandchildren (josongajeong), or have disabilities. Others entered the sector through the partnership between the state and NGOs. With the exception of one worker who was with a private agency, the rest of the 17 domestic workers29 were all affiliated with the so-called “Big Three,” the three leading NGO-based domestic workers’ organizations, which provide job training and job placement services. In the section about organizational context, I will explain how these organizations emerged in the midst of crisis and became mediators that connect women workers to the state’s workfare programs.

Korean Chinese Workers’ Entry: Pursuing Korean Dream

Korean-Chinese workers’ entry into the care sector in Korea is split into two types: one, those who entered Korea in the 1990s and went through various 3D jobs as undocumented workers and entered the care sector as they aged; and two, those who have immigrated since the 2000s and

29 This is partly because of my sampling through organizations. There is no comprehensive data that shows whether this is a broad trend.

48 directly entered the care sector. Five out of 22 Korean Chinese workers I interviewed are categorized as “old comers,” while the majority belong to the second group. Half of them (11 workers) came to Korea after 2007, suggesting that the introduction of H-2 visa played a role in boosting Korean Chinese Korea-bound migration.

Korean Chinese workers’ employment trajectory in Korea is very different from the others’. Jobs that the old comers experience in Korea before their entry into the care sector include farming, construction, restaurant work like dish washing and serving, motel cleaning, and warehouse and factory work. Immigrating to Korea through various informal channels, such as smuggling, counterfeit passports, marriage, or invitations from fake kin, these old comers worked in a rage of low-paid jobs in brutal working conditions when they were young, then they found care jobs as a last resort when they reached middle-age in Korea. Newcomers who immigrated in their 50s and 60s, on the contrary, directly entered the care sector. This is because they immigrated with the knowledge that working at private homes or hospitals was the only viable employment option for them. This shapes the most unique aspect of Korean Chinese entry into care work in Korea, which is how they see this entry. While other groups of workers were very reluctant to work in care sectors when they began, Korean Chinese workers view doing care work in Korea as an opportunity to make more than they could ever make in China.

L.A. Koreatown IHSS Workers: The Revolving Door of Small Business and Service Job

1.2.3 Organizational Context

The majority of L.A. workers I interviewed had been full-time homemakers in Korea, but their U.S.-bound migration pushed them to contribute to the family economy. Contributing per se did not have gender-specific impacts on them, but the fact that these women largely “followed” their spouses to L.A. without linguistic or other marketable skills created real issues. The L.A. Koreatown is large but very insular and institutionally saturated to the extent that dependent women with limited English fluency can navigate everyday life without linguistic barriers, so it quickly absorbed these immigrant women into the ethnic economy.

There are two streams of jobs in the ethnic economy that absorbed these women. One is unpaid work in the family business, and the other is low-waged service jobs in Koreatown. Except for

49 one woman who had an office job in the public sector in L.A. with her U.S. degree, 27 women workers out of 28 went back and forth between the two streams before they became homecare workers. Trapped in the revolving door of small business and service jobs in the ethnic economy for decades, these women lost the opportunity to improve their English, develop job skills, and network, thus losing their chance to work in the broader labour market.

While the participants’ husbands continued or started their own enterprises in L.A., their wives, the women workers I interviewed, experienced a much bumpier road of adjustment. For instance, Mi-Sook was willing to adjust to her changed role from full-time homemaker to factory worker in order to adapt to immigrant life, yet even that was hindered by competing demands from her family. That is, she was now required to work but at the same time still needed to remain as a major carer for her children. Facing competing demands within her family, and given that she does not speak fluent English, she had little choice but to find part-time jobs in Korean supermarkets and restaurants.

Service jobs, however, stopped being viable options as these women workers aged. Participants responded that working in Korean supermarkets and restaurants gradually became physically demanding to them. Even if they found these jobs manageable, others felt that women in their 50s and 60s are not suitable for service jobs. For instance, Mi-Sook and Mi-Kyung got to know each other when they were working in a Korean restaurant. While they worked in the restaurant more than 10 years, they faced unspoken pressure to quit from others and moved on to IHSS work. Mi-Sook, a 62-year-old IHSS provider, illustrates this pressure:

Yes, I worked as a waitress for more than ten years. You know, L.A. is small, and I worked for a while, and we worked in big restaurants only. So, when people looked at us, they

recognized us and said, “Ajumma,30 you still work here? You still work?” Also, the owner

gave gestures. Well, the owner said when talking to friend, “Ah, old ones should quit.”3

30 A generic term that refers to a middle-aged woman in Korea. The term denotes a dominant social perception of older groups of women in Korea: de-sexualized women’s bodies that are suitable for unpaid care work in the home.

As Mi-Sook’s experience vividly shows, the notion that middle-aged women are not presentable and thus not suitable for service jobs that involve direct interactions with consumers in public spaces, gradually funnelled these women into “backdoor jobs” such as dishwashers, cleaners, and cooks in the kitchen. Some participants said that getting a job interview for a restaurant server position became impossible when they entered their 40s, and they had no other choice but to start IHSS work when they found that they could do the work for their own family members.

Half the participants engaged with small businesses such as laundries/alteration shops, restaurants, supermarkets, home cleaning services, and convenience stores, run by their families at some point in their lives after immigration. Three participants were still running small businesses at the point of interview, but the majority of former-business owners experienced a decline in their businesses and opted to seek other possibilities including IHSS work.

The Big Three and the Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers in Korea

The Big Three in the domestic service sector in Korea, namely the YWCA, with the Christian women’s movement, the KWWA (Korean Women Workers Association) from the working class women’s labour movement, and the Unemployment Coalition (sireopgeukbog undongbonbu) from the localized movement for the poor, all emerged in the aftermath of the IMF crisis as mediators that brought women from dire economic situations into the care sector. As a Christian membership-based organization, the YWCA started a job placement service among their members out of the spirit of “Christian mutual aid.” In 1966, the YWCA began job training for their member domestic workers, carrying out a public campaign to call domestic workers “domestic helpers” (gasadoumi) instead of sikmo (domestics). The YWCA, in partnership with the Ministry of Labour, established the House for Working Women (ilhaneun yeoseongui jip) as a nationwide organization in 1988. In 2001, its governmental partner changed from the Ministry of Labour to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family,31 changing its organizational title to the Women’s Employment Center (yeoseong inryeok gaebal senteo). Through government funded centers and nationwide YWCA branches, the YWCA recruited numerous women

31 The Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001. The “Family” part was added in 2005.

workers as care workers:32 five out of 18 domestic workers I interviewed entered the sector through a YWCA branch or its affiliated organizations.

The Unemployment Coalition and the KWWA started job training and job placement programs in the middle of the IMF crisis. The two organizations stem from very different movement traditions, but they are both anchored in the care sector to cope with the massive influx of older groups of women into the paid labour market during the crisis. A representative of the Korean Domestic Workers Association (KDWA), a workers’ organization that the Unemployment Coalition established in 2012 as an independent organization, described the urgent situation:

During the IMF crisis, there were massive layoffs. But back then, dual-income families were not that common. Most women were full-time homemakers, and they all flooded out to look for work when their husbands lost their jobs. They were all women in their 50s and 60s. So, the unemployment rate of women at that time increased by over 500 percent. The state distributed money and rice to the unemployed, and we did it together. But as we were consulting with these women, we learned that there were no jobs for them. They didn’t have skills or established careers, and some of them did not know about banking. They had never seen a thing like fax machine. It was impossible to give them computer training in a year, so we came up with something marketable immediately. They did the work at home

for 40-50 years, so we thought that was the way.”4

The KWWA had been a leading voice against the exploitation of working-class women under the authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 80s, but they also had to join in partnership with the government to assist women in dire economic need during the IMF crisis (Chun and Kim 2018). Like the Unemployment Coalition, the KWWA participated in the government’s emergency relief activities, such as “distributing money and rice” through their nationwide organizations. They also connected women job seekers to care sectors as they operated state-funded projects in workfare and social service. However, they found that such efforts could only be a temporary solution unless the gendered stigma attached to care work was subverted. Realizing that the

32 I interviewed staff from all three organizations, and information in this section was confirmed by them during the key informant interviews.

52 gendered labour market reacts even in the face of a crisis to protect male workers (Chun 2009), the KWWA started organizing domestic workers. In 2004, they launched the National House Managers Cooperative (NHMC), a South Korean affiliate of the IDWF (International Domestic Workers Federation) and the very first organization with a leadership drawn from domestic workers in Korea.

The KWWA organized care workers through its sister organization the NHMC on the one hand, but on the other they directly recruited poor and working-class women for the care sector through their partnership with the state they had developed since the IMF crisis. Similar to how the YWCA established the Women’s Employment Center, the KWWA created Self-sufficiency Promotion Centers (jahwal senteo) in their branch offices. Funded by the Ministry of Gender Equality and the Ministry of Labour, these centers became an institutional channel that connected older groups of working-class women to care jobs. For instance, So-You, the first president of the NHMC, was immediately guided into workfare programs when she consulted with the local government’s workfare department about employment opportunities. Working under the government’s social service rubric, which is visiting the poor and disabled and providing services such as housecleaning, cooking, and bathing, she became experienced with care work first. Later, the government connected her to a KWWA branch, continuing the workfare job in the B Self-sufficiency Promotion Center under the KWWA branch. So-You described the self-sufficiency work (jahwal geunro) she did as follow:

At the self-sufficiency center, I got nursing instruction. And I was sent to those poor elderlies who live alone, and I provided domestic services. [I: So, you started with eldercare?] Yes, for the first couple of months. There were a couple of options: eldercare,

sewing, etc.5

So-You’s case illustrates a common path for the state and NGOs to channel women in dire economic situations to the care sector under the banner of workfare. Limited options in job training are given to them, and they soon start working in homes, caring for a vulnerable population. Seven out of 18 South Korea-born domestic workers I interviewed entered the care

sector either through direct recruitment by one of the Big Three organizations33 through their government-funded “projects” or through the liaison between the government and the NGOs. So- You later changed her career and became a house manager with the NHMC, as its four-hour work schedule gives her more flexibility.

The Seoul Supporting Center for Elderly Careworkers34(hereafter the Seoul center), a government-subsidized NGO that organizes LTCI workers, was established by former union activists and yoyangbohosa workers in 2013. Unlike domestic workers who were completely outside the attention of the unions, the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) began organizing informal caseworkers (ganbyeongin) in a hospital in 2001. With the introduction of LTCI in 2008, the union faced a growing number of in-home care workers who worked in isolation. Furthermore, the fact that family caregivers made up 50% of all yoyangbohosa workers made organizing this fragmented workforce even more difficult.35

In response to this changing situation, union activists took alternative approaches to organizing yoyangbohosa workers. They applied for local government funding for their free medical and legal service project for yoyangbohosa and obtained some resources from the Seoul city government. Over the years, these government-funded projects achieved good results, and the activists and workers were able to establish partnerships with local government. In 2013, they established the Seoul Center, a government subsidized NGO that advocates for eldercare workers’ rights. Under the slogan of “toward good care,” the center has been focusing on promoting yoyangbohosa workers’ rights by providing a range of services, such as labour

33 This by no means indicates that workers in the three organizations account for the majority of the care workforce in Korea.

34 서울시 어르신돌봄종사자 종합지원센터. The Seoul Supporting Center for Elderly Careworkers is their official translation, which is not accurate. The accurate translation would be The Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare workers.

35 From my interview with Kyung-Sook Choi, current representative of the Seoul Supporting Centre for Eldercare Workers and a former activist with the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union under the KCTU. She was a registered nurse, union activist, and was organizing eldercare (yoyangbohosa and ganbyeongin) workers at the center.

54 counseling, leadership programs, policy forums, empowerment group activities, and public campaigns.

The Joseonjok Coalition in Korea

In 2000, six founding members established the Joseonjok Coalition as the first organization to advocate for Korean Chinese people in Korea. Their collective action had similarities with the non-co-ethnic migrant workers movement in that religious leaders in Korea were deeply involved. The two leaders of the coalition did not have any background in social movements in China but became charismatic leaders who led a fervent protest for three years. Like many other migrant workers, these two women, who initially came to Korea for better economic security, came with the expectation that their true “ancestral land” or “homeland” of Korea would embrace them. However, their experiences in Korea as undocumented workers in extremely precarious service jobs led them to develop internal dissent over time. It was several activist Protestant pastors who stepped in. Though trade unions in Korea did not recognize migrant workers as organizable, these pastors set up movements advocating for migrant workers’ rights in the 1990s, condemning the exploitation of migrant workers in Korea as a human right issue.

The ways in which Korean Chinese workers’ issues are framed in the movement, however, greatly diverged from the migrant workers’ movement. While non-co-ethnic migrants’ issues were highlighted as a human rights crisis, in a context where employers exploited migrant workers with the assistance of state policies, Korean Chinese workers were depicted as “double victims” (Park 2015). In order to establish a moral appeal to Korean people and the government, the Joseonjok Coalition drew on narratives that Korean Chinese people were victims who suffered colonization in China and were still suffering economic instrumental exploitation in Korea. Therefore, it is not surprising that the founding members of the coalition organized Korean history classes at churches and developed their right claims as “returnees,” not migrants, to the ethnic nation in a linear historical narrative.

It is also a logical outcome that the coalition never organized Korean Chinese workers based on particular occupations, although the vast majority of their women members were concentrated in a few jobs such as restaurant service or working in private homes and hospitals. The coalition members refused to be part of a broader movement of migrant workers, but instead have made

55 the claim that they are entitled to “restore” their rights as Koreans vis-à-vis the Korean state, although economic concerns are inseparable components in their movement. In this view, labour rights come in a package with other rights that are bestowed to rightful members of the Korean nation. This view conflates citizenship and ethnicity, seeing Korean ethnicity as automatically guaranteeing full membership in Korean society. Hence, Korean Chinese workers’ struggles have always hinged upon Korean ethnicity, by highlighting their lineage and cultural retention.

SEIU 2015 in L.A. Koreatown

All the IHSS workers in this study are members of SEIU 2015, one of the largest labour unions in California. In the U.S., union density has continued to decline in the past decades, and the AFL-CIO started paying attention to unorganized, ethnically diverse and scattered workers. The SEIU began to deploy flexible strategies to recruit homecare workers and achieved significant organizing victories in L.A. in the late 1990s (Delp and Quan 2002).

Despite this organizing success, Korean workers remained unorganized by the union until 2013. This can be explained by two factors. The first was the language barrier, which made the union out of reach for Korean workers who spoke limited English. The second was the workers’ antagonism toward unions, because of their collective imagination about them based on their experiences in Korea. As the Korean community in L.A. aged, Korean IHSS providers also increased, and a handful of these workers came to know about the SEIU through their fellow workers from other ethnic communities at work. At first, several Korean IHSS providers simply attended unionized Chinese workers’ gatherings to meet other IHSS workers, and soon after, they started mobilizing their co-ethnic workers utilizing their dense ethnic networks.

Because not many of them spoke English fluently, they developed a centralized leadership structure that is effective for communication. Under a leader who can communicate with union staff, they elected 14 captains who lead small groups with names like Dandelion, Jewell, Rosemary etc. in 2017. These captains organize small group activities such as hiking and karaoke with their group members and mobilize them quickly when there is a meeting or union protest. While organizing strategies utilizing ethnic networks were not uncommon within SEIU 2015, Korean workers’ mobilizing was notably effective. In 2016, these workers recruited around 1000 Korean IHSS workers as union members out of 35,000 IHSS workers in L.A.

County.36 It is noteworthy that SEIU 2015 has a registry that matches consumers and providers, but it is out of reach for those who do not speak fluent English. Therefore, these workers rely on their own networks formed under the union.

1.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I situated my case study within a broader context where the care market emerges as the terrain of a nation’s economic growth by combining welfare and health imperatives through the employment of poor and working-class women in two local sites’ care sectors. In both sites, the state’s gendered response to economic crisis propelled the resurgence of the care sector. In Korea, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the following neoliberal restructuring of the welfare regime fostered the rapid growth of the care sector. Under the state’s enticing rhetoric of revaluing care work and creating decent jobs for older groups of women, a myriad of women were rapidly funnelled into the care sector. Repackaged with feminist vocabularies of empowerment, autonomy, and self-sufficiency through employment, the Korean state’s workfare policies targeting older groups of women were implemented even in partnership with feminist and labour groups. In the United States, the long-standing racialized servitude (Glenn 1992) associated with care transformed into anti-poverty programs undergirded by unequal race relations. The increasing supply of new immigrants replenished the racialized and feminized labour force in the care sector in recent decades. This new supply of the labour force enabled the state to transform the healthcare system from providing long-term care in institutional settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes, to private homes and communities. Attracting economically marginalized and racialized women to the burgeoning home care sector allowed the state to cut its welfare expenditures as well.

The long-term care programs in both sites, the LTCI program in Korea and IHSS in L.A., illuminate the inner working of these pseudo-public programs that outsource welfare to marginalized groups and communities. The pressure of establishing long-term care programs has intensified with the changing demographics in Korea and the United States. The two states

36 From an informal conversation with the leader of the group in L.A in 2017.

57 minimized the cost of running these programs by making them a hybrid of private and public: in both LTCI and IHSS, market and ethnic communities take the roles of delivering and regulating care service, moving the state’s role to the payroll office. The rationale in taking a hands-off approach in the delivery of care was to ensure a sufficient and steady supply of workers by utilizing market measures (Michel and Peng 2012). Yet, by doing so, the two states implicitly allow actors in the care sector to exploit each other: home care workers earn 15,100 USD annually, and nearly one in five of them lived in a household below the federal poverty line in 2016 (Campbell 2018).

In the L.A. Koreatown, poor immigrant women with limited employment opportunities in the larger labour market enter IHSS work, providing culturally specific care services at minimum wage level to their co-ethnics, who also suffer from poverty and underfunding. Under LTCI, yoyangbohosa, state-licensed workers in Korea, earn around 1,200 CAD per month, which is equivalent to around 65% of the median individual income in Korea in 2018. The National Health Insurance Service, a national agency in charge of LTCI, pays around 85% of the total cost of providing LTCI services, but the funds do not directly go to workers. Instead, they are released through licensed private agencies that hire yoyangbohosa. An agency earns several dollars by securing an elderly client with LTCI benefits, which gives an incentive to agencies to exploit yoyangbohosa workers. In sum, the very deceptive publicly funded long-term care programs locate workers within vicious circles of exploitation, shifting the social cost of delivering care to workers and their recipients.

In both sites, the care sector serves as the principal avenue for entry to the host society. In Korea, Joseonjok people’s Korea-bound migration was disguised as a divided nations’ decolonization, but the vast majority of Joseonjok women workers directly enter care work as informal workers. In L.A., care work in the ethnic community provides a last resort for immigrant women who face labour market constraints. Neither group is classified as legitimate workers, but instead each is seen as a distinctively ethnicized and unrecognized yet useful reservoir of labourers. Joseonjok people have been positioned differently at particular moments and circumstances in the matrix of social relations. The Korean government once viewed co-ethnics as “overseas Koreans” (Dongpo) and “family visitors,” but has now started to see them as “foreigners” and “illegal aliens” (Seol 2002,203). Called Joseonjok Imo (Chinese Korean auntie), joseonjok women

58 workers are “aunts” for their employer’s family. They are also called Dongpo, josenjok, and, at times, foreigners or “ignorant Chinese women” (Lee and Son 2010). Indeed, as Lee et al. (2010) argue, the term Joseonjok Imo itself reflects Koreans’ ambivalent perception of Joseonjok workers. On one hand, “Joseonjok” signifies the workers’ otherness, while on the other, “auntie” conveys a (feminized) sentiment towards in-group members.

Chapter 2 From Domestic Service to House Manager: Redefining the Worth of Domestic Work

This chapter analyzes how organized domestic workers’ new political subjectivity emerges in gendering struggles to improve their working conditions, labour rights and dignity within the context where older groups of women are channeled into the domestic service sector through neoliberal welfare provisions in collaboration between the neoliberal welfare state NGOs such as the KWWA. By utilizing infrastructure that the KWWA established throughout its ongoing partnership with the state, the NHMC organized domestic workers and coined the term “house manager” to cultivate alternative domestic worker subjectivity, challenging assumptions that undergird the masculine-worker subject in the hegemonic ideal of work. However, house managers view Korean Chinese workers as permanent unprofessional others and cheap laborers who deserve poor working conditions and who potentially undermine Korea-born workers’ efforts to elevate their position in the labour market. This view of migrant workers forecloses the possibility of having migrant domestic workers as their potential allies in the domestic workers’ movement, further deepening the segregation between house managers and migrant workers in the same sector.

2.1 What is Work?: Dismantling Gendered Assumptions in Domestic Service Work

I want you to remember me as a person who works with pride. Domestic service might not be a noble job, but I have pride about my work. The other day a friend of mine told me, “Eww, how can you do the dishes at other person’s home? How can you clean another’s toilet?” So, I said, “It is a workplace, not “another person’s home.” You are not paid when you put your hands in the toilet at your home. I put my hands in another person’s toilet and I get paid.” I think this is work. This is not just cleaning others’ homes; it is my job. Home

management is my work.6

During my fieldwork37, I always wrapped up my interviews with the same question: Is there anything you think that I must bear in mind when I go back and write about domestic workers in Korea? You-Ha, a 53-year-old member of the NHMC, made her closing remarks by reiterating the key theme that runs through interviews with organized domestic workers—domestic service is work. This statement confronts the popular notion of domestic service in Korea, which is that domestic service is not real work but just what poor women do out of urgent economic needs. The statement also challenges the gendered workerhood inscribed in the law that relegates domestic workers to “helpers” (doumi),38 not subjects of waged labour.

The sense of self-worth and pride in You-Ha’s statement above, however, required a long time to grow. It took many years for her to be able to clearly articulate who she is as a worker, what her work is and how valuable that work is. Like many other domestic workers I met, You-Ha found her work shameful nine years before when she first started working as a domestic labourer at the Y Self-Sufficiency Center under the Ansan branch of the KWWA (Korean Women Workers Association). After her marriage, You-Ha went through various part-time jobs that allowed her to take care of her three children as well as contribute to the household economy. However, even poorly paid part-time employment became hard to secure for her, a middle-school graduate in her 40s. You-Ha’s sister, who was and still is a KWWA activist and social worker affiliated with the Y Self-Sufficiency Center, recommended a government subsidized “social job” (sahoejeok iljari) at the center, but You-Ha did not expect that the job would be domestic service. When she

37 Ford Foundation for supporting my fieldwork in Korea as part of the multi-country comparative research project, “Informal Construction and Domestic Work: Collaborative Research on Institutional Influences on Job Quality” (Chris Tilly, PI; Jennifer Jihye Chun, South Korea country coordinator, 2015_2018). My fieldwork in Korea was also greatly supported by the Doctoral Associated Program funded by the Centre for Global Social Policy under the project titled “The Micro Politics of Care: A Comparative Study of Co-ethnic and Local Women Workers in the Domestic and Long-term Care Market of South Korea.”

38 Statistics Korea classifies domestic workers as Domestic Chore Helpers (gasadoumi) in the KSCO (Korean Standard Classification of Occupations, 9511).

61 realized that what her sister recommended was this kind of work, she thought, “Is she insane?

Why does she recommend a job like this to me?”7 You-Ha considered herself “a person who is not for this work.8“ Immediately drawing on the image of servant women in affluent households she had seen on TV shows, she thought that becoming a domestic worker would mean degrading her social position. You-Ha recalled at the time:

You know, on TV in the old days, there were always servant women called Mrs. Yeojoo or Mrs. Gimchun [both are names of regions] in an executive’s house. When I started watching instructional videos about domestic service [at the Y self-sufficiency center], I thought, “Is she crazy? No matter how poor I am, how dare she recommend this to me?” As I proceeded with the education, however, I came to think that, ah, this is not just what those kinds of people do, and that this can be a decent work. After the education, I started the social job, and as I worked, I realized that this is not just what a servant woman does.

This is what society really needs; someone needs to do this.9

In her comparative study of welfare-reliant women’s subjectivity in the United States and the Netherlands where the state pushes welfare-reliant women to be workers to become legitimate members of society, Anna Korteweg (2006) shows that the U.S. women embraced masculine worker-citizen subjectivity imposed by the neoliberal state, while Dutch women developed mother-worker citizen subjectivity. Korteweg points to the availability of counter-hegemonic discourses as a key factor that makes the difference: while welfare-reliant women were hailed only as soon-to-be workers rather than mothers in the U.S., discourses that valued women’s unpaid care work as mothers enabled Dutch women to assert their needs as mothers in the making of mother-worker citizen subjects (Korteweg 2006). Likewise, for You-Ha, the only available vocabulary and images to describe domestic service work nine years ago were derogative terms and subservient images in mass media. Her strong aversion to doing domestic service was associated with culturally entrenched images of domestic service that define it solely in terms of function without meaning. Historically, doing paid domestic work has been seen as a status marker rather than an occupation in Korea, because paid domestic work provided women from unprivileged classes with a means to survive (Moon 2014). For You-Ha, who was not immured to the dominant images around domestic workers, becoming a domestic worker herself

62 meant falling into a subservient relationship with her employer where she could not expect any respect at work.

The lack of worker subjectivity in paid domestic work is also reflected in the law. The term “helper” in the official classification denies these workers’ ownership in the process of service production. Their exclusion from access to labour rights and social insurance protections is grounded on the notion that these workers “help” other women rather than produce their own service. This abjectification of domestic workers inscribed in the law further perpetuates the subservient images of domestic workers that You-Ha had. However, as I will elaborate below, she and her fellow house managers unsettled the popular notion by asserting a distinct political subjectivity in domestic workers’ collective struggles.

Gendering Struggles

Organizations intervene in the uncritical and passive adoption of dominant discourse around domestic service, providing workers with an alternative conceptualization of their work. While most domestic workers reluctantly began their work feeling ashamed like You-Ha did, they reported that they cultivated pride as house managers and, like her, expressed their vocational commitment by long-term memberships in the NHMC. The NHMC explicitly declares that domestic service work is poorly remunerated and devalued in Korean society due to its association with femininity and separate sphere ideology. By doing so, it challenges the issue of low-paid work with what England calls a “devaluation framework” (England 2005).

Is it difficult to gain social recognition because domestic service is undertaken by women? Or are women concentrated in domestic service because the work does not enjoy a high status in society? It seems like a chicken and egg question. Regardless, the fact is that women mostly do the work, and it is called “women’s work” in reality. Yet even if it is the same cleaning work, there are men working as street cleaners, yet they rarely work in private homes. Why? Because street cleaning is work outside the home. So even though it

is a similar type of cleaning work, it is considered to be cleaning a public place. 10

Let’s Write Contract, NHMC

The key argument from pamphlet Let’s Write Contract given to NHMC member workers is that the better remuneration male street cleaners enjoy is not associated with the nature of their work or their skills. Rather, the nature of the work and the value attached to it are socially constructed as a result of their male privilege. In other words, domestic workers lack social recognition because they do women’s work. This logic provides an explanation of the continuing devaluation of domestic labour, allowing workers to see productivity in domestic labour as a social construction interwoven with gender relations. This then enables workers to further challenge assumptions that undergird the masculine-worker subject in the hegemonic ideal of work.

Feminist-influenced discourses alone are not sufficient to empower these deeply stigmatized and isolated groups of workers. The NHMC has organized disconnected workers through their institutional network, which the KWWA initially established in previous decades. Government subsidized self-sufficiency centers under KWWA branches have recruited women in need of basic livelihood support as prospective domestic workers, provided information to raise awareness about domestic service work, and developed a training curriculum. While for-profit agencies do not provide any training for workers, the KWWA has committed to creating opportunities for workers to be exposed to alternative discourses around domestic service work by KWWA activists and, more importantly, their fellow workers. Through constant exposure to feminist accounts of the devaluation of women’s work and collective discussions with their peers, they come to understand that productivity in domestic labour is not defined by its nature, but “by the social relations that are involved in its practice and control” (Lan 2001).

So-Won, a representative of the NHMC, also rejects the notion of women’s work, offering a gender analysis of the devaluation of domestic service. According to her, the reason why domestic service is poorly remunerated is not because of its nature. Instead, she argues, it is the poor remuneration that blocks men from being domestic workers because men have more and better options in the labour market. So-Won explains her position as follows:

You know, there are more male nurses these days. Pay. If this job gives better pay to the workers, then you know, then, we see many male chefs these days…If we could raise awareness, then those who can do this work well will come. I think we need to do some

groundwork so that those who can do this work well, as a job, can enter.11

63 64

Albeit rough, her logic is in line with the argument that domestic workers’ low wages are a result of unequal power relations along gender line, and the wage level does not reflect the importance of their work. By making the point that men can be good house managers and that higher wage levels could attract those potential workers, So-Won suggests the notion that domestic work does not necessarily have to be done by women.

As workers embrace the idea that the devaluation of their work can be understood in terms of power dynamics, they come to interpret their exclusion from domestic labour law as a serious omission rather than a fair reflection of their worth as workers. If poor remuneration of their work is just because of their meager power in gender relations rather than the real value of their work, then it is unjust that the state does not recognize domestic workers and continues to ask them to tolerate servant-like treatment at work. NHMC house managers condemn the state, asserting that it is substantially responsible for the maintenance of the masculine worker subject in both policy and popular discourse. Just as You-Ha asserts in the following quote, many NHMC house managers argue that if the state endorsed workerhood, it would be a great help in changing the popular notion that domestic work is not real work.

When the government recognizes that this [domestic service] is essential work in society and that we are workers [nodongja], then people would consider us as reliable workers [ilhaneun saram], and prospective workers would see this [domestic service] as a type of work—real work with professional skills and knowledge, not just doing chores in others’

homes.12

Home as Workplace

Making the home a workplace is the foundational component in the alternative conceptualization of domestic labour. Denial of this notion is essential to all derogative expressions regarding domestic workers: “in others’ homes” (name jibeseo) is the most frequent expression that workers hear when people demean their work. Therefore, NHMC house managers continually correct the dominant image of the workplace by asserting that others’ homes are workplaces. For example, even though her friend, son and husband disdained her work by saying that what she

65 does is “doing dishes” and “washing rags at others’ homes” (name jibeseo geollena ppaneun), You-Ha explained her work to her elementary school-aged daughter:

I said, mommy works in other people’s homes, and it is to manage [gwanri] their homes, so I am called a house manager. Broadly speaking, it is a service job. It is also a care [dolbom] service, so when people ask you about mommy’s job or when you need to write about it, you can say that mommy is in the care service sector. Service jobs are not all the same, and there are many different types of services, you know. So, I tell my daughter and son, always, that it is a house manager when it comes to a specific occupation, but it is a

care service job, broadly speaking.13

In the quote, You-Ha clearly articulates some elements that characterize domestic service as work. They are: a) other people’s homes are her workplace; b) she provides a holistic service to “manage” clients’ homes; c) the title of her occupation is house manager; and, d) it is in the broader care service industry. In this clear assertion, she did not use the feminist language of the public/private sphere that is evident in the organizational discourse. Nevertheless, she drew on the idea and challenged the popular notion that home can be a workplace, and working in others’ homes is not only what poor women do unskillfully for money, but it is work that provides care and management services to clients. In doing so, they locate their work within the mainstream service economy.

2.2 What is Skill?: Reconstructing Domestic Service as Skilled Work

This is difficult, really, physically. The other day a person told me, “Well, these are domestic chores, so skills [gisul] are not required?” I said, “No, it needs skills. Skills are needed, well, I would say, you need know-how. It is not so easy without know-how. It doesn’t matter if you work on this and that for ten hours or so in your home, but this, you must complete all the tasks perfectly in four hours, so you really need skills. That’s why, in

fact, not many people survive here for long.14 You-Ha, NHMC House Manager

Skill is the word that house managers used most frequently to articulate the idea that their domestic service is legitimate work that deserves better recognition and remuneration. In house

66 managers’ conceptualization of work, what distinguishes respectable work from mere survival activities are skills. Interviews with house managers reveal that they challenge the longstanding notion that their work is low- or non-skilled work. To do so, they highlight and revalue components of their work that have not been hitherto considered as skills, such as body and emotional labour. By developing discourses and practices that render women’s unpaid work visible and deconstruct the androcentric notion of skill, house managers reconstruct domestic work as a particular type of service that requires skills in unique types of physical and emotional labour in the mainstream service economy.

2.2.1 Domestic Service is Labour-intense yet Skilled Work

Domestic work is tough. Four hours. It pays well, but muscular skeletal disease, yes, those things come, if you do it for years. This work requires know-how. It is not just about physical power. So, skills [gisul], you need skills. So, if you simply think that that this is

something you do at your home, you’re wrong. You are so wrong if you think so.15

Jung-Hwa, age 48, NHMC House Manager

Historically, work that involves physical strength, such as construction and manufacturing, has enjoyed lower levels of occupational authority in Korea. Yet at least those who do these kinds of labour-intensive jobs find what Lamont (2009) calls workers’ dignity—a sense of pride, honor and self-worth from their working selves—in their work regardless of the low pay. When physically intensive work is a feminized work, however, women workers are less likely to see themselves as having workers’ dignity. For example, Choo (2016) shows that factory workers develop a sense of pride and honor when they work in the same factory for years because their work history is translated into work experience and skills. However, women workers with years of work experience in bars as an entertainers neither enjoy the same recognition from others nor cultivate a sense of pride because their physical and emotional work is not recognized as skilled (Choo 2016).

House managers explicitly emphasize the physical intensity of their work, and in doing so they challenge the notion that women’s body work does not require skills. While the physical aspect of this work is not highlighted much in interviews with other workers in this study, all the house managers I interviewed mentioned how physically demanding their work is, and more

67 importantly, how they deal with it with a set of skills. Domestic labour can be strenuous work, and when it becomes a paid service within a specific timeframe, the intensity of the work becomes much higher. To them, this means that one must understand the specific characteristics of body work in domestic service and, more importantly, develop a set of skills to cope with it.

Time Management Skills

The duration of home-visit domestic service is standardized in the Korean domestic service industry. Typically, workers work 4 hours for a client and then move on to another. Some clients hire them for 8 hours per week, but these clients typically want the workers to come twice a week instead of getting 8 hour continuous service. The time frame, namely the 4 hour duration and the frequency of workers’ visits, directly shapes the intensity of paid domestic labour. Workers emphasized that their clients tend to accumulate unfinished chores until the workers visit, thus the quality and the scale of the tasks are not comparable with unpaid house duties. The reasons for this accumulation vary, according to the workers, but a common reason reiterated by many of them is that clients leave all the chores simply because they do not know how to deal with them. For example, Ji-Eun, a 59-year-old household manager, explained that being a woman and mother is not sufficient to be a good career. She described her client as not competent to maintain her home, so she had to hire someone:

I can’t even describe it. That baby’s mother [her client] does not know how to do housework [salim]. She just piles up dishes for days [laughs]. She accumulates them. Then it takes so long to clean the kitchen because they are all covered with grease stains. It hurts

my wrists to clean them.16

Hiring domestic workers is not only a needs-based practice, but it is a class specific strategy to maintain reproduction within the household without eroding the dominant gender ideology (Lan 2001). House managers highlight their employers’ needs and incapability—rather than the class gap—as a reason for hiring domestic workers, and they obscure the gendered and class based- stigma attached to their work. In addition, workers cultivate a sense of pride as they stress their capability to complete tasks that their employers are unable to do.

The four-hour service duration at a flat rate means that workers need to finish their duties within four hours regardless of the varying degrees of intensity and quantity of tasks across different

68 clients’ homes. Without a clear job description, over four hours the workload can reach the point of exploitation. Therefore, the NHMC along with the two other domestic worker organizations developed a contract that contains a clear job description to protect their workers from clients’ excessive or unreasonable requests (see Appendix 1). According to the NHMC contract, for instance, using laundry machines is included in the basic service, but clients need to pay extra if they want handwashing or ironing. Cleaning the kitchen is part of the basic service, but sterilizing baby bottles is not.

It is a norm in the industry that time for commuting or meals is not included in hours worked, so a worker finishes her morning shift around noon and rushes to the next one so that she can finish her day around 5 or 6. Having lunch at a table is a luxury for most workers within this tight timeline, so they usually prepare a small portion of snacks, such as nuts, bread, or porridge, that they can consume on the way. Chae-Young, a 58-year-old worker, states the following about her need to manage time at work:

I’ve been working for more than fifteen-years, so it is a bit tiring, you know. I feel that my physical strength is not good enough, and I was quick at things until mid-40s and 50s. Speed. My speed at work. To figure out things at work quickly. I could outline the work in my mind. This and that and that. I had such good logistics. But not now. and it bothers me. So I think, ah, I can’t do this work any longer. Seriously. I am a perfectionist at work, so I want to do the work and get paid as long as I work at a client’s home. I don’t want to be a

problem. So thinking of these things, I think, ah, I need to quit sometime soon.17

This is an example of how time management skills are an integral part of workers’ conceptualization of domestic service as legitimate compared to women’s unpaid care work at home. Meeting individual clients’ needs in a tight timeframe is, according to the workers, what distinguishes domestic service as work from unpaid household chores. As Chae-Young, a “perfectionist at work,” remarks about her 15 years of work experience in domestic service, one must be capable of developing excellent logistics to complete the work with perfection. In other words, it is physical work, but one needs to do physical work according to a carefully planned order and method. The question is, then, what types of skills do the workers need to achieve the level of perfection?

Knowledge for Standardized yet Customizable Service

The second theme that emerges from workers narratives in distinguishing their work from non- work or unskilled work, such as unpaid care work at home and servant work, is that they are equipped with service-related knowledge that they learn from their organizations. The three domestic worker organizations all run apprenticeships for those who want to become members. At the NHMC, the apprenticeship consists of several days of entry level training during which apprentices learn theory about domestic service along with on-the-job training where they accompany a senior worker and practice the skills they have studied. At the basic training sessions, workers learn what to do at their jobs and how to complete their duties. For instance, they learn how to efficiently order tasks, effective ways of doing laundry, proper ironing methods for different garments, chemical hazard-free-ways of cleaning the washroom, and techniques to keep drains and garbage cans clean until their next visit.

Responses to my question about why they thought such an education is necessary were very similar across all the organizations. Contrary to the public assumption that one can do domestic work in an ad hoc manner, workers said they needed guidelines that enable them to know what to do and how to do tasks within a limited timeline. For example, So-Young, a 44-year-old NHMC house manager, said:

Because, once you visit the client, you have no idea what to do. I think I learned the order of the work first. Step by step, how to do the kitchen, then the washroom, and then sweep and wipe. I liked that very much. [I: Does it help at work?] Yes, I worked with the guidelines. I just did things randomly at home, but I watched videos and learned things. I think education is all good. Learning things and then making those things your own is

good. I often listen to those lectures at the office.18

Similar to So-Young, the majority of workers described the anxious situation they would have encountered at work without their training. In another person’s home, workers would “have no idea” how to proceed. Indeed, one of the standard features in this hypothetical situation in workers’ narratives is puzzlement that comes from unfamiliarity with the workplace, which varies across homes. To deal with the diversity in workplaces and to provide service that meets clients’ expectations, organized domestic workers follow a manual. NHMC train prospect member workers with the manual followed by apprenticeship. The manual is not only helpful for

70 workers in providing standardized service, but more importantly, by going through the training process, workers develop a sense of group identity with their fellow workers as house managers.

House managers who attended additional training to gain more detailed work-related knowledge, such as information about nutrition, hygiene, and worker organizing, proudly told me that had greater levels of flexibility in dealing with different demands from their clients. For example, workers would provide special meals if there were patients or infants, and they would not use specific types of chemicals for cleaning a baby’s laundry. Moreover, knowledge about housework helps workers to be attuned to changing work environments as house managers. Ji- Soo explains:

The supplementary education is, well, you become a bit too relaxed when you become experienced in this. So, those experienced managers often work for the same clients for years. Then they come to lose a keen sense about new things. You know, there are new laundry machines these days, and some apprentices do not know how to use front-loading

washing machines.19

In short, the NHMC developed its training program with an emphasis on standardized service using a manual together with a contract to protect workers from exploitation in isolated workplaces, given the lack of legal protections. In their learning process, house mangers not only gain practical skills that they need to provide standardized service, but they also come to develop a collective viewpoint and cultivate a sense of pride and confidence.

The Unprofessional Others

As much as workers crystalize their worker subjectivity in the process of collective learning that emphasizes professionalism, their sense of authority as professionals enables workers to distinguish themselves from others. Asked if there are differences between the organization with which they are affiliated and private agencies, the majority of workers pointed to the knowledge they obtained from educational sessions and on-the-job training that their organizations provide. For instance, Yoon-Ji, a 51-year-old NHMC house manager stated:

Those pachul (part-time domestic service work) agencies don’t educate workers. You just visit their office and register, then they will tell you to work for a client, and you just go,

without getting any education. I know some people who work through that channel, and they might not be satisfying to the client, because they are not thoroughly educated. They just quit when the client complains. Here, we do the field practice two or three times, so it

is reliable.20

Note that in Yoon-Ji’s response, domestic workers from private agencies are described as not only untrained and incapable of providing quality service, but they are also passive workers who are simply dispatched, following the job agency’s instructions. Contrast this portrayal with another example below, part of a conversation with a group of NHMC workers during their 2016 summer retreat. When I said I did not know about the private agency, namely the Mothers’ Association (eomeonihoe), a big company with nationwide franchises, everyone at the table expressed deep frustration and strong antagonism toward the agency, and a worker distanced the professional us from those unprofessional others working at agencies, saying:

Once you pay the annual registration fee of 80,000 won (90 CAD) or so, then they just send you to random places like restaurants and so on. We house managers work with pride from managing our clients’ homes, but these people do not do the work we do. Like

mayflies, they go anywhere if they get paid. And we are treated the same as those people.21

In the quote above, the professional us are those educated house managers who work with pride, while the unprofessional others are those with for-profit agencies who merely work for money without awareness of their work or the capability to provide proper management service, like a mayfly, an insect blindly attracted to the light. Drawing on a real example of for-profit job agencies like the Mothers’ Association, they see these unprofessional others as those who feed the long-standing popular images of maids or domestics and who erode their struggles to change such perceptions.

2.2.2 Domestic Service is Not Just Backdoor Chores: Emotional Management Skills

While domestic service is widely understood as indirect care work that involves a minimal level of contact with clients, the workers in this study provided extensive descriptions of their interactions with clients. Some work or go out while the service workers do their jobs. Others remain home, often monitoring what the workers are doing. Regardless of the duration of

72 interaction with clients, the majority of workers pointed to this interaction as a time when they need to actively and deliberately perform emotional labour in a professional manner.

Since Hochschild, the notion of emotional labour has served as a useful idea that shows how capital deeply penetrates our lives and commercialize human feelings (Hochschild 2012). While Hochschild’s understanding of emotional labour highlights the coercive nature of emotional labour based on commercial rules and its detrimental impact on workers, the literature on care work has expanded the original formulation to include philanthropic and prescriptive emotional management (Aronson and Neysmith 1996; Bolton 2000). The emotional management that house managers perform has a prescriptive element, as they are attentive to clients’ needs in order to have a good working relationship. However, I find that house managers actively engage in emotional management to guard their dignity in interactions with their clients and as a labour market strategy that differentiates themselves from the unskilled who do subservient work.

Acting in Domestic Service

Criticizing those who do not care about their looks at work, the house managers I interviewed asserted a claim that a proper domestic worker needs to maintain a professional image at work by wearing clean clothes and light makeup. This is not simply because the NHMC instructed its workers to do so during their training sessions, neither do they attempt to appeal to clients for greater employment opportunities. It is also unlike the way for-profit agencies create a professional image of domestic service, with the merely cosmetic use of agency uniforms (Romero 2016). I find that wearing a neat outfit and light makeup is more about house managers self-expression: they intend to display an image of career women in the service sector rather than one of poor women who do dirty work in the shadows. Putting forward a new term they coined to break the stigmas around domestic workers, they also intend to create a new image accordingly.

How do domestic service workers maintain a professional image at work? During my fieldwork I met many workers after their eight hours were finished, and I was amazed at how well- maintained they looked after such physically demanding work. They still looked stylish, and I could not smell any cleaning products or garbage. How did they do it? A widely shared way is to change clothes when they start work. By carrying multiple articles of clothing in their bags to change into, workers arrive at the next client’s home looking refreshed. One might think that this

73 is a requirement that forces workers to be commodifiable. Indeed, such a renewal process does not include concerns about revitalizing workers by giving them sufficient breaks or snack time, but it centers on others’ gaze over the workers.

Interviews with house managers also revealed that these workers’ emphasis on their appearance also helps them to build confidence at work by narrowing the perceived socioeconomic gap between them and their clients. For instance, Na-Young arrived with a beautiful hairstyle, fresh makeup, earrings and an elegant outfit in the afternoon, and when I asked her if she was coming from work, she answered:

I wear bunjang [make-up], because the work we do is kind of, you know, so I don’t want to

be looked down upon [kkulligo sipji anhaseo] by clients, so I put on some makeup.22

For Na-Young, the underlying message of her elaborate appearance is clear: she is not a servant (sikmo) who is in a feudal relationship with her employer, and she only provides services in exchange for wages. Her looks, therefore, are clearly intended to signal to the client that their relationship is equal as it is based on contract. Like You-Ha, Na-Young said she never eats at her clients’ homes, but instead of asking, she tells one of her clients that she will take a short coffee break after finishing her work, as the river view at the client’s home is so lovely.

Trust is an important theme that was reiterated by many workers, especially organized ones. They saw it as critical for drawing boundaries between themselves and unprofessional others. Staff in the three domestic worker organizations all emphasized that they have a good reputation in the market compared with the for-profit agencies and that clients can trust their member workers. All these organizations required applicants to submit identification and health documents to become members and in addition property certificates to designate them as “verified workers“ (sinwoni hwaksilhan). This organizational discourse emphasizing trust is a discursive strategy to unsettle the dominant image of domestic workers, that is, unknown and poor women working in the shadows, seeking money without morals. However, those who cannot supply the same identification and health documents, namely migrant workers, are automatically differentiated as less trustworthy.

In everyday practice, workers in the domestic server organizations also tried to build up a reliable and trustworthy image for themselves and their organizations. To accomplish this,

74 workers deployed two common strategies. First, they stressed punctuality as a crucial factor for their and their organization’s image, which is one of many reasons why the workers would rather skip meals than be late for a shift. Second, introducing themselves using proper language is important to give clients a professional impression. Workers said they need to introduce themselves “properly when they visit clients,” namely by saying, for instance, “Hi, this is your house manager Kyung-A Kim.” Kyoung-A, a 63-year-old house manager, elaborated on these points:

First of all, to get trust, you should introduce yourself and do other things properly, and most importantly, you should be punctual. Be punctual, and, no matter how bad your mood

is, you should have a smile on your face. A grimace would make people uncomfortable.23

What is notable here is that none of the migrant workers I interviewed ever used their names at work, but they were just called imo (aunt) or halmoni (grandmother). None of them, in fact, mentioned any sort of proper introduction in their first or subsequent visits. On the contrary, house managers deliberately used a script at work, as they were trained, to build the professional image of a house manager.

Interacting with Clients

By arguing that house managers perform emotional labour, I do not mean that they interact with clients following exploitive commercial rules or an instrumentally developed script. While these workers are trained to use scripts and certain terms, they are not directed to do so by management, i.e. their organizations. There is room for workers to use their discretion to provide service smoothly. Indeed, many workers emphasized that it is integral to understand the client’s deposition (gogaegui seonghyang) in order to deliver quality service. For instance, Kyung-A, a 63-year-old house manager says:

Once you visit a new client, you can tell, ah, this client likes talking; this client likes lip service; doesn’t like talking; doesn’t like me be being smart. Things become visible as you just have short conversations with them. Then I adjust accordingly. Well, this client likes talking but she likes me being perfectly responsible in terms of work, then I do that. And that client likes playing around, talking and grabbing tea with me, then I do that. But those clients who are at a certain level [of SES], I think they tend not to be open to others. They

don’t want to show everything. But they talk nicely once they trust me. And those that I’ve worked a long time for, if they want, I have tea with them, talking for twenty to thirty minutes. But I can’t be completely relaxed. Then I say, “I need to this today.” If they say, “You don’t need to do that today,” then it does not matter, but if not, having some time with them makes me busy. So, I don’t just go with what they want, this is a type of

service.24

As Kyung-A explains, skilled domestic workers quickly know what a client wants. Whether clients want personal interaction or simply cleaning, their needs can be subtle and unspoken, and workers must be able to read such unspoken requests. Also, having a tea break with the client is not really a break, as Kyung-A explains. It is still a part of work because it is the client who is relaxed. The workers must continuously think about their remaining tasks and the schedule, simultaneously engaging in conversation with the client. Teatime with clients, therefore, is an emotional service from a worker’s perspective.

Regarding emotional labour in their services, the most frequently mentioned example in my interviews with house managers was elderly women clients. Consider, for instance, how So- Young and So-You, both house managers for the NHMC, respectively articulate their understanding of the specific needs of this type of client:

This work, domestic work, is not just doing domestic work, I think. You know, those clients, domestic work is important, but some of them are emotionally unwell. They like us being there talking to them. For example, I do not have a grandmother client this year, but last year and the year before, I had many grandmother clients. They own their places, but they can’t do the cleaning, but most of them wanted me as company to listen and talk. I think clients these days like someone who can listen to all their stories and clean hard as

well. Someone who can have a real conversation with them. Our clients all like that.25

So-Young, NHMC House manager

Grandmothers, you know, they are eager to talk. They want to gossip around their daughter-in-law and others, and they are all alone at home every day. When we visit, the first round is gossiping with their daughter-in-law. We have to complete things within four hours, but they keep talking. I worked for a grandmother the other day. One day, she gave

me my pay for the week, but she arranged the bills out of order. Oh, this grandmother must be mad about something. She was mad because I did not change the tank of the water

purifier.26 So-You, age 53, NHMC house manager

In both workers’ narratives, elderly women clients are portrayed as a prime example of clients who need extra emotional labour, such as listening to their stories which may not be interesting to the workers. As So-You describes, it is the “first round” of their work because they are required to respond in a culturally proper manner so that the client can resolve their desire to talk.

House managers’ narratives around emotional labour reveal a hitherto invisible aspect of their work. It also allows them to assert that domestic service requires another set of skills, i.e. interpersonal skills. On the other hand, many of these workers drew on the same logic when they described migrant workers, co-ethnic migrant workers from China in particular, as unsuitable workers. Interpersonal skills can be better achieved when workers have a shared understanding of culture. Hence, those who have limited understanding of “our” culture are automatically assumed to be unsuitable and thus unprofessional workers. For instance, So-Young explained why migrant workers are inherently incompatible:

There are many clients who want to talk to us. You know, they want someone to talk to. But they [Joseonjok workers] are not capable of it, you know. They are not so familiar with our lifestyle, so they don’t get things quickly. For example, we know when kids start their vacations so we can talk about it, saying “Are your kids all on vacation by now?” Then they would say, “Yes, they are, recently.” Those Joseonjok would not have kids around, since they are all abroad. Also, there’s no visible difference after their service is finished. I want to work thoroughly so there won’t be any need for a second touch, but they are a bit

dirty and don’t work thoroughly.27

The quote above reiterates a notable feature in house managers’ portrayal of migrant workers from China. There is a typical image of a Joseonjok domestic worker in the description, that is, a mother who works in Korea as a live-in domestic worker, leaving her children behind in China. However, the reality is quite different from what house managers imagine. The vast majority of migrant workers in my sample have their families in Korea, as they were able to bring them over after many years of work. Unlike what So-Young imagines, they have their grandchildren

77 nearby, and they know very well how Korean schools work. Such a stereotypical image of migrant workers from China also almost automatically generates another stereotype about them, which is that they have limited understanding of Korean culture and therefore limited ability in performing emotional labour. A supporting example in workers’ responses included cases where migrant workers make absurd demands on clients or quit without notice. As I will demonstrate, however, these behaviours stem from their distinct labour market strategy, not cultural distance.

Stay outside the Boundary: Don’t be a Mother, Don’t be a Mother-in-Law

When a woman hires another for domestic service, the family boundaries are reconstructed, and the family becomes a key site where multiple gender identities are negotiated (Lan 2001). Interpersonal skills that are required for a skillful domestic service worker also include the capability to understand subtle cues in the negotiations between workers and their clients. A worker should be a service provider in the client’s home, not a mother/mother-in-law figure. Acting like one would symbolically undermine the client’s legitimate position in the house, bother them, and eventually lead to the termination of the relationship. For instance, Ji-Soo, a domestic service worker and the president of the NHMC at the time of my interview, explained the two most common reasons why and how workers need to be wary about a client’s symbolic guard. Talking about her experiences of being fired, Ji-Soo described a case where she tried to teach her client’s children to use a tray when they brought food:

I worked the entire day there while the [clients’] kids were at school. And when kids came back home, they got things from the fridge, and you know, it is basic to put food on a tray, but they were not educated to do so. So, when the kids brought food, I said “Can you use a tray?” Then I brought a tray for them. The kids were okay with that, but it seemed like I was scolding them in their mother’s eyes. I just brought a tray [laughs]. So, it is like, she didn’t like me teaching the kids things that she didn’t teach them. So, she said later she

didn’t want to hire someone who made her self-conscious.28

Ji-Soo thought that she merely wanted to correct minor problems in the children’s behavior. However, she soon realized that instructing the kids and making a small request to her employer were misinterpreted as challenging the employer’s authority as a mother, by acting like someone in a legitimate position to scold the children and instruct the client. In fact, most workers mentioned that one’s 50s is an ideal time to perform domestic service. This is not only because the work becomes physically unbearable later, but more importantly, because clients are reluctant to hire someone who is too old as it would be inconvenient to set a symbolic guard. What is notable here is that the Korea-born domestic workers I interviewed were all wary about their client’s symbolic guard (Lan 2006) and interpreted it as a kind of customer need that is specific to the industry. These workers clearly rejected the idea of a servant- and madam-like relationship between them and their clients by reconstructing the relationship as purely contractual and thus reciprocal. Accordingly, respect for a client’s symbolic guard is an essential part of their work.

The other example, reiterated by many house managers including Ji-Soo, is related to workers’ empathy for their clients’ situation where dominant gender norms in society force women to carry out tasks in the home. As a president of the NHMC, Ji-Soo educated members and led public campaigns to raise awareness about domestic workers. She was a worker who would immediately correct her clients if they called house managers ajumma39 or imo (aunt). Yet as the quote below illustrates, she made a few exceptions at work, but would only pressure a client who was already oppressed by dominant gender norms:

The reason why I sometimes can’t tell them that I am a house manager is that, thinking of a service users’ perspective, their kids or family members would say, “why do you outsource your work to others?” So, they [the clients] can’t confidently say that they use the service. Not most of them, but there are some. So, when I visit [such clients] and their kids ask, “mom, who is this?” they say, “She is my friend. Mommy is a bit tired, so the aunty came to help.” Sometimes they speak like this. In such cases, I don’t push them to say that I am a house manager. I wish the term that people call us would change, but I also need to think

39 Ajumma is a term that refers to older groups of women in Korea. While the term originates from a kinship term ajummoni (aunt), the term ajumma carries the connotation of denigrating and desexualizing older groups of women.

about the kid’s mother’s situation, so I just let her…However, when I text a client, I always say, “This is house manager Ji-Soo Kim.” Some clients say, “Manager Kim”

(gwanrisanim), so I guess perceptions are changing and we are in a transitional period.29

Knowing that dominant gender norms still expect women to perform unpaid care work in the family, Ji-Soo understood that asking her clients to call her “manager” in public would let others know that the client was hiring someone for the tasks that she was supposed to do. Ji-Soo, like many other workers, did not support such gender norms, yet because she understood her client’s difficult situation as a Korean woman, she allowed her employer to call her imo in public. This example shows that cultural understanding of family dynamics becomes crucial knowledge to become a house manager. A good domestic worker, therefore, needs to understand the client’s symbolic position in the family, and always needs to be careful about it.

2.3 Good Domestic Service Guarantees Customer Satisfaction

Most of the house managers I interviewed used the term client (gogaeck) to refer to service recipients. While calling the service recipients madam (samonim) was common among migrant workers in this study, house managers saw the term as silly or absurd. Calling the recipients “client” is about more than just emphasizing the contractual relationship. It is to locate the client in a position from which they evaluate the service. Then it becomes clear that the key criterion for excellent service is not a worker’s sincere effort but rather the results, actual performance, or as workers say, customer satisfaction (gogaek manjok). Instead of saying they clean their clients’ homes “as I clean my own home,” these workers asserted that a professional touch must be “different from what I do at my home.”

A key feature that can bring clients satisfaction is when they get the impression that they do not need to do additional work once a house manager visits. Many workers used the expression, “A second touch shouldn’t be needed” when they described the ideal state of completed visit. This is because, as So-Young articulates below, what doing domestic work as a job means is that the client evaluates your performance:

For instance, let’s say that I clean my own refrigerator. I would think something like, “Well, it looks fine. I clean it frequently.” But if it is a client’s refrigerator, then I think differently, say, “No I have to do it thoroughly this time.” You know, then the client will

say “Ah, it is clean.” It is evaluated. Frankly speaking, this a job where something is evaluated. It is evaluated by others’ eyes. A client comes home and sees that it is clean, that he/she will like my service…Our clients say that they don’t need to do any additional work after a managers’ visit. If a manager visits but the client still needs to clean, it means

that the manager is not great.30

Therefore, those who are unable to make such a visible difference and impress the client are not professional enough. House managers, for this reason, tend to be very strict about themselves at work. For example, Yoon-Ji said that she became a perfectionist who does not accept a hair left in the client’s home after she realized that she left some hairs after cleaning once. Instead of complaining about the client, she analyzed her movements at work and developed a way in which she could make sure there are no hairs left behind. She said:

Even a hair is not acceptable. There was a client who said she found some hairs on the floor after my visit. Hairs! I tend to lose my hair when I am under stress, so I am always cautious about it and tie my hair at work. The client said, “Helper” [douminim], we were called helper back then, “Helper, I found some hairs in the bedroom after you visited.” So, I wondered why. Therefore, since then I wipe the floor, moving backward, and exit the door. I can check whether there is a hair or not when I move backward. If I move forward as I used to do, then I can’t see the hairs that could be behind me. Since I lose hair, I am very cautious, always. Since I started proceeding backward, I haven’t heard that there are

hairs.31

However, simply working hard does not guarantee a visible difference that can impress a client. This is why house managers say that professional domestic workers who work on a tight schedule need both efficiency and effectiveness at work. By effectiveness, I mean that workers are required to produce a desirable result, that is, a visible difference and customer satisfaction. The efficiency, skills, and experience of workers matter. In the language of domestic service workers, there are “key points” which they must cover to give the impression that they have cleaned a space perfectly. One of the characteristics of domestic work is that it is not so visible, but a professional domestic worker must focus on those “key points” so they can maximize their results with a minimum investment of time.

2.4 “We are house managers” :Connecting Professionalizing Discourses to Right Claims

As Aronson and Neysmith (1996) argue in their case study of homecare workers, workers cannot challenge unfair practices at work when they lack the language to cleary define their work. In this study, workers often priotize their sense of responsibility over their labour rights and cater to their clients’ needs outside of their official responsiblities, even though they know that it is not part of their work, because they lack the language to describe such unjust practices (Aronson and Neysmith 1996).

In the case of house managers in Korea, organizational discourses that interpret the lack of state protections for domestic workers as unjust have provided workers with alternative vocabularies. House managers did not consciously attempt to dismantle gendered assumptions, neither did they use sophisticated language such as “separate spheres” or “patriarchy.” However, the organized workers I interviewed embraced a feminist analysis of the devaluation of their work together with organizational discourses and strategies that target state recognition as a first step to improving domestic service work. Drawing on this alternative perspective and grounded in the pride and confidence they cultivated at the NHMC, these workers strongly asserted the claim that they are legitimate workers who are entitled to labour rights. A worker expressed the following to me in a casual conversation at the 2016 NHMC summer retreat:

If the state took responsibility by, for example, issuing care homes certificates or stamps to recognize our work, then it would allow us to say that we are not like the Mothers’ Association. We would say that we are a brand, a state-recognized brand of labourer, then we could speak up to clients, talking about our rights confidently. Without it, clients treat

the Mothers’ Association workers and us the same.32

In the quote above, the house manager demands two interrelated things: first, clients need to see the differences between house managers who work with vocational commitment and those who do the work just for survival; second, the state should take responsibility for recognizing the differences by “issuing certificates or stamps.” Workers’ emphasis on state endorsement through a “state-recognized brand” not only shows that they are engaged with the NHMC’s collective struggles for legislation for domestic workers, but it also reveals that house managers are very

82 aware of the disadvantages of their position in the labour market. They know that market competition is keen given the soaring demand, and the NHMC’s non-profit management style might lose its competitive edge without recognition of its investment in professionalization.

The professional worker subjectivity these workers articulate allows them to make claims about their rights in relation to their clients. House manager worker subjectivity makes these workers more sensitive about injustice at an intimate level, such as lack of respect from employers, which provides them with the moral ground of resistance.

2.5 Conclusion

This chapter analyzed how domestic workers’ political subjectivity emerged in gendering struggles to improve their working conditions, labour rights and dignity within the context of what Chun and Kim call feminist entanglement with the neoliberal welfare state (Chun and Kim 2018). Labour laws in Korea have excluded domestic workers from accessing basic labour rights and protections since they appeared in 1953, despite the constant demand from civil society for legislation to recognize domestic workers’ workerhood and protections since the early 2000s. The lack of legal recognition does not mean that these workers were outside the purview of the state, however. If anything, the state plays a role in channeling poor and working-class women into the domestic service sector through neoliberal welfare provisions in collaboration with NGOs such as the KWWA (Chun and Kim 2018). By utilizing infrastructure that the KWWA established throughout its ongoing partnership with the state, the NHMC organized domestic workers and coined the term “house manager” to cultivate alternative domestic worker subjectivity.

My interviews with house managers reveal how these workers understand their work and how this understanding becomes a part of the self. House managers assert themselves by challenging gendered conceptualization of work by dismantling the androcentric notion of workplace and skill. House managers collectively develop professional worker subjectivity based on their own definitions of need, good service, necessary skills, and knowledge. By doing so, they not only dismantle long-standing gendered assumptions about domestic service, but they further reconstruct domestic service as skilled work that deserves better recognition and remuneration.

Their efforts to construct a professional us, however, lead to the construction of unprofessional others, namely migrant workers. In workers’ narratives about the professional us, and in the meanings they attach to their work, there is little room for migrant workers to become members of the professional us. House manager workers assume that migrant workers inevitably have limited understanding of our culture and thus have limited interpersonal skills. They may obtain some knowledge from work manuals and learn cleaning techniques, but none of the three domestic worker organizations in this study open their doors to migrant domestic workers for reasons of reputation and their doubts about migrant workers. After all, co-ethnic migrant domestic workers are simply people from China who “speak awkward Korean” and can never be “our people” as the quotes above clearly suggest. Under circumstances where all paths to become a member of the professional us are blocked, migrant workers are viewed as permanent unprofessional others and cheap laborers who potentially undermine Korea-born workers’ efforts to elevate their position in the labour market.

I find moral connotations being carried in house managers’ constant boundary drawing against various others, such as private agency workers, pachulbu, and Joseonjok. House managers’ discourses that re-value their work “disentangle socioeconomic and moral worth” (Lamont, 147) in order to make sense of the continuing devaluation of their work. However, when they evaluate others in the market, they mix the two, drawing stereotypical images of others. When house managers condemn Joseonjok workers’ work practices as ineffective, inefficient, culturally inappropriate, and morally wrong, they associate these qualities with being “Chinese.” This view of migrant workers forecloses the possibility of having migrant domestic workers as their potential allies in the domestic workers’ movement, further deepening the segregation between house managers and migrant workers in the same sector.

Chapter 3 National Care Experts: State-Certified Eldercare Workers

This chapter examines how state-certified eldercare workers (yoyangbohosa) construct a sense of self-worth and how they interpret the occupational hierarchy in the labor market by constructing differences with other groups of workers who do similar work. I situate these workers’ subject building project within a context where the state legitimates the marketization of eldercare by deploying discourses on socializing filial piety. Such policy discourses position yoyangbohosa as care specialists who are integral to the economic growth of a rapidly ageing nation. While the state does not treat these workers accordingly, they embrace the policy discourse, actively asserting their quality as state-certified care experts who deserve better treatment. In what follows, I unpack workers’ definitions of good care workers, which have a formative role in the subject building process.

3.1 Outsourcing Filial Piety: An Illusion of Socializing Care

3.1.1 Formalizing Care through Marketization

Now Long-term Care Insurance is regarded as having succeeded not only in its duty- public filial piety but also in deriving positive effects such as job creation, providing a lot of value-added, saving medical expenses, etc.

National Health Insurance Service, 2016, p.iii40

In recent decades, the discourse of care deficiency has been at the center of the care policy regime in Korea. This discourse carries particular moral weight in the sector of eldercare, when the ageing population and low fertility of the nation are represented as warning signs of imminent national crisis that can possibly erode both the nation’s economic wellbeing (“the care deficiency in eldercare will suppress the economic participation of younger people, especially women”), and the moral order (“our society cannot uphold our morals when we do not provide

40 The original text is written in English.

85 proper care to our elders”). The Korean state’s response to this alleged crisis is socializing filial piety (sahoejeok hyo) and unburdening families41 by outsourcing care to the market. And this process targets women. The state sees the significance of the LTCI program as allowing “middle-aged people who have cared for the elderly for a long period of time” to be able to “concentrate on economic or social activities.” Yet it implicitly indicates that those who would be “unburdened” from filial duties are daughters-in-laws at home who have been expected to fulfill their moral duty as unpaid eldercare workers. In turn, socializing filial piety takes the form of women’s unpaid care being outsourced to low-paid care workers in the market who are also mostly women.

In this process of recruiting women as low-paid eldercare workers under LTCI, new policy discourses around eldercare emerge. These policy discourses from the state attach the moral value of filial piety to state-subsidized eldercare on one hand and repackage women’s care work with vocabularies of professionalism on the other. To reconcile the traditional value of filial piety within the family with the marketized provision of care, the state has discursively elevated the occupational status of eldercare under LTCI to a state-endorsed profession. While historically low-paid eldercare workers in homes and hospitals in Korea have been treated as a type of domestic worker and thus have been denied their workerhood under the law, the Korean state has changed its position in order to recruit a big enough workforce to sustain LTCI (Yun 2018). Official occupational categorization sees the jobs of informal caregivers as easy and unskilled jobs that “requires a middle school educational background and a light workload (Yun

41 The emphasis on “unburdening the family” is the core element of the policy discourses around LTCI. The Long- Term Care Insurance Act (Article 1) stipulates that the purpose of the law is “to pursue the improvement of health of older persons and the stabilization of their livelihood during post-retirement life, relieve family members from the burden of supporting them.” The National Health Insurance Service enunciates the significance of LTCI with a focus on shared responsibility of care, stating that LTCI is “based on the principle of social solidarity, the nation and society shares the responsibility for long-term care and nursing services for senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease or stroke instead of leaving the entire burden to their families.”

2018:56),” but the state has started touting yoyangbohosa as a workforce that “provides high- quality care by fostering care specialists” (National Health Insurance Service Republic of

Korea42).

The strong emphasis on professionalism in LTCI policy provides yoyangbohosa workers with discursive sources that they can draw on for their own understanding of their work as valuable and “professional.” While the term often connotes an occupation with higher economic rewards and social status, the assertion that work is “professional” can also be understood as a kind of labour closure strategy (Parkin, 1974) which “aims for an occupational monopoly over the provision of certain skills and competence in a market for services” (Witz,1990). I use the term “professional project” to denote how yoyangbohosa purposively and strategically define their work as “professional” and put forth illusionary policy discourses.

The state’s strategic promotion of the professional image of yoyangbohosa achieved great success. Given the gendered labour market that poses even greater constraints to older groups of women, the allure of being a professional worker as well as easy access to the licensing process attracted enormous numbers of women in their 40s and 50s. In 2007 the Ministry of Health and Welfare projected that securing 34,000 yoyangbohosa would be a major challenge for the implementation of LTCI, but 172,889 people obtained yoyangbohosa certificates within a year. That number increased to 1,100,000 in 5 years, making yoyangbohosa the fastest-growing occupation in Korea (National Health Insurance Service, 2016).

Albeit limited, some achievements were made through this formalization of care work. Departing from the traditional view that equates caregivers with domestic workers, the Ministry of Employment and Labour recognized that yoyangbohosa are employees of long-term care institutions shortly after the introduction of LTCI (Yun 2018). While domestic service workers were not included in the Labor Standards Act, yoyangbohosa in the LTCI program came under the purview of (minimal) state protections as they have clearly defined job descriptions and tasks with schedules allocated to specific recipients.

42 Official website of the National Health Insurance Service Republic of Korea, http://www.longtermcare.or.kr/npbs/e/e/100/htmlView?pgmId=npee201m01s&desc=Introduction (retried in July 14, 2020).

However, the failure to control the oversupply of yoyangbohosa, combined with the lack of regulation of mushrooming agencies and small private sector LTCI facilities, have resulted in poor working conditions. While the government advertises yoyangbohosa as a promising professional job for older groups of women, the reality has been the contrary. The public perceives yoyangbohosa workers not as government-approved care professionals but as “state- certified domestics” (pachulbu).43 Wage levels, which are slightly above the minimum wage, are far lower than expected. In 2008, the government said that in-home yoyangbohosa workers would earn 1,400,000 won (1,314 U.S.D) per month, but in 2012, their average monthly earnings were approximately 600,000 won (563 U.S.D) (Park 2014). Job duties also involved “extra” cleaning and cooking tasks that far exceeded defined activities. Care recipients and family members commonly treated certified workers as their maids, not professional “care specialists.” Private agencies that matched recipients and yoyangbohosa also exacerbated this exploitation. It was not uncommon for private agencies to avoid providing severance and other benefits or arbitrarily reducing work hours by hiring workers under short-term contracts. Private agencies were also known to “steal” government cash benefits for workers by inflating the total number of hours worked under fraudulent claims (Nam and Sin 2013; Park 2014).

3.1.2 Workers’ Responses to Illusionary Policy Discourses: The Seoul Supporting Center for Elderly Careworkers

In the previous chapter I examined how the KWWA and NHMC shed light on the gender dimension in domestic workers’ struggles, and how they stimulated workers’ subject formation by empowering them with alternative interpretations of the devaluation of domestic service work. The KWWA organized women workers to oppose authoritarian labour repression throughout the 1970s and 80s, and it has continued to be a leading voice for women workers, whom the androcentric major trade unions in Korea have failed to represent. The NHMC’s activities, therefore, are on the continuum of the feminist labour movement that sees poor and working-class women workers not only as oppressed in the gender stratified labour market but also as key agents of progressive social change.

43국가공인 파출부

The Seoul center was born in a different tradition of the progressive movement. Yoyangbohosa workers’ collective struggle to improve their working conditions began as early as 2001, before the introduction of LTCI, when most eldercare workers in private homes and hospitals were not recognized under the law. In 2001, these informal workers (ganbyeongin) began collective action in alliance with The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), prompted by Seoul National University Hospital’s attempt to remove their free agency. The hospital had been matching ganbyeongin with clients to outsource the ganbyeongin supply to private agencies. 120 workers refused, and one of them made an inquiry to the Ministry of Labour asking if ganbyeongin could form a union to resist the hospital’s attempt collectively. The ministry, however, answered that there was “no employment relationship between the workers and the hospital,” and thus they could not be unionized. The ganbyeongin workers did not accept the ministry’s stance and organized 80 ganbyeongin in the hospital. The KCTU and other civil society groups quickly joined the struggle. Women workers in their 40s and 50s occupied the hospital director’s office and staged rallies and sit-in protests onsite, and regular unionized workers under the KCTU joined these protests in solidarity. After eight months of fierce resistance, the unionized ganbyeongin returned to the hospital with their own free agency. This victory and the alliances they built became the seeds of eldercare workers’ mobilization.

While domestic service workers had never been invited to policy discussions previously, organized ganbyeongin workers and union activists joined in the subsequent policy debates around LTCI. Their representation in the policy making process was possible because, first, they had a strong collective voice that they had built with the union, and second, the state saw that converting the existing informal eldercare workforce (ganbyeongin) into yoyangbohosa as a viable option to ensure the sufficient supply of yoyangbohosa. Throughout the years of policy debate about LTCI, union activists and ganbyeongin workers who fought together in 2001 became knowledgable about the program and built the Care Workers’ Hope (huimangteo) organization within the Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers.

In this process of engaging, workers and union activists foresaw the impact of LTCI on care workers. Implementation on a large scale of LTCI in-home visit services, provided by yoyangbohosa employed at private agencies, meant that the traditional model of organizing workers would not be effective for yoyangbohosa. In searching for more realistic ways to organize the isolated and scattered workforce, workers and union activists pushed the Seoul

Metropolitan Government to legislate an ordinance obligating the city to provide yoyangbohosa with institutional support. The key rationale was that LTCI is state-funded program after all, and the government is responsible for maintaining the quality of its core workforce, i.e. yoyangbohosa. This is how the Seoul Center was established as government subsidized organization: while domestic workers support the NHMC with their membership fees, the city of Seoul subsidizes staff members’ wages and rent under its Ordinance on Better Treatment of Long-Term Care Workers and Improvement of Their Status.

The Seoul Center’s official vision is to “provide eldercare workers, including 65,000 yoyangbohosa in Seoul, with comprehensive support to strengthen their vocational capabilities and advocate for their rights.”44 Rather than seeing the state as an opponent that sets exploitive terms and conditions for yoyangbohosa workers, the Seoul Center strategically utilizes state power and resources in organizing workers through grassroots empowerment. In doing so, the center actively draws on state policy narratives around socializing care, high-skilled care, and job creation through care jobs. Under the overarching goal of “strengthening their vocational capabilities,”45 the center offers free labour dispute consultations, free classes on dementia, labour rights and sexual harassment, and various group activities such as stretching and line dancing for yoyangbohosa who are employed in a myriad of LTCI institutions. Engaging in these activities provides workers with rare opportunities to develop a collective sense. They cultivate an image of ideal yoyangbohosa in everyday encounters with other workers and staff in various programs. Attending classes also strengthens their confidence as experts, allowing them to deal with the gap between the professional image of yoyangbohosa in policy discourse and the difficult reality. The center also organizes outside initiatives like public awareness campaigns and research on poor working conditions for yoyangbohosa, from which it derives policy suggestions.

44Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers official website: http://www.dolbom.org/sub/sub01_02_01.php 45 역량 강화

3.2 “We are Government Certified Experts”: National Care Expert Subjectivity

State policies promote the professional image of yoyangbohosa workers, and such images and policy scripts have attracted many older groups of women in recent decades. These workers, however, soon found there was a gap between the alluring state-promoted images of yoyangbohosa and the unchanged reality of low pay, lack of job security, and lack of public recognition. Their struggle, therefore, aims to reduce the gap by improving their working conditions to a level that matches the state-promoted images, namely skilled workers who contribute to the nation’s economy as well as moral standing by providing quality care to elderly people. To do so, workers deliberately specify what they mean by the “high-quality” eldercare they provide as “care specialists” and what distinguishes their services from those of others.

While “servants” in a feudal society are a reference group from which house managers have distinguished themselves, yoyangbohosa workers find it offensive that people commonly equate yoyangbohosa and domestic workers. Underlying their strong aversion to this equivalence is that these workers see domestic service work as what yoyangbohosa do not do—poor women’s survival activities—while they see their work as real, skilled, more valuable, and thus state-endorsed work that deserves the provision of higher symbolic and material rewards. In what follows, I will unpack what yoyangbohosa workers mean by “real” work and how they further redefine their worker subjectivities as national care experts.

3.2.1 Dirty Work with Dignity: Choice Narratives

Over the course of my interviews, many yoyangbohosa workers emphasized that they chose their work. They were well aware of the popular view of eldercare workers, namely that they have no other choice but to barely earn money by “changing dirty diapers” (ttonggijeogwina ganeun). This expression was reiterated by many participants, including non-certified migrant workers, when they described other people’s views on eldercare. Mentioning the expression, workers made it clear that they dd not think that they were in dead end jobs, but rather work that they chose. For yoyangbohosa workers who saw themselves as underestimated experts, the expression was a target that they wanted to overthrow.

These workers consciously challenged the popular view that economically desperate women become yoyangbohosa by explicitly articulating the reasons why they chose their work. I interviewed 16 Korean-born yoyangbohosa workers, but I did not ask the participants “why” they started their careers as yoyangbohosa because the “why” question presupposes the availability of many options which might not be the case for older groups of women in Korea. Yet when I asked “how” they entered the eldercare sector instead, interestingly, many yoyangbohosa workers tried to make it clear that there were reasons why they “chose” this work out of other, albeit limited, options. Such reasons included the need for family care, religious calling, and expectations about working conditions at a quasi-government job.

Needs for Family Care

Six workers out of 16 started their careers as yoyangbohosa to take care of their own family members, such as their husband, parents, or in-laws. Most of these workers did not articulate why they became the primary caregiver, which suggests that they assumed their moral duty as female spouses or daughters. However, some workers mentioned specific reasons. One of the most common ones was that they found that becoming yoyangbohosa was a way to do their filial duty and meet their economic needs at the same time. For instance, Sin-Bi, a 58-year-old yoyangbohosa and the leader of the stretching club at the Seoul Center, started the certification process because her better understanding of the recipients would help in providing better care for their loved-ones:

This [yoyangbohosa] has no retirement age, and you know, at my age in service work, you move from the hall to the kitchen. At my age. So, I obtained it [a yoyangbohosa certificate]. I thought of taking care of my mom. We are 5 daughters, and I am the third. Since I lived near her, I knew her style, disposition, and personality very well. I even used to visit her one or two times a year to do major cleaning, and I slept over there. I wanted to take care of her better when I got the yoyangbohosa certificate. I wanted to make her comfortable. Because I know her better than other people. Back then, I thought, “well, 400,000 won [per month, 448 CAD] is not too bad for the commuting cost and more. Let’s

think of this as doing filial duty for her and maybe her friends later.”33

While Sin-Bi put much stress on the quality of care she could provide to her mother as a yoyangbohosa, the quote above also reveals the context in which she made such a decision.

Being a daughter is not the only reason why she became a yoyangbohosa for her mother, but her situation at work played a role in shaping her decision. As a divorced woman with only a high school diploma, Sin-Bi worked at pubs, but she was about to be pushed out of this sexualized job when she got older. Under these circumstances, the new LTCI emerged as an option with which she could meet her economic needs while fulfilling her moral duties. For many workers like Sin-

Bi, state funding for family caregivers46 with a yoyangbohosa certificate was perceived as an incentive for those in need of economic support to do their filial duty.

In their study of in-home care workers in California (with the IHSS program), Chun and Cranford found that gendered status obligations and a racialized and gendered labour market shape immigrant workers’ entry into homecare (Chun and Cranford 2018). Where the narrative of yoyangbohosa workers diverges from Chun and Cranford’s findings is that the yoyangbohosa workers I interviewed argued strongly against the idea that they were coerced into the job. While the labour market and policy context jointly affected their decision to become yoyangbohosa, they explicitly cited other reasons to which they could attach moral values.

Religious Calling and Sacramental Penance

Faith is another salient source from which yoyangbohosa workers derive meaning around their work. Asked how they started, five workers put their faith forward, constructing their work as motivated by faith rather than economic need. These workers used explicitly religious language when they explained their motivation to enter the eldercare sector. Emphasis on love, sacrifice, sharing with others, and compassion for the weak were reiterated themes among these yoyangbohosa workers, and some Catholic believers, such as Um-Gee in the quote below, understood their hardship at work as penance.47 These workers experienced care work in various faith-based volunteer activities and turned to paid care work later.

My husband suddenly passed away. We used to say, “Let’s do more volunteer work for the rest of our lives once our children grow up,” then he passed away too early. So, I decided

46 Yoyangbohosa who work for their parents (including in-laws) can be compensated for 20 hours per month regardless of their actual work hours. Compensable time was 40 hours when LTCI was introduced.

47 죄의 보속

to do the toughest work for his share, and it was this work [care work at a nursing home]. I got the thing [a yoyangbohosa certificate] when he was sick, and it seemed that this work was very tough. When I really started the work, however, I thought I just couldn’t continue. I cried countless times, seriously. I promised the Lord that I would give it a try for a year: 6 months for me and the rest for him. It took me two years to keep my promise. I was in and out for the first year, thinking “why am I doing this?” Nevertheless, I thought I should do this because I made a promise to the Lord. I got used to the work, and I found it fulfilling to work for people who are in a worse situation than me. Elders say, “thank you” and “thank you,” then I feel empathy and compassion, so now it’s been five years, and I

don’t think I can quit.34

Norah, a 53-year-old yoyangbohosa, was another worker who strongly emphasized that she does her work not for money but for a higher purpose. To make her point that what yoyangbohosa do is help elderly people live with dignity, she told me a great deal about her socioeconomic status. Born into a middle-class family, she was raised with an emphasis on sacrifice and sharing by her father, who was a famous pastor. She has two brothers who are both university professors, and her husband is also working at a university, making her family economically stable. Saying that she has no economic concerns thanks to her husband’s income, she said:

People think that this is dirty and menial work that only husband-less women [nampyeoneopsneu-nyeoja] would do, and many people [workers] do not have self-esteem

because of that [popular idea].35

In both workers’ narratives around caring for family and religious calling as key motivations for entry, these yoyangbohosa workers privilege moral value over economic needs. In doing so, these workers attach moral meaning, in addition to monetary value, to their work. This is not to say that they deny their economic needs. Rather, their narratives reveal what aspects of their work they choose to emphasize to make their work more valuable and respectable. However, such emphasis on moral value in their work also provides workers with a rationale to point out moral offenders. Those who say that they do the work of caring for the elderly just to earn money are constructed as Others, who lack the moral quality to become good yoyangbohosa.

3.2.2 We are not Ajumma or Aunty: “Call us Yoyangbohosa”

The occupational title “yoyangbohosa” matters greatly to the yoyangbohosa workers at the Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers. In Korea, one can easily find brochures about LTCI at any LTCI-affiliated institution such as a placement agency or daycare center. Directions for how to address yoyangbohosa workers at home or at LTCI facilities, alongside introductions of the LTCI programs, are an essential part of these brochures. At the Seoul Center website, the same message, “please call us yoyangbohosa,”48 pops up on the main page. Everyone in the center calls each other seonsengnim (teacher/ma’am), including workers, staff, and visitors like myself. In reality, however, workers encounter recipients and even their fellow workers who call them “aunty” or ajumma, a generic term that refers to middle-aged women in Korea. Given the culture of mutual respect at the Seoul Center, I found during my fieldwork, at a stretching class with yoyangbohosa workers, that the most common subject of conversation among them concerned those who do not call them by their official occupational titles. Those who address yoyangbohosa as “aunty” or “ajumma” were subjected to ridicule during the stretching class and worker interviews. For example, Min-Jung, a 57-year-old daycare yoyangbohosa, vented her frustration about a colleague who ridiculed her practice of calling other workers seonsengnim:

I think we need to call each other ma’am [seonsengnim]. How do we address each other otherwise? Madam Yoon? You know, those who work in the office [agency and day care management] call each other by their official rank titles. But we don’t have such things, right? Then we must address each other with the term [seonsengnim]. At least among us! Why do we degrade each other?…Then she [a colleague] said, “we work at a menial work [nogada] site, don’t we? We just clean up poop and pee, don’t we?” I have no idea why

she degrades herself like that. Why does she do that?36

While house managers were careful to use their occupational title at work, such as introducing themselves as house managers or leaving memos to their employers with the title, yoyangbohosa workers at the Seoul Center strongly argued that people at their work should address them with

48 “저기, 아줌마가 아닙니다. 요양보호사라 불러주세요.”

95 more dignified terms that recognize their professional capabilities, such as seonsengnim. Workers tended to be more lenient with their cognitively impaired elderly recipients, but as Min- Jung’s narrative above shows, they were particularity critical about other yoyangbohosa who did not use dignifying terms. This is also in drastic contrast to migrant workers preferring to be addressed with kinship terms, such as imo (aunt), by recipients. The majority of yoyangbohosa I interviewed rejected such kinship terms as well as fictive kinship-like relationships. Some workers said that they let their recipients call them “friend” or “deaconess” to create a certain degree of bonding, which helped them provide effective care, but none of them found kinship terms desirable at work. These workers said they never called their service recipients “sister,” “grandmother,” or “madam,” but instead they deliberately used “senior” (ureusin). Most workers wanted people to call them by their official occupational title yoyangbohosa, firmly asserting their subjectivity as national care experts.

Why do terms of address matter to them? In her study of sales associates in cosmetic stores, Lan (2003) explained that, to protect themselves from customer attacks, workers embraced and internalized their beauty-expert professional identity and downplayed sexualized images in their bodily labour. Similarly, by using their official occupational title, yoyangbohosa workers strategically reconstruct their image, as women engaged in unpaid household and family labour, into wage workers in a contractual relationship with recipients. Reminding recipients that their relationship is contractual also enables workers to say “no” to excessive requests. Furthermore, it justifies their emphasis on predefined job descriptions that bind both parties to a contract and legal regulations. According to the workers, this strategy helps protect them from any potential exploitation that comes from the fictive kinship-like relationships with recipients.

While embracing a professional identity certainly provides some degree of respectability for yoyangbohosa workers, the difference between the female sales associates and the yoyangbohosa I interviewed is that their sense of self as professionals is not imposed by management. How people address them greatly matters to yoyangbohosa, because it enshrines who they are and what they do. They are not just “helpers” but eldercare specialists who have ownership of service production. Because the usage of an official occupational title is a way of asserting their worker subjectivity on the job, these workers articulate a claim that the government needs to “educate” recipients and their family members who mistreat yoyangbohosa due to their “ignorance” about them and LTCI.

Yoyangbohosa are not Replacements for Women in the Family

Most Korean-born yoyangbohosa workers made it clear that they were not merely substituting for the recipient’s family, and they provide care services that only trained specialists can deliver. They also bridged the narrative to another related theme: they do what even family members cannot. When I said, “I don’t think I could do what you do, even for my mom” in casual conversations with yoyangbohosa workers at the Seoul Center, their typical response was “Of course you couldn’t do this for your parents.” According to the workers, family members tend to be in denial of the fact that their parents are ill or unable to restrain their emotions and provide necessary services to them. Most workers also responded that too much “emotional labour” (gamjeongnodong) is needed in eldercare, and family members who live with their frail parents cannot deal with such non-stop intense emotional labour. One of the workers who reiterated this narrative was Norah, whose recipients were 85 and 92, both with severe dementia. She explained why people need yoyangbohosa in taking care or frail recipients, especially those with dementia, she said:

When I do not visit, she [the recipient’s daughter-in-law] just lets her eat, sleep, watch TV, and play with bubble wrap, since she has dementia. You know, what else they can do? It’s like, I can’t teach my kids but need a teacher. It’s the same thing. Then when I visit, they tell me, “My mother doesn’t want to brush her teeth. She doesn’t want to sit up.” I don’t do things that way. That’s my skill. That’s the role of yoyangbohosa. I say, “Ureusin [respected elder], I came.” Then she [the recipient] says, “Who?” Then I say, “It’s me, your friend. Are you going to lie down there when your friend comes?” Then she rises, saying, “Of course not.” Then I get her to wash her teeth and face. That’s why her daughter-in-law is surprised. She is amazed that her mother-in-law, who she assumed was incapable of doing anything, can do this and that. So, I do things in such an instructive way

because it is dementia.37

The term “friend” in Norah’s story is not a token of an intimate relationship with the recipient. It is an instructive tool she used to lead the 92-year-old recipient, who forgot her age due to severe dementia. What is notable in Norah’s story is how she contrasts the care from the family to the care provided by yoyangbohosa. While the care provided by the recipient’s family merely keeps

97 her alive, Norah describes herself as a professional who can diagnose the recipient’s state and therefore come up with proper methods of care, thus making successful outcomes.

3.2.3 The State-endorsed Care Expert

“Ganbyeong-in, they are, well, they simply do manual things. They do physical stuff. But yoyangbohosa are educated, so they use their discretion. Yoyangbohosa don’t just do what patients want. We correct them when we think something is not helpful, because it’s not good for them. Even if it [correction] brings conflict, I think we need to do it. [I: What do you mean by physical?] Well, simple things like emptying urine containers. Getting them

dressed up, assisting them in the washroom, those things.38

So-Dam, 60-year-old yoyangbohosa

Yoyangbohosa workers portrayed informal care workers (ganbyeongin) as a reference group to articulate the yoyangbohosa as superior. Asked about the differences between ganbyeongin and yoyangbohosa, one sentence reoccurred in many yoyangbohosa workers’ immediate responses:

“We have the state-issued certificate.”49 Some of them even felt that my asking such a question made them uncomfortable, as I was daring to compare ganbyeongin, whom are mostly migrant workers, to yoyangbohosa. Interestingly, I also heard a very similar sentence from the majority of yoyanghohosa—"This is a state-issued certificate” (gukka-jakyeok-jeung)—when I asked respondents how they become yoyangbohosa. This prompts the question: What does the certificate mean to them? What is so special about it?

The yoyangbohosa certificate is not just a document for these workers. It is a source of pride, and it gives them a sense of entitlement. It means that their expertise as care specialists has been endorsed by the state. Such an emphasis on skills and knowledge, instead of love and emotional attachment, enables these workers to demonstrate the “respectability” of their job (Macdonald 1999), as Norah explains in the quote below. She asserts that “studying and doing research” are

49 우리는 국가 자격증인데/ 우리는 국가 자격증 받은 사람들인데

98 necessary for yoyangbohosa, not only because she needs the knowledge for practical reasons, but also because they let her draw boundaries between “the woman next door” and her, a trained expert:

They [the government] need to further professionalize yoyangbohosa. Once we visit [the recipient], we need to take on a professional attitude and use professional terms so that the recipients’ family members see the difference between just chatting with the woman next door and talking with a yoyangbohosa. We need to make them want to consult with us [regarding the recipient’s conditions]. That’s why yoyangbohosa need to keep studying and

doing research.39

The skills and knowledge that workers emphasized included interpersonal skills, linguistic fluency, healthy food, hygiene, the psychological characteristics of elders, dementia, and helpful pedagogical techniques for recipients. Unlike migrant workers, the majority of whom responded that training is not necessary to carry out their tasks, yoyangbohosa workers emphasized that they had invested time and money, that they thought was well-spent, to acquire expertise. In supporting their claims about the importance of skills and knowledge at work, many yoyangbohosa gave examples of how their services “improved” their recipient’s condition. For instance, Norah elaborated on how she helped her recipient by deploying the knowledge of dementia she learned from the Seoul Center. She explained:

At the place I work in the afternoon, they [the recipient’s family] asked me to just play a card game [Go-Stop] with her, then I realized that she sits upright properly. So, I taught her stretching, and now she is better than me. And I also taught her writing…I asked her to express her gratitude to people. Although she forgets in five minutes, she can do it at that moment. [I: you mean she forgets what she just said five minutes ago?] Yes, she forgets. But she recognizes it at the moment she says it, so when she says something, I ask her to write down what she just said. Then she writes it down. So that she can keep the memory. It comes in and out of her head, even though she forgets. It is just like how a three-year-old child calls for her daddy and then forgets that she called for him. It is adorable. Really.

Innocent and pure, the way she thinks.40

Like Norah, workers described cases where they made some positive changes for the recipient and impressed the recipient’s family. A pattern in these cases is that once they demonstrate

“respectability” to the recipient or his/her family, they can then hold the reins at work. For instance, instead of passively cooking what the recipient wants, workers can advise the recipient about what to eat or insist that the recipient’s family members buy specific types of food. Knowledge and skills, then, give workers some level of authority and autonomy.

Field Knowledge

When it comes to knowledge, yoyangbohosa workers not only stressed what they obtained through the certification process and classes at the Seoul Center. Another type of knowledge the workers emphasized is what I call field knowledge, a type of knowledge that is learned by working on-site. This type of knowledge is something that outsiders, such as management, cannot easily understand, thus it is often devalued. Yet it was evident among workers who shared their lived work experience, and workers often vented their frustration over institutional restrictions that prevent them from exercising their field knowledge. A good example is the nursing home workers in Pat Armstrong’s study. They knew best when and how frequently they needed to perform tasks like changing diapers, but they were hindered by the rules from using their knowledge (Armstrong et al. 2006).

Opposing attempts at deskilling by management, these workers also expressed strong confidence in the expertise they had gained throughout their years of hands-on experience in the field. Especially in institutional settings like day-care centers and nursing homes, rules defining when and how to take care of recipients are tight. Moreover, workers in such institutions are supervised by nurses, social workers, and other officials. While these layers of supervision and management are designed to ensure standardized services, workers claimed that they knew what, when, and how to do their tasks. Those with long work experience or a background in nursing had strong doubts about the rules and their bosses’ ability at work over them. These workers asserted that in a real situation, such as a severely choking elder, only an experienced yoyangbohosa can successfully resolve the problem. Consider, for example, You-Ju’s story at a nursing home below:

One day it was snack time, and someone rushed to me saying, “You-Ju, come quickly! We have a situation!” So, when I came, I saw an elder with a blue face. [I: Was she chocking?] Right, right. It [her face] was so blue, and she pooped, drooling. I had heard about it but didn’t realize that this is how people die. So, we had a fat nurse who was in charge of

100

rehab, and she and a yoyangbohosa just blamed each other for feeding [the elder] a banana. So, the nurse held the elder upside-down, trying to do the thing. [I: The Heimlich maneuver?] Yes! The Heimlich thing to have the elder vomit, but it didn’t work. So I said, “Step aside.” And I asked her to hold the elder. The moment when I put my finger in her throat, images of a policeman running around hit my brain, but anyway, I soon detected some rice cake compounded with her saliva, clogging her throat. And, my god, she finally

had a big exhale when I took it out. So, the elder survived.41

You-Ju was a nurse’s aide in the 1980s before she got married to her husband, who had a decent job in a big motor company. She was skilled to the extent that she could substitute for nurses, but she quit to focus on her family after her marriage. However, her life as a middle-class stay-at- home mother ended when her husband was fired in the wave of massive layoffs during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. She returned to the labour market to support her children, who were still in elementary school, but she could not get a job in a hospital due to her age. She was in her early 40s. When she heard that there were “social jobs” available, she found it was a good opportunity to do something that could exercise her skills. What she faced at work, however, were all sorts of rules and interventions that tried to control her, which she found useless. Nurses in the nursing home never allowed her to use her discretion, assuming that she was just a low-skilled yoyangbohosa who was supposed to follow their instructions. The way she describes the incident above, however, shows how she reacts to such a trial of deskilling. For her, the “fat nurse’s aid” did not help when there was a real situation where an elder’s life was at stake. It was she who used her good discretion and exercised real skill to save the elder, risking being fired and possibly arrested in case of failure.

At the Seoul Center, workers share their field knowledge with each other through collective discussions, reaffirming their expertise which is so often devalued. For instance, one day after the stretching class at the center, one yoyangbohosa talked about her recipient and initiated a discussion around older adults’ sexuality and how they deal with it at work. When multiple workers said they had intervened in their recipient’s masturbation, an administrator at the center interrupted, saying, “No, you shouldn’t say anything [to them]. You should respect elders’ human rights and privacy. If you see it, then just close the door.” However, no one out of around twenty workers agreed with her. They did not oppose her directly, yet when I asked them about the issue later during individual interviews, many of them, including Norah complained:

101

She just talks about theory without knowing the reality at work. If you just say “yes” and “yes” all the time, then they would look down upon you, saying “That’s why you are

changing soiled diapers.” I mean, who is the weak one here?42

Denials of authority and bureaucracy, as exemplified in Norah’s remark, “she just talks about theory without knowing the reality at work,” frequently emerged during the interviews and participant observations, especially regarding sensitive issues such as elders’ sexuality. Other workers also explained the vital necessity of holding the reins at work, pointing to cases where romantic relationships developed between elders but ended with domestic conflict or violence as well as legal disputes about the elders’ property between the children of both sides.

Workers’ resistance to bureaucratic control and interventions from nurse’s aides often goes beyond refusal. When workers bond with recipients, and when they are confident in their knowledge and skills, they secretly provide elders with services they think are necessary for them. For instance, Sin-Bi knew that cutting elders’ toenails was prohibited in the care center, but she often did this because she knew that no one, even their own families, would pay attention to their toenails, and she knew how to deal with infected toenails properly. She said:

The care center doesn’t allow us to cut their toenails. Fingernails are okay, but not toenails. Too many germs in there, and they say it can contaminate others. I want to cut them, but the nurse’s aides intervene. They intervene, saying that I shouldn’t do it. They said that most elders have toenail fungus, and it is contagious. [I: Toenail fungal infection?] Yes, lots of them. The colours of toenails are all changed and cutting them is not so simple. You need a knife and scissors to take care of them. The elders’ family members don’t pay attention to their toenails. But I secretly took care of the elder’s toenails when there was no

one in the office.43

Emotional Management: “You can’t do this for your own parents.”

The capacity to carry out a specific form of emotional management is an integral part of the professional skills that yoyangbohosa need to become good care workers. Eldercare is relational service work, that is, “service work that includes an ongoing relationship between worker and recipient” (Cranford and Miller 2013:786). While personal interaction with clients tend to be minimized in domestic service because the service is provided in the absence of the clients in

102 many cases, intimate contact and personal interactions on a regular basis over a longer timespan are unavoidable in eldercare. Relationships with clients, therefore, have more depth in eldercare, and the ability to manage these relationships has more significance to yoyangbohosa in presenting their expertise at work.

What kinds of emotional management do yoyangbohosa perform, and more importantly, what makes their emotional management professional, distinguishing it from “unprofessional” kinds? Yoyangbohosa emphasize their expertise in managing their emotions in contrast with the emotional management done by the untrained, including recipients’ families. When I said, “I don’t think I could do what you do, even for my mom” in casual conversations with yoyangbohosa workers, they frequently responded, “Of course you couldn’t do this for your own parents.” Two reasons emerged when they explained why the recipients’ family members could not perform emotional labour properly. First, according to the workers, the deep bond between the recipients and their families blinds the family members from their frail parents’ mental issues. When it comes to dementia, many workers mentioned that their recipients’ children are commonly in denial of the fact of their parents’ cognitive malfunction. Dementia causes a variety of unpredictable symptoms, yet the idea that “my mom cannot be that kind of person” prevents them from seeing the developing signs with objective eyes, resulting in the delay of proper treatment.

Second, workers said that family members who live with their frail parents cannot deal with providing non-stop, intense emotional management. Workers mentioned the material conditions of providing emotional labour (gamjeong nodong) in eldercare. That is, yoyangbohosa can fully focus and exercise their expertise in providing eldercare because they work within a limited timeframe. Unpaid eldercare from family members, however, can never achieve the same quality because it makes the caregivers exhausted.

A unique characteristic of yoyangbohosa workers’ descriptions of how they perform emotional labour is that they highlight their capacity and skills. While Hochschild (2012) asserts that emotional labour operates as a mechanism of labour exploitation by commodifying human emotions as a source of profit, the yoyangbohosa workers I interviewed interpreted the emotional management they engage it at work as clear evidence that demonstrates their professional quality. The workers did not interpret their emotional management at work, like enduring

103 recipients’ harsh language or aggressive behavior, as a sign of the unequal power relationship between them and the recipients. Instead, because their recipients are mentally and physically frail, workers saw the need for a particular type of emotional management in their work. Emotional management in this case is not forced on them by their employers through explicit organizational rules, neither is it coerced by cultural signals from elders. Instead, workers concluded that their emotional management showed their ability to keep calm, analyze recipients’ conditions, and carefully choose necessary services for them.

To maintain appropriate distance from recipients is essential to perform effective emotional labour. The proper distance, not too close and not too far, allows workers to build some level of intimacy with recipients and yet enables them to maintain objective eyes at the same time. So- Eun, for example, was one of the workers who said she never expressed her frustration to her recipients no matter how rude and violent they were due to dementia, but she said things that were necessary, in a very restrained way, to improve the recipients’ conditions. She said:

Even if the elders say something unpleasant, I just say “Ureusin [respected elder], I can be nice to you when you are nice to me.” Simply doing what they want is not good, I think. When the elder can understand things, I speak like that. Even if they have dementia, I say “no” when I mean “no.” If you let them to do whatever they want, they think it is okay to

do.44

In sum, the emotional management yoyangbohosa workers engage in at work is not motivated by commercial or instrumental purposes. This is particularly true for the workers in this study because they are organized workers who have a higher vocational commitment as well as pride. Their view of their recipients, namely frail elders who are in need, allows these workers to see their emotional labour at work as an instrument to improve their recipients’ conditions. Yoyangbohosa workers are not coerced by management to perform a certain type of emotional management but they perform to meet the client’s individual needs. The emotional management these workers perform points to the interdependency and intimacy involved in care work and illuminates how workers are motivated to respectfully meet their clients’ various needs to build a good working relationship (Cranford and Miller 2013). This type of understanding of emotional labour plays a role in workers’ subject formation in a distinctive way.

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3.3 “We Have a State-issued Certificate.” and “They are Chinese.”

In the above, I have documented how yoyangbohosa actively construct and narrate their sense of self, or what I call the national care expert subject. In narrating their subjectivity, the workers put more of a premium on their expertise being endorsed by the state. This certification is at the center of their evaluation of worth, including their self-worth. What is equally important is that it functions as what Lamont (2009) calls a “measuring stick” in workers’ lifeworld: a criterion that workers draw on in their own understanding of social hierarchy. Many yoyangbohosa workers worked as informal eldercare workers (ganbyeongin) before the introduction of LTCI, and their organization, the Seoul Supporting Center for Eldercare Workers, was indeed established out of ganbyeongin workers’ struggles. Nevertheless, most yoyangbohosa workers I interviewed located ganbyeongin workers under yoyangbohosa in their perceived occupational hierarchy, constructing those uncertified informal workers as untrained, morally problematic, and unprofessional.

Similar to the NHMC house managers, many yoyangbohosa draw boundaries against those “untrained workers” who go to their clients’ homes without proper outfits or courteous manners, claiming that they contribute to the public perception of care work as “dirty jobs” and “jobs for poor and uneducated women.” Yoyangbohosa workers also highlight their ability to maintain a “cold yet professional and objective” distance from elderly recipients and smile and speak positively to their clients regardless of their genuine feelings, as essential to delivering quality care. Thus, for yoyangbohosa, paying attention to one’s attire and manners is not about the presence of external control over the female body. Rather, it is an expression of their professional identity.

The Seoul Center became crowded in the evening with many yoyangbohosa who visited for various reasons. Some came for labour counselling, and others came to attend group activities or just relax with other workers. Each group activity team had 20-30 members who saw each other every week at the center, so I became acquainted with the regular visitors over the course of my fieldwork. However, one thing I found was a lack of diversity among those who come to the center. While it did not officially exclude migrants and informal workers, everyone who came to

105 the center was a non-migrant yoyangbohosa. Asked if they would be willing to do activities at the center with migrant workers, their responses were negative for several reasons.

First, because they were workers under LTCI, a program that operates with tax-payers money, and because their work is integral to the nation’s future, workers drew nationalistic narratives, constructing migrant workers as Others. Most workers did not directly say that they did not want to see migrant workers at the center, yet they argued that government needed to encourage South Korean nationals with yoyangbohosa certificates to work in the field first rather than bringing in more “Chinese” to fill care jobs. Mentioning that a large number of South Korean citizens obtained yoyangbohosa certificates but do not work in the field, these workers made a nationalistic claim that privileges South Korean citizen’s employment over that of migrants. They were all very well aware that the poor working conditions in the eldercare sector are the reason why those South Korean nationals who have certificate quit. They also felt that senior hospitals and nursing homes in Korea rely heavily on Joseonjok workers who accept the worst working conditions. However, instead of seeing migrant workers as potential allies who suffer exploitation as cheap labour, yoyangbohosa saw them as foreigners who take “our” jobs.

Second, as much as they derive their pride and confidence as experts from the yoyangbohosa certificate, they do not see those who are not certified as potential colleagues who have equivalent skills and who deserve better treatment. The yoyangbohosa workers I interviewed, without exception, portrayed what “Joseonjok ganbyoengin” do in nursing homes or hospitals as simple manual work, in contrast to what yoyangbohosa do. For instance, Sin-Bi once hired a Joseonjok ganbyoengin for her mother, and her mother was satisfied with the worker. Sin-Bi heard a lot of compliments about the worker from her mother, but she never recognized the Joseonjok worker’s skills. During her interview, Sin-Bi related a situation where she skillfully helped her recipient with a severe case of constipation and how disgusting her work could be to those who are not trained. While she cited not frowning at her recipient as a great example of maintaining a professional attitude, she did not praise the Joseonjok ganbyoengin who did the same for her mother. Instead, she said the worker always smiled at her mother because she is a Joseonjok ganbyoengin who would do anything for money.

Some workers expressed strong antagonism toward Joseonjok workers, describing them as “dirty, ignorant and only seeking money.” However, most respondents provided a rationale to

106 explain the lack of skills and knowledge among Joseonjok and their exclusionary sentiments. Da- Yeon, a 62-year-old yoyangbohosa who emphasized the importance of “systematic and scientific education” in differentiating yoyangbohosa from pachulbu (a derogative term that refers to part- time domestic workers), expressed deep concerns about Joseonjok ganbyeongin. Exclaiming that an ill-trained ganbyeongin could possibly kill a recipient by making silly mistakes, she said:

There are many Chinese. Too many. And Chinese never [make good workers]…They just fill out the time. They only think about money, and the way they think about the recipients is different from us. [I: How different are they?] They are good at smiling; always smiling with bright faces. But they would not work for even one extra minute for the recipient

because it is all about money. They just came to make money.45

In Da-Yeon’s narratives, various others are all merged within the image of Joseonjok ganbyeongin: they are untrained and thus work like “pachulbu,” and they lack morality in their work and are thus “horrible.” By emphasizing that Joseonjok are “Chinese,” not co-ethnic migrants or even Korean Chinese, Da-Yeon further reinforced the distinction between us, non- migrant yoyangbohosa, and others, informal migrant workers.

Older groups of Joseonjok women in the informal care sector are heavily shaped within the context of reparation politics and care politics, which jointly channel Joseonjok women into the low-paid and informal care sector in a labour market stratified along citizenship, gender and ethnic lines. However, the construction of Joseonjok ganbyeongin infused with stereotypical images of Chinese, that is, that they are filthy and would do anything for money, obscures the structural inequality that shapes Joseonjok workers’ concentration in the informal care market. Yoyangbohosa workers emphasize their “choice” or “reasons” to dismantle the popular idea that they were simply pushed into dead-end jobs, yet they refuse to give such meanings to migrant workers by reducing their motivations simply to money.

It is this boundary drawing that normalizes the lack of diversity at the Seoul Center and the segmentation in the labour market. In many yoyangbohosa workers’ depiction of Joseonjok ganbyeongin, migrant workers are simply meant to belong to workplaces with extremely poor working conditions. When I asked if there was a Joseonjok worker in the daycare center where she works, for example, Sin-Bi said:

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Why would they hire Joseonjok when we have lots of Korean candidates?…They know they are not going to make it, so they don’t even try. [I: Aren’t there more and more of them recently though?] There are, but as I said, they just go nursing homes or hospitals. Their goal is money. They came here for money, so this [monthly income from daycare work] is not enough. At nursing homes, you work for 24 hours per day and have one day off per week, then you can earn around two thousand something dollars, so they want that kind of job…Since you have more hours there, also, you don’t need to worry about

accommodation and food there. You know, Joseonjok people don’t dine out.46

Sin-Bi might be correct: the municipal care center might prioritize non-migrant workers in the hiring process. Yet by normalizing such ethnocentric hiring practices, workers like Sin-Bi contribute to the maintenance of labour market segregation.

3.4 Conclusion

Care work scholars have shown that care workers’ resistance at the collective level is difficult for a number of reasons: workers remain despite current conditions because they find value and rewards from their emotional connections to their recipients (Stacey 2011a); they see altruistic value and find a sense of social justice in their work even though they are poorly paid (Baines 2016); and most importantly, they lack “alternative words and vocabularies” to challenge the poor working conditions shaped by policy (Aronson and Neysmith 1996). A unique characteristic of the organized workers in this study is that they are equipped with language that they can use to make right claims. Given their lack of legal recognition, house managers developed this language by translating feminist views of reproductive labour. Viewing their work as professional, yoyangbohosa workers emphasize the importance of defining their work as paid contractual work with elderly care recipients.

The role of state policy is much more palpable in yoyangbohosa workers’ subject formation process. Although the state does not directly hire them, the fact that they are recognized by the state as “care professionals” through a licensing process bolsters their views of themselves and others. The sentence reiterated throughout almost every interview with yoyangbohosa workers—

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“we are state-certified workers”—functions as an endorsement of their self-assurance that they are qualified caregivers.

Workers find, however, that the state policy rhetoric in LTCI is charged with empty words. The state touts these workers as essential and playing a vital role in fulfilling public filial piety. However, they barely make minimum wage, suffer employment insecurity, have limited access to benefits and protections, and are exposed to intimate injustice such as sexual harassment and denigrating treatment. By engaging in group activities at the Seoul Center, workers realize the discrepancy between policy discourses and their actual work conditions, starting to assert their subjectivity as national experts within the policy and labour process.

Organizations play a different role in amplifying workers’ consciousness. Because domestic service workers have barely any policy discourses or material support that they can draw upon in their project, the KWWA played a great role in positioning workers’ subjectivity, nurturing and organizing them with the KWWA’s own organizational vision. On the contrary, yoyangbohosa were born as a legitimate category recognized by the state. This means that these workers, as individuals, already have a higher sense of self-worth than domestic workers. However, the workers’ slogan, “we are state-certified workers” would be an empty one unless they have can explain what they mean by “certified workers.” Without a sense of being collective political subject, their resistance at work would remain individual dissent. Therefore, the major role of their organization, the Seoul Center, is largely to empower workers to solidify their political subjectivities and to mobilize these individual subjects as a collective.

These newly born political subjects enable workers to understand their value in society. They also function as political leverage where workers exercise their right claims as collectives. Instead of staying in low-paid jobs as “caring selves,” these workers actively seek rights and state protections. However, when workers emphasize professional quality in their subjectivity, and when they attach moral meaning to their work, they separate out moral offenders. In my interviews with yoyangbohosa, joseonjok workers filling the informal eldercare sector were blamed for disgracing the meaning of eldercare by bringing in bad practices. Joseonjok as Others apart from the Korean nation were charged with being untrainable, inferior, and immoral. While these workers had barely any personal knowledge about joseonjok workers, they drew upon common Chinese stereotypes, portraying them as amateurs, lacking the skills to improve

109 recipients’ conditions, and immoral, not caring about elderly people’s lives. This view obscures the fundamental pitfalls in the LTCI program, namely that it is not sustainable without cheap informal labour.

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Chapter 4 Joseonjok Imo: Care Worker subjectivity based on fictive kinship

In the previous two chapters, I situated the emerging worker subjectivities of house managers and yoyangbohosa within a context where a gendered state policy regime and labour market jointly channel older groups of poor and working-class women into low-paid and unprotected care sectors. In this chapter, I introduce another form of neoliberal incorporation of women’s labour into the labour market, through a gendered and ethnicized care-migration regime that constructs co-ethnic migrant workers as “colonial returnees” rather than workers. Specifically, I show how importing cheap women’s labour to the care sector in the name of preferable treatment for co-ethnics translates into an unequal relationship between Korea and its diaspora, justified as the return of co-ethnics to their homeland to pursue their dreams. By analyzing interviews with Joseonjok workers affiliated with the Joseonjok Coalition, who engage in the construction of Joseonjok collective worker subjects as fictive-kin caregivers, I examine how Joseonjok care workers embrace the hierarchical structure of a care-migration regime that locates Joseonjok workers between full citizens and other (racialized) migrant workers.

Chapter 2 and 3 explored how workers present themselves as house managers and national care experts. The rigid boundary between the two sectors is relevant in the case of non-migrant workers, not only because the two sectors are separate institutionally, but also because workers themselves draw a rigid occupational boundary. In contrast, such a rigid boundary that clearly divides the domestic service and eldercare sectors is much less relevant in the case of Joseonjok workers. Working in the informal care sector, Joseonjok workers are much more open to traversing occupational boundaries. In many cases, I found it challenging to identify what their occupations were. For instance, what do we call a worker if she lives and works in a private home, taking care of elders as well as doing all the house chores? As I will illustrate below, a broadly defined job scope, a blurry job description, and holistic service is what makes Korean- Chinese workers’ cases distinct, and they promote these features as their selling points. Based on my empirical findings, in this chapter I merge the two occupational categories into a broader category of care worker that encompasses a range of variations. This empirically informed categorization allows us to see domestic service and eldercare work as being under constant construction, instead of presupposing domestic service and eldercare work as universal and fixed categories.

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4.1 Entry to Care Market through Migration and Magnified Precarity

Back in China, my husband passed away when my kids were small, so it was hard to make a living. Then I heard that one can make lots of money in Daehan Minguk [the Republic of Korea ], so I thought, who would care if I go to the Republic of Korea and clean washrooms to earn money, even though I was rich and owned a restaurant with many

employees in China? [So I decided] “I am coming!”47

Na-Hui, a 58-year-old woman I met at the office of the Joseonjok Coalition, introduced herself as a “domestic” (gajeongboo). Widowed in her 30s, she worked hard to support her two sons in China. In her 40s, her diligent work bore fruit when she became the owner of a motel and an attached restaurant. However, she felt that running a night business by herself had become increasingly demanding, and about this time she heard stories about people who had realized their “Korean dream.” Her children were still boys50 and would need financial support from her until they got married, so she decided to migrate to Korea. As she says in the quote above, the types of work she could do in Korea were not her concern: as long as it paid well, she was ready to accept any job, even if it was cleaning washrooms. Na-Hui came to Korea in 2000 through an arranged marriage with a Korean man she had never met. The brokerage fee was around 70,000 yuan (approximately 13,450 CAD), and it took her a year to pay back the fee by working in factories, night club kitchens, restaurants, motels, and private homes. When I interviewed Na- Hui in June 2016, her voice was shaking with rage. Sixteen hours of work per day with a salary of 1,700,000 won (approximately 1,977 CAD) was hard to bear, but the part of her work that she could not tolerate was the lack of respect from her employers: they never invited her to eat together. At every meal, she had to eat alone, and that made her feel that she was not treated as an equal. In August 2016 when I met Na-Hui again, she was working in a restaurant kitchen, but she said the job was too physically demanding. When I met her for the last time in September, she told me that she was thinking of getting a job in a nursing hospital or a nursing home like

50 Joseonjok interview participants emphasized that it is their parental duty to gift houses or cars when their sons get married.

112 many of her friends had. After all these years, she still could not fully comprehend why her employers, “who shared the same blood,” treated her without respect.

Na-Hui’s story epitomizes many older groups of Korean Chinese women workers’ experiences in their Korea-bound migration and work trajectories, which presents a striking contrast to their non-migrant counterparts. Like Na-Hui, most Korean Chinese workers in this study reported that they had a relatively stable material base in China, while that is not the case for the vast majority of their non-migrant counterparts. While most house managers and yoyangbohosa experienced a career interruption upon marriage and rejoined the labour market many years later, Korean Chinese women had relatively stable work experiences in China. Their work there included a range of different occupations, from farmer to high school teacher, but a commonality in their work experiences in China is that they consistently worked regardless of their marital status. Having employment stability for decades allowed these women to have established some level of material base, including the old-age pension in China. Their economic activity in Korea, therefore, is not a matter of survival per se.

Joseonjok workers’ desire to work in Korea was institutionally shaped by policy regimes. Joseonjok who joined the Korean independence movement during the Japanese colonial era, as well as their direct descendants, were allowed to “return” to Korea through “permanent returnee status”51 until 1997 (Lee 2010). For most joseonjok participants in this study including Na-Hui, who migrated in the early 2000s, narratives around the idea of “returning to the homeland” were something they embraced throughout their migration journey and everyday life experiences in Korea. Like Na-Hui, most participants explained how they were drawn to the idea of migrating from encounters with their neighbors, friends and relatives who said they had realized their dreams in Korea. What is important here is the fact that their ancestors were from Korea does not automatically mean that they have always longed to go back themselves. During interviews, these second and third generation Joseonjok people described what they envisioned about their “ancestral land” or “homeland” before their Korea-bound migration, but they rarely planned to “return” to the imagined homeland that included North Korea at times. When Na-Hui came to Korea, she used the most viable option at that time, namely marriage, but other participants

51 These permanent returnees (영구귀국자) were not required to apply for Korean citizenship.

113 migrated through visas granted to co-ethnics, such as H-2 and F-4. Joseonjok people had struggled to achieve eligibility for the F-4 visa, which allowed greater labour market mobility and a longer length of stay in Korea, and the Korean state made it gradually and conditionally available to them. The immigration policy change in 2013, namely granting F-4 visas to co- ethnic migrants aged 60 and above, provided an institutional ground for older groups of Joseonjok women to stay in Korea virtually permanently.

4.1.1 Magnified Precarity

The low-paid care sector is poorly regulated or entirely neglected. All groups of workers in this study experienced some common problems, such as physical and mental exhaustion, disrespectful attitudes that they were like servants, and sexual harassment. Korean Chinese workers experienced these with even greater severity. This magnified severity is closely tied to policy regimes that grant them mobility based on their membership in the Korean nation but in fact only allow them to move within jobs at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy in the care market.

Bounded Labour: Trapped on a Sticky Floor52

The severity of working conditions is partly, though not entirely, due to live-in settings. Although Korean Chinese workers are moving toward live-out settings, as their migration history stretches over more than two decades now, live-in work still prevails among Korean Chinese workers, because they are the only group of migrant workers whose legal status and cultural capital allow them to take live-in jobs.53 Such jobs are not exclusively domestic service work.

52 The term sticky floor was coined by sociologist Catherine White Berheide (1992) in her study of women trapped in low-paying and low-mobility jobs in government. While middle class women face glass ceiling, poor and working class women cannot even reach the point where they face the glass ceiling. I use the term to encapsulate Korean Chinese workers’ situation where they trapped in alleged women’s job with opportunities to advance their career.

53 Out of 13 Korean Chinese workers who identified themselves as domestics (gajeongbu), four commuted. For those who lived in their employers’ homes, five days of work per week was the most common. Workers said that they used to work six days in the past, but their working conditions, including work hours and wages, improved.

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Those who live and work in hospitals providing “24-hour care” (24 sigan ganbyeong) are on call for 24 hours, seven days a week. Working in confined spaces with a minimal level of autonomy, many of those who work in hospitals do not have any scheduled days off. Live-in domestic workers have some breaks in the early afternoon when their employers are at work, but hospital workers do not have such a luxury because their recipients have limited mobility and require care at all times, even at night. They can freely quit and find a new job, but the new job for this particular group is either working in a different hospital or a private home. I use the term “bounded labour” to illustrate how the seeming autonomy and mobility granted to Korean Chinese workers structurally confines them in low-paid and unprotected care jobs within the labour market. I will elaborate on why I call Korean Chinese workers’ care work bounded labour with the following example:

Ha-Na, a 58-year-old ganbyeongin worker, did not have a day off for a year after she started working for six elders with severe dementia and limited mobility, who wander around at night. Because it is hard to predict when and who will need a diaper change, urine container change, or assistance in the washroom, and because the frail elders always need attention even at night, those who work with them are on call for 24 hours. All the Korean Chinese workers I met in hospitals were in a similar situation. They were responsible for taking care of multiple recipients with severe mental and physical impairments 24/7. These workers, who usually take care of six elders at the same time, get paid 80,000 won (approximately 93 CAD) per day, which means that they provide the 24-hour care for about four Canadian dollars per hour.

Live-in settings magnify the common problems care workers experience in many ways. First, these workers are on call for 24 hours and under employer or bureaucratic monitoring. Live-in workers are particularly preferred when employers have small children, especially twins, or elders who require care at all times. But even when recipients do not need their attention, these workers cannot be free from surveillance as long as they are in their employers’ homes. Setting up surveillance cameras that allow employers to check what is happening in the house through their smartphones is very common among those who hire live-in workers in many societies (Romero 2002). This practice is so common that workers are aware of some brand names.

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Installing cameras in the home does not mean that the employers are always watching, but the existence of the cameras and the fear of being watched create a self-surveillance mechanism in workers. Na-Hui was one such worker, and she expressed her frustration by puzzling her employer. She said:

So, I took a picture and sent it to my friends, and I learned that it is an S (CCTV brand name) camera and they see you when it works. So, when I need to change [my outfit], the washroom is the only place that is free from it [camera]…It is hot these days since it is summer. Sometimes I want to change my underwear, but I can’t do it freely, so I bring my stuff to the washroom. Always. Then the kid in the house says, “Grandma, why did you bring this?” [Then I say] “Well, because there is this thing [camera].” [The kid says] “It’s not working now.” [I tell him] “It is working. How does you dad know that I played a game with my phone? He knows because he checked the camera”…So now I think, well, watch if you want. It will be awkward. So, I deliberately take off my top and am there

wearing just my bra. See if you want!48

Many house managers also reported that they know that their employers set up cameras at home due to their suspicion. Yet these workers said they either “don’t mind” or “pretend that they don’t know about the camera” when they notice them. And the rationale that makes them relatively nonchalant about the cameras is that they have nothing to hide while they are working for four hours, and the existence of the cameras provides proof that they are not thieves. For instance, mentioning a case in which an employers’ property went missing after the employer hired Korean Chinese workers, Ji-Eun, a 59-year-old NHMC house manager, explained:

Things had never gone missing before, but ever since the Chinese came, it happened. Her [the employer’s] son-in-law had a laptop, and he saw the person [the Korean Chinese worker] taking it, but the person said she did not steal it. [I: Did he see her stealing it?] He saw it, but the person denied it. Well, you can’t prove it unless you take a picture of it with

a camera.49

In explaining why cameras might be necessary for employers, another house manager, Chae- Young, also said:

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My employer had a junggug-in ajumma [Chinese woman] before me. Later, like in a year, when all the family members gathered to have her [the employer’s] birthday meal, she found that, [laughs], you know, silver spoons, five silver spoons out of ten were missing…About the things [surveillance cameras], I think they are supposed to install them. I am definitely not a person who touches others’ stuff, so it is okay with me. It

doesn’t matter to me.50

Notice the difference in how Na-Hui and the two house managers responded to surveillance cameras at work. For Chae-Young, who provided four hours of service, the cameras were not an issue at all. She even said that the employers are “supposed to install them,” as the cameras ensure that she is a trustworthy worker, unlike the Korean Chinese workers who are suspected of stealing the silver spoons. On the contrary, living under constant surveillance was a great insult for Na-Hui. Not only did it make her feel that she was not trusted, but it also invaded her privacy.

Second, the job scope is loosely defined in live-in settings. Combined with the lack of occupational boundaries between domestic service, eldercare and childcare, Korean Chinese workers who work in their employers’ homes are required to perform an unlimited range of jobs. For instance, Mi-Ju, a 67-year-old worker who was taking care of an infant at the point of the interview, proudly said that she never disappointed her employers when she was required to do all the house chores on top of taking care of an immobile elder. She said:

He was old and had diabetes, so he needed help from his wife and me when he wanted to stand up. When he showered, I had the know-how, so I got the wheelchair ready in front of the washroom, had him grab the handrail and to sit down on the toilet, and then I washed him with the body washer. [I: Was he in a condition that needed your assistance in the bath?] Yes, I did it all. I did not complain at all, so they [the elders’ children] said, “My goodness, our ajumma, such a nice ajumma!” His son said thank you to the agency for sending him such a good ajumma. I have never heard that I did a poor job—I think I

always worked hard to get recognition.51

Five years ago, Mi-Ju got paid 1,300,000 won per month (approximately 1,500 CAD) for six days of live-in service per week. The male recipient in her story went to the care center for seniors every morning and received the care he needed in the government-subsidized facility during the day. But once he got home, all the tasks to care for him fell on Mi-Ju’s shoulders, and

117 such tasks ranged from cleaning and cooking for all the family members to providing bathing assistance to the elder.

Third, everything at work, ranging from small things like eating meals to issues in employment relations, depends on the employers who have full control over workers. As a result, personal relationships with employers become workers’ prime concern. Under this personalistic setting, customer satisfaction comes not only from the output of the service but also from the relationship with the worker. Joseonjok workers, therefore, are required to perform physically and emotionally intense labour. See, for instance, how Mi-Rae, a 64-year-old worker, forced herself to impress her employer physically and emotionally. She said:

I worked there for about 6 years. The same place. But the house was so big, and things were all marble, so I had to crawl to wipe the floor, so my knees were all broken. [I: I saw you having difficulty with your knee during the dance practice.] Yes, yes, they are still unwell. It’s less painful these days, but still. Because I crawled on the marble floor to do a

good job.52

All the house managers I interviewed said that they did not clean floors by hand to protect their joints and waist. The NHMC specifies in their service contract that house managers will use mops instead of crawling on the floor with rags. The three domestic workers’ organizations all inform clients that they need to have mops and are clear that their workers may reject requests to clean the floor. Yet some Korean Chinese workers, including Mi-Rae, had severe joint issues caused by floor cleaning or carrying infants for long hours. As Hondagneu-Sotelo observes, employers often do not view themselves as employers; thus, they do not give detailed instructions to domestic workers, hoping the workers will read their subtle cues (Hondagneu- Sotelo 2001). Even when the employers do not give them detailed instructions on how to perform their tasks, many Korean Chinese workers use methods that can degrade their joints, to signal to their employers that they are doing their best. I asked whether she was instructed by her employer to crawl on her knees to clean the marble floors thoroughly, and Mi-Rae said:

No, but I thought the marble floors must be sparkly and shiny after I clean them. I came here to earn money, and I believe that I am supposed to make effort to get some money out of others’ pockets. So, I didn’t take shortcuts. They [the employers] fed me, and sometimes the husband asked me to have some steak and a glass of wine with them when

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he had some, so they were nice. They treated me well, plus, I got the retirement money there. They were kind. They gave me a break and a bonus on my birthday and when they

had guests.53

The average age of Korean Chinese workers who were working in private homes was 60 at the point of their interviews, while South Korean domestic workers’ average age was 54 to 58. Mi- Rae was 64 and Mi-Ju was 67 at the point of their interviews, yet they were willing to do more physically demanding work to impress, to show their ability, or to pay back employers whom they thought “treated them well.” Mi-Rae’s former employer hired her first, and then brought Mi-Rae’s sister from China, trained her for months without paying her, and then sent her to their daughter, just like sharing good servants between family members. And still, Mi-Rae said she was lucky that she had good employers who treated her nicely.

The sense of gratitude expressed with phrases such as “they [employers] treated me well” is found only in interviews with joseonjok workers. Other groups, including the workers in L.A. Koreatown in the next chapter, described their employers as “well educated,” “nice,” or “bad,” but they rarely expressed a deep sense of gratitude. What caused Mi-Rae’s sense of gratitude? Like Na-Hui, Mi-Rae migrated to Korea via a marriage arranged by brokers. While this marriage with a Korean citizen allowed her not to worry about her status in Korea, it did not guarantee her a decent job. After going through years of exploitive employers matched through job agencies, she found her current one whom she found “nice” in a comparative sense. After employing Mi- Rae for many years, they suggested that she invite her sister from China for a job at their daughter’s house. The fact that they have employed Mi-Rae for so long, plus their willingness to give an additional job offer to her sister, was a huge relief to Mi-Rae, who would otherwise need to deal with exploitive agencies and employers by herself.

“That’s why they hire Joseonjok.”

Korean Chinese workers are not naturally prone to accept jobs in live-in settings. Rather, their acceptance of harsher working conditions is the result of a racialized and gendered labour market as well as care and migration regimes that utilize this informal workforce to buttress formal care policies. Joseonjok yoyangbohosa are good examples. I met some Korean Chinese yoyangbohosa workers, who had yoyangbohosa certification, but there were all working and

119 living in their clients’ homes, which is rare for non-migrant yoyangbohosa. Why? Bo-Ra, a former yoyangbohosa who is currently working as a social worker at an LTCI agency explained:

People want live-in helpers, but you can save money by hiring one with yoyangbohosa. For example, Once they [service recipients] get the [LTCI] grade, then the workers who are dispatched as live-ins can earn 2,400,000 won [approximately 2,792 CAD] per month with a 700,000 won [approximately 814 CAD] government subsidy. So, the client only pays 1,700,000 won [approximately 1,977 CAD] out of their pocket, and it benefits us [the agency] as well…Those people [Joseonjok] came here with the purpose of earning money, so they endure all sorts of humiliation. Sometimes they are not treated as humans…Some elders don’t want diapers at night because they find it uncomfortable. They think that’s why they can hire them [Joseonjok]. They think they can buy them out. It’s not slavery, but similar. There are sad cases, really. It makes me think sometimes, “what if I were them?

what a relief that I wasn’t a joseonjok.”54

The agency where Bo-Ra works has around 100 yoyangbohosa workers, but it always dispatches joseonjok yoyangbohosa when their clients want someone who will combine LTCI care and domestic service as a live-in. While the LTCI provides universal coverage to all Korean citizens aged 65 and above, the service hours are not sufficient to meet the soaring needs of elderly people. The home-visit service that yoyangbohosa provide under LTCI only covers a few hours per week. Therefore, those who need extra hours look for yoyangbohosa who will provide live-in service. Private agencies that profit from government subsidies for LTCI beneficiaries, then, dispatch Joseonjok yoyangbohosa, knowing the slavery-like working conditions waiting for the them, with the justification that joseonjok yoyangbohosa are willing to accept such conditions.

Bo-Ra is not the only one who assumes joseonjok workers’ acceptance of harsh working conditions. Previous studies on Korean Chinese domestic workers, as well as the Korean-born workers in this study, have readily assumed that Korean Chinese workers are prone to live-in settings because they come to Korean alone to make money and thus want to save on accommodation costs. However, most workers I interviewed have families in Korea; in many cases, three generations all live in Korea. Korean-national workers often told me that Korean Chinese workers are poor migrants who are desperate for money. But the reality is that these migrants have substantial property in China while many non-migrant workers belong to the

120 bottom of the income strata in Korea. In fact, Korean Chinese workers earn more than South Korean workers due to their long work hours. Self-identified Korean Chinese domestic workers’ monthly earnings range from 1,400,000 to 2,200,000 won (mean: 1,619,100 won / median: 1,600,000 won), while those of non-migrant domestic workers range from 1,100,000 to 2,000,000 won (mean: 1,211,500 won / median: 1,110,000). As for Korean Chinese workers who work in hospitals, their monthly earnings fall between 2,000,000 and 2,200,000 won, while their non-migrant counterparts earn around 1,000,000 won per month in general.

Poverty, therefore, is not the factor that drives these migrant workers to perform live-in/bounded labour. As will be elucidated in detail in the following sections, multiple structural factors shape these workers’ seeming inclination to secure work in the informal sectors. When the soaring demand for care cannot be met by non-migrant workers who increasingly call for more rights and recognition, and when these non-migrant yoyangbohosa exclude migrant workers who face greater constrains in the labour market, the unmet needs for care create a large informal market. Without full citizenship, the ethnic tie becomes a form of merit for co-ethnic workers, primarily because they have the experience of achieving legislation for their co-ethnics, based on their claim that Joseonjok political subjects are members of a transnational Korean nation that encompasses the homeland and its diasporas. This ethnic identification is central to Korean Chinese workers’ subjectivity and rights discourses.

Lack of a Regulatory Mechanism

The lack of any regulatory mechanism also intensifies the problematic working conditions that Korean Chinese workers face. All three groups in Korea in this study, house managers, (non- migrant) yoyangbohosa, and Joseonjok care workers are under different levels of the regulatory mechanism. Yoyangbohosa workers can expect some level of state intervention as they are in the LTCI system. House managers can also expect some, albeit limited, intermediary help from their organizations in case conflicts arise with their clients. Korean Chinese workers, on the contrary, are entirely outside of any regulatory mechanism. When a private job agency matches them with clients, they pay 10% of their first month’s salary to the agency as a one-time matching fee, and that is all. Once they enter the client’s home or hospital, everything is up to the relationship between the worker and the client, including the fundamental conditions of living. For instance,

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Yeon-Ja, a 60-year-old woman who provides service to seniors in a hospital and private homes, complained:

They didn’t give me food. They only gave me tofu and bean sprouts. I really didn’t like tofu and bean sprouts in China, but they gave me those two things only. They didn’t give me kimchi, and even when they provided some kimchi occasionally, I got the root of the

cabbage. “I don’t eat these,” I told her [the recipient].55

Having undesirable meals was one of the most frequently reoccurring themes when Korean Chinese workers complained about their working conditions. Providing quality meals is a human rights issue that must be regulated, but to the Korean Chinese workers, a meal meant more than just nutrition. The quality of meals and how they are provided meant a lot to them, because they show the level of respect the worker gets from the employer. The quality of food is also a clear reflection of the unequal power relationship between workers and their employers, which many Korean Chinese workers found hard to bear. Yeon-Ja was angry about the food she was given, not just because she did not like tofu and bean sprouts, but because such a meal made her aware of her subservient position. In a focus group with other Korean Chinese workers, Yeon-Ja shouted in rage:

[To the recipient’s daughter] Sister, I heard that you are rich. What’s wrong? We don’t eat things like these. Sister, even Chinese dogs don’t eat these! [yelling] I was so upset as I

told her. The son [the recipient’s son], he treated me worse than animals!56

Providing tofu and bean sprouts was an insult to Yeon-Ja because serving them suggested the treatment she received in her employer’s house, which was, according to her expression, “worse than animals.” Then what kinds of treatment and relationships do Korean Chinese workers expect? At the same focus group session, After Yeon-Ja’s vehement criticism, other workers responded:

P1: They [employers] don’t ask to eat together.

P2: They don’t, even when food is rotting. Even if they have plenty of food that is going bad, they don’t ask me to eat the food with them. They’d rather just dump it.

P1: They don’t think of us like gajokgati [family] …

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P2: No, they don’t think in that way.

P1: Right, they just think of me as ilkkun [a person who works].

Yeon-Ja: They just think that we are hadeung inmul [inferior people]. The son asked me to come back after getting treatment in Japan. [He said] “My mother likes you, so please come back to us later.” So, I said “Why would I? I won’t even spit toward Korea in Japan.” I had faith and big expectations in China because we are the same people [minjok], but as I spend time in Korea, Koreans are mean. They treat me like an animal, and they are mean.

P2: They think that people from China are starving.57

Focus Group Interview Session 2

As the conversation in the quote shows, workers’ expectations about the relationship with their employer were not consistent with a contract-based relationship. These workers, who were called “aunt” and “grandmother” by their employers and their children, got hurt and even upset when they found that the employers treated them as just “ilkkun” (workers). Although they were not real family members of their employers, many of the Korean Chinese workers I met expressed their expectation of being treated “like family,” so they anticipated some respect.

This informal, undefined, fictive kinship-like, and thus unregulated employment relationship creates grey zones however, especially when it comes to remuneration. While house mangers endeavour to polish a labour contract that clearly defines the service fee, Korean Chinese workers find that bringing up the issue of a pay raise is awkward, unnecessary, and inappropriate behaviour. So, Mi-Rae, even though she worked for the same employers for five years, coming to the employers house every morning at 6:40 to prepare breakfast, she could not ask for a raise. She said:

I haven’t asked for a raise. I couldn’t tell her to raise my salary by, like, even 100,000 won. The truth is that my salary is the lowest in the neighborhood, but I just can’t tell. I guess they talk to each other. They don’t ask me to work further. They let me finish on time and then say, “Take a day-off tomorrow.” [During off-days] they never call me, and they don’t mind if I go anywhere. That is good, so I just stick to this employer, even if I am not fully

satisfied.58

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Indeed, many Korean Chinese workers took pride in their nonchalant attitude toward pay and their lack of willingness to negotiate about it. Mi-Rae alluded to this a bit, but Mi-Jung (69) articulated why talking about money is unnecessary. She said:

In private homes with infants, employers would tell me in the interview. They would say that they can raise my salary in a month or three months. I can estimate the intensity of the work based on the salary [proposed by prospective employers]. Why would I ask for a raise? I don’t need to. They will give me a raise if the job is tough. I will be kicked out if I ask for a raise when the work is not that difficult. Don’t you think? They put the intensity of the work into their calculations. The salary. Aww...why do people ask their employers

for a raise?59

To refrain from talking about money in detail not only projects the image of a good care worker who provides service from her heart, but more importantly, it provides some wiggle room with employers. When Mi-Ju said “I will be kicked out if I ask for a raise when the work is not that difficult,” the implication is that she would rather have some time to know employers better than run the risk of losing the job by attempting to negotiate her pay.

Lack of a clear contract and regulatory mechanism that bind the two parties, however, magnify the vulnerability of Korean Chinese workers in case of conflicts. Most workers responded that they just quit when conflicts arise, because they know that no one can resolve the issue in the home. A worker who resisted with a rather drastic measure was Mi-Ju. She heard from the agency that she would be paid 1,200,000 won (approximately 1,392 CAD) per month, but the employer did not pay her this amount on time. Given the lack of any external intervention she could possibly seek out, she protested by bearing the situation for nine months until she collapsed from high blood pressure in the middle of an argument with the employer. After this incident she received partial remuneration, but the employer never paid her what they owed for the previous nine months.

Physical harm becomes a serious issue when the work relationship is completely unregulated. While house managers refuse to perform high-risk tasks such as cleaning the outsides of windows, Korean Chinese lack such power to say no. Do-Yeon, for instance, said:

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The woman [employer] was a neat one. She wanted me to beat all the blankets [to remove dust] and hang them out on the rooftop unless it was rainy. That was so stressful. Thinking of it now, I think I could have just done it, but at that time, it was so…I had to bring the blankets up to the rooftop every day, tie the rope, hang them out, and beat them, all white blankets. They often fall, although I try to fix them with clothespins, because they are high

on the rooftop. But I had to do it every day.60

If they were requested to perform hazardous tasks, many house managers’ immediate response was to express concerns around their safety and long-term career. Some workers stated directly that they did not provide such services for their employers when they were asked to clean windows or hang out bedding. On the contrary, none of the Korean Chinese workers refused, regardless of whether they knew the risks or not. While yoyangbohosa workers have industrial accident insurance, it is entirely the responsibility of individual informal workers if are injured in private homes. Mi-Ju, who suffered delayed pay for nine months, could not freely move one finger after she was injured in another employers’ home, yet the burden of working with a disabled finger became hers entirely.

4.1.2 The Choice Narrative

“Korean society decides what to call me, and that’s the rule.”

In the previous chapter, I analyzed how yoyangbohosa dignify their work by drawing on the choice narrative: they emphasize that they have chosen their work for a reason, and by doing so, they challenge the notion that they are poor desperate women with no other choice but to do dirty work. While yoyangbohosa did not see their work as a dead end they were forced into, Korean Chinese workers rarely described their entry into the care sector as their choice. Asked what jobs they had in mind when they came to Korea, there were two types of responses. First, almost all Korean Chinese workers responded that they came to Korea without a detailed plan about what work they would do. For instance, Yeon-Ja responded:

I had no idea when I came to Korea for the first time, honestly speaking…My life [in China] was okay, so I didn’t pay too much attention to Korea. Then the woman next door

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[laughs] went back and forth to Korea, and one day, when she said she was leaving for

Korea again, I just said “Oh? I am coming with you.”61

Yeon-Ja worked in a state-owned department store for decades without interruption, so she had her own pension as well as her late husband’s. Her life after retirement was “okay,” but she heard that South Korea was a “good place to make money” from her neighbours. She made a quick decision to migrate to Korea, but she did not have any specific job in mind even after she arrived there. Like Yeon-Ja, many Korean Chinese workers said that they just came to earn money without a plan, then just went to job agencies in Daerim, in the southeast area of Seoul, wherein Korean Chinese people are heavily concentrated.

Yeon-Ja did not even know what ganbyeonin was when she got a ganbyeonin job, and it is common for Korean Chinese workers to have only a vague idea about the possible options for them. Su-Jung, a 64-year-old live-in care worker, as another example, had some information on working conditions in restaurants and hospitals thanks to a relative who had come to Korea about two decades ago and gone through many jobs in the service sector. Asked about her plans for a job in Korea, she said:

I: You said that you wanted to earn money when you came to Korea.

Su-Jung: Yes, I did.

I: What kind of work did you think of then?

Su-Jung: I have a problem with my leg, so I thought restaurants were not for me, so I

thought, well, ganbyeong [eldercare] would fit me.62

Note that she lists restaurants and ganbyeong, not others, as possible options for her in Korea. Asked the same question, (non-migrant) yoyangbohosa workers listed some other options, such as mall cashier, factory worker, small business clerk, department store jobs, etc., then explained why they chose their current job over the others. They were aware of the labour market constraints that are associated with their age, gender, education level, and career interruption. Nevertheless, they explained that they had some options and chose one out of others. On the contrary, Korean Chinese workers migrated either without a plan or with a vague idea that they would find a few kinds of jobs that are common for Korean Chinese in Korea.

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The second type of response to my question of whether they had a specific job in mind when they migrated to Korea was that they were directly channelled to the care sector by their family members, relatives, or close friends. For this group of workers, working in private homes or hospitals was readily arranged before or shortly after their migration. Unlike those who came to Korea earlier and went through multiple jobs ranging from construction to restaurant work, these workers, who mainly migrated in their fifties and sixties, found domestic service and eldercare to be viable options for them.

In sum, Korean Chinese care workers see that they have only limited options in the Korean labour market, thus they do not attempt to find other kinds of jobs. Korean immigration laws allow co-ethnic migrant workers who hold H-2 visas to work in 38 sectors; those who have the F-4 visa have more options. However, these seemingly limitless choices are, in fact, not open to Korean Chinese workers. Not long after experiencing the gender-, age-, and racially stratified Korean labour market, Korean Chinese workers realize that to have a job in Korea is not something they choose, but rather it is given. A 64-year-old worker, Ok-Ja, who was a university graduate and professional writer in China, had no other choice but to work in private homes and nursing hospitals in Korea, and she cynically responded to me when I asked a question about how she wanted to be addressed at work:

I don’t care what they [employers] call me. Korean society decides how to address me, and that’s the rule. I am a gyopo [overseas Korean] anyway. I do that kind of work anyway [eochapi geureon il haneungeonde]. Why would I care what they call me?[I: What do you mean by “that kind of work?”] The most undesirable and laborious work. We do all the

work that Koreans do not want to do and calling us with fancy titles means nothing.63

Nakano Glenn has shown that low-paid care work is in the continuity of gendered and racialized servitude (Glenn 1992; Glenn 2010). Building on this emphasis of the coercive structures that reinforce the feminization of care work, Chun and Cranford reveal that workers themselves are aware of the coercive nature of care work, but they have no other choice but to accept it given their gendered status obligations in the family and the racialized labour market (Chun and Cranford 2018). While my findings are line with Chun and Cranford (2018), the following sections will show how this structurally coerced care work is reframed through organizations and

127 how organizational interpretations of the coercive nature of care work become a part of these workers’ sense of self.

4.2 The Joseonjok Coalition: Ethnic Mobilization of “Colonial Returnees”

People were just scared and ran away when they saw the police back in 2000 because, back then, everyone only came to Korea through brokerages…Then we came to know Rev. Lim Gwang Bin, and we talked to him about our issues. We wondered why only Joseonjok people have to spend a lot of money to come to Korea while those who are in Japan and the U.S. don’t need to. We were not so familiar with computers back then, but Rev. Lim showed us the Overseas Korean law, and we learned that we were not granted the F-4 visa while they [overseas Koreans in U.S. and Japan] were granted it. We realized what keeps we Joseonjok trapped in the brokerage…And we realized that we, because we are all the same Korean people [minjok], must be treated equally under the law. We have the right to

travel freely. We can fight.64

Interview with the president of the Joseonjok Coalition, Yoo Pongsun

In her book The Capitalist Unconscious, Hyun Ok Park (2015) analyzes how the Korean Chinese movement strategically constructed Korean Chinese as “colonial returnees” in order to assert their political subjectivities in their claim rights to freedom of travel and work in Korea. She finds that by constructing themselves as “sublime victims” of Japanese colonialism, Korean Chinese simultaneously framed their suffering in Korea as “causalities of shallow South Korean policies.” The Reverend Lim in the quote above is one of the key figures who galvanized Korean Chinese, who were largely working undocumented in Korea. Local activists including Lim played a significant role in framing the Korean Chinese movement within reparation politics, and presenting Korean Chinese as victims was at the heart of Korean Chinese collective struggles (Park 2015). Yet Korean Chinese did not entirely agree with local activists. As Park sharply points out about the disagreement between Rev. Lim and the leaders of the coalition, they wanted to go beyond the victim subject and construct themselves as “free and equal subjects” of the Korean nation, whereas Korean activists assumed hierarchical relationships between full citizens of South Korea and Korean Chinese—people of the Korean diaspora. Reparation

128 discourses provided Korean Chinese with a discursive engine to mobilize Korean Chinese as a collective, but the Joseonjok Coalition divorced itself from the Korean civil society and migrant workers movements to further assert Joseonjok political subjectivity as equal members of the nation. Refusing the paternalistic protections that faith-based organizations provided, they established their own shelter called Our Home (urijip) under the coalition and started engaging the Korean government directly. The question is, then, how did they develop their own discourse that goes beyond the victim narrative?

I argue that state power has been overwhelming to these under-resourced, economically and socially vulnerable groups of workers. Their identity as Koreans was endorsed by state policies in the context of capitalist incorporation of diaspora in South Korea. While Korean Chinese workers did not have access to language that interpreted these policy regimes, they came to learn it throughout their collective organizing experience in the early 2000s. Although they came to Korea primarily for their economic gain, their leaders, including Pongsun, found practical necessity and moral legitimacy in their resistance. Park (2015) finds that Korean Chinese workers pursued their economic goals by connecting their desire to work without obstacles in Korea with the discourses around reparation politics. Building on her point, I find that workers derive moral legitimacy from their struggles that emphasize their right to membership in the Korean nation. The workers I met at the collation thought that they were doing the right thing, and that they were giving up money for a higher moral purpose. For example, looking back at her struggles over two decades, Pongsun recalled:

Now we stay legally, so we can travel when we want. That makes me feel that our struggle was worthwhile…My son used to call me and say he wanted me to pay a brokerage and bring him to Korea. So, I said, “come when we get the right to free travel. We’ll get it.” My son said, “you are dreaming. Other mothers all earn money and bring their sons, and you are just dreaming.”…I gave up money, but I feel better doing this. Money is not

everything in life. We eat and sleep here, anyway.65

In making sense of her life in Korea as an activist, which she never intended in the first place, Pongsun finds pride and a sense of worth in the fact that Korean Chinese have achieved a better legal status at the end of their collective struggle, with moral appeals that hinge on their membership in the nation. Even when her son accused her of not doing her motherly duties,

129 defined as economic provision, she could justify her activism because she had a clear sense that she was doing the right thing not only for her son but for all Korean Chinese people. This strong sense of legitimacy provided many Korean Chinese people in the Joseonjok Coalition with the moral ground for resistance. For many of those who come to the shelter, the coalition is not only a space where they meet their own kind, but it is a place where these people, who do the low- paid and disrespected work, can affirm their sense of moral worth. At the coalition center, women members gather every weekend to practice Korean traditional fan dance and choral singing. Performing Korean traditional dances and songs, these members, who are mostly working in private home or hospitals, reaffirm their ethnic identification. This allows them to find other meanings besides money in their life in Korea, and this moral sense fuels workers to form a sense of self that is not subservient but resists injustice.

The term injustice not only relates to the responsibility of the Korean state to protect members of the Korean nation. As I explained in the previous section, Korean Chinese workers are well aware of the state’s tactics that locate them in care sector jobs that are soaring in demand yet low-paid and unprotected. Thus, they find it unjust that Korean society, which is reliant on them for care, exploits them without recognizing their contributions to the nation. When it comes to their contributions, they do not mean women’s invisible work in social reproduction. In their narratives, they mean the contributions of their ancestors’ independence movement in China during Japanese colonial rule, their struggles in China to preserve Korean culture for generations, and current generations’ hard work in the most marginalized jobs in Korea. Because their narrative is on the continuum of nation’s transitional history, they see their issues as a matter of membership in the nation.

Korean Chinese workers’ political subjectivity hinges on the notion of co-ethnics, legitimate members of the Korean nation. Since there is little room for worker subjectivity in this subjectivity, these workers define good care work as centering on a sense of ethnonational belonging. In these workers’ views on the self as care worker, they emphasize the affective and relational dimension of care and the kinship-like relationship between caregivers and recipients. While workers as such, addressing care workers “imo” (aunt) isn’t an insult to them, rather it shows the quality of care they seek to provide and indicates their national membership in their ethno-centric narrative construction of Korea.

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4.3 Wholehearted Care

“We are like a family.” Jung-Won, a 67-year-old Korean Chinese ganbyeongin who was taking care of six virtually immobile elders in a nursing hospital near Seoul, repeated this sentence during her interview. While migrant eldercare workers make up most of the labour force in nursing hospitals in Korea, it was extremely difficult to interview them because they virtually live in the hospital and are on-call for 24 hours a day. When I met Jung-Won in the hospital near bedtime for an hour-long interview, she had to hurry to make time for me. She first changed two elders’ diapers, emptied a urine container, brought two elders to the washroom to assist them in urinating, and comforted an elder by feeding her sleeping pills. Jung-Won told me that it had been more than a year since she had had a day off, yet she said, “She [the oldest recipient] calls me a child [yaeya], and she [another recipient with dementia] calls me sister. I like that”.

The strange combination of extremely poor working conditions and embracing the analogy of family reflects how Korean Chinese workers find meaning and a sense of self-worth in their occupations. These workers endure the most undesirable working conditions in private homes and hospitals, but rather than doing this difficult work mechanically, they try to find some meanings in it by seeing their work as an affective and intimate service that can be appropriately done by the family. These workers promote themselves as a good alternative when the ideal caregivers, namely family members, are not available. Cultural and linguistic affinity play out when these workers draw fictive-kinship terms, as they make claims that such qualities as co- ethnicity enable them to provide “wholehearted” (jin-sim) care.

Jung-Won once lived in North Korea with her parents and joined the rehabilitation project (bokgugeonseol) there after the Korean War. She was always curious about South Korea, but when she got a chance to visit, she had no idea about working there. Like most workers I interviewed, she soon learned about ganbyeong at the park where many Korean Chinese gathered and chatted. Thinking of her mother, who passed away suddenly so that she did not have a chance to take care of her, Jung-Won decided to work as a ganbyeongin to “take care of others’ moms instead.” She could endure recipients with dementia who used bad language or spit on her, because she always did her work as if she was helping her own mother, but she became angry when the recipients’ children visited and asked her to change their diaper:

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There are children, daughters or daughters-in-law, who visit their parents and ask me to clean their mother’s poo. Can’t they just do their filial duty once in a while? I don’t get it. We do it every day, but they just think that we should do all the work since we are paid. I don’t agree. It’s their mother. Can’t they just do it like a child? We do it every day. Money isn’t everything. Daughters and daughters-in-law, they are all children. Can’t they just use gloves and hold their breath for a second? Those women would abandon their mother-in-

law in her poop.66

For yoyangbohosa at the Seoul center, their service is a professional kind that untrained people, including family members, cannot provide; hence they are not mere replacements for family members. By articulating how distinct their service is from that of amateurs, Seoul center workers not only highlight their self-worth in the market but also dismantle the long-standing gendered notion of care, namely that any women can be a care worker naturally. On the contrary, Jung-Won was angry when her efforts to substitute for her recipients’ family members did not get the recognition that she thought she deserved. Asking her to change diapers might have been a legitimate request because it was her job, but for her, the service she provided was not something people could merely purchase, because it came from her heart.

To get recognition and respect as a fictive-family member is significant for Korean Chinese workers because good care means “wholehearted” (jin-sim) care for these workers. “Wholehearted” was repeated frequently by most of the Korean Chinese workers when they described how they work. A family-like relationship with service recipients is a necessary and sufficient condition for wholehearted care because it means to take care of elders as if they are the workers’ parents. In reality, there are diverse ways to raise children, and not all mothers are selfless. We have seen on the news that adult children can abuse or even murder their own dementia-stricken parents. Yet when these women workers claim they provide service out of their hearts, they draw a specific image of a woman in delivering care, namely, a selfless woman with intrinsic qualities such as warmth, neatness, and affection. For example, when Mi-Ju said that she could do her work “naturally,” it is logically coherent that women like her, who raised children and came to Korea to support her grown-up kids, would be the best candidates for good care workers. She said,

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Working in a private home is honestly, well, cooking in the morning to feed the children, cleaning, doing laundry, ironing, and cleaning the washroom, like things women can do at home. Average women [botong yeojabundeul] can all do these things. So, I found that this [work] suits me, so thus far, I haven’t worked elsewhere [in other sectors] and stayed as a domestic helper [gasadoumi], because this is women’s work. Something [women] can do

naturally [sunriropge] at home.67

When their wholehearted care does not get the recognition that it deserves, and when their employers treat them only as workers, it upsets them. One example of such a case involves meals, which I have explained in earlier sections, and another example is the tension around motherhood. Mi-Rae never blamed her employer for her salary, which had not been raised for five years. Yet when her employer drew a clear line between her, the mistress of the house, and Mi-Rae, the servant who merely did housework, she could not help crying in front of her. She said:

I never gave instant ramen to the boy, but one day he begged me, so I made it for the ten- year-old boy. Then his mother demanded to know if I made him instant ramen without her permission, so I said, “you give ramen to him at times.” Then she said that it is not the same, and I cried. I just cried so hard in front of her. [I: What does that mean that it is not the same?] She meant that I did what I wanted. She meant that it is her child, and I shouldn’t feed him what I want. She meant that she can feed him whatever she wants, but I

can’t.68

In her ethnographic study of Taiwanese households, Lan (2001) has provided a nuanced analysis of how the family becomes a key site where the employer and domestic workers negotiate gender identities. When a Taiwanese employer outsources her care work to a foreign domestic worker, she tries to find her value, sense of self, and rightful location in the family as a wife and mother by rearranging work that builds up the family. Unlike the workers in Lan’s study who narrated such negotiation as competition with their employers around a wifely or motherly role, workers in this study, who are co-ethnics and much older than the workers in Lan’s, did not describe such negotiation as competition. What made Mi-Rae cry so hard was not the salary or the overwhelming workload. It was her employer’s unspoken yet clear message that it was not allowed for Mi-Rae to have the same kind of authority as the boy’s mother; that Mi-Rae could

133 never compete with the employer even though it was Mi-Rae who had held the boy in his bed every night since he was an infant. By the same token, workers said that they preferred kinship terms over the term ajumma, as the terms conceal the reality that their relationship with the recipients/employers is a master-servant one. These workers know that, given their bounded labour conditions without any official entitlement, being a quasi-family member is the best option for them to gain some respectability.

4.3.1 Capitalist Lip Service is Not Good Care

For Korean Chinese workers, the idea of wholehearted care is constructed in relation to their South Korean counterparts. The workers frequently used the expression “wholehearted care” when they contrasted their ways of caregiving to how South Korean workers do the same work, saying South Korean workers are only good at “lip service.” Many Korean Chinese workers characterized their care as “steady,” “silent,” and from their “whole heart,” while South Korean workers were “pretending” and “working with their mouths” without substantial and genuinely wholehearted effort. Yeon-Ja articulates this view:

Gyopo [Overseas Koreans. She meant Korean Chinese] take care of patients sincerely, steadily and silently. But Koreans don’t. They do the work with their mouths. They say all the sweet things when the patients’ families come. They do lip service to the families and tell us unnecessary things, like, [they say] we are Koreans so we can do better than you. [I: Do they intervene blatantly?] Yes, that’s why there is discrimination between Koreans and

gyopo. But in fact, gyopo work with their whole hearts.69

The professional skills and knowledge that yoyangbohosa obtained through job training was barely appreciated by these migrant workers. While using professional language and maintaining an expert attitude were key to demonstrating their national care expertise for yoyangbohosa at the Seoul Center, Korean Chinese workers saw their language and attitude as evidence of capitalist exploitation. Asked what qualities make a good domestic worker, for example, Do- Yeon responded:

Koreans are good at pretending. We are not good at that. So, I am leaning it, but it is difficult because it is unnatural for me…[Korean] Society makes people like that. That is a lifestyle that works in Korea. Otherwise, it would be difficult to survive in this harsh

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society. But we lived with freedom in China. Yes, freedom. We, how to say it, live a bit naively, so we did not need to flatter at work, because it did not affect our jobs or relationships with colleagues at work. So, we lived our own way, without being so conscious of others. But here in Korea, if you are not overly conscious of others…So from

our view, Koreans are a bit cunning. Pretentious. We don’t pretend.70

For Do-Yeon, yoyangbohosa workers’ smile at work signals their lack of “freedom” and is the evidence of a commodified self that mechanically displays the smile imposed by management. Like Do-Yeon, Korean Chinese workers do not see that non-migrant care workers’ emotional labour at work shows their professional quality. To Korean Chinese workers, smiling, “lip service,” and “flattering” are just types of social skills that people developed in a competitive capitalist environment. Some workers, including Do-Yeon, bridge the non-migrant care workers’ “lip service” to capitalist society, contrasting their lifestyle with that in communist society where people are equal and thus do not need to develop skills for flattering. While house managers and yoyangbohosa at the Seoul Center often equate the communist regime in China with backwardness, some Korean Chinese workers presented their own analysis of exploitation in capitalist society. After experiencing many hard jobs in Korea, Na-Hui reached the conclusion that working in Korea as a domestic worker is being exploited. She said:

In China, in the past, we had landowners (jiju,地主) who exploited poor people, who put poor people to work and didn’t pay them. I thought that the same thing exists in the Republic of Korea. [I: You mean the landlords before the People’s Republic of China?] Yes, they did that in China in the past. People say that the Republic of Korea is an advanced country, but there you have such a thing. Isn’t it exploitation? Even though they

pay.71

Equal relationships at work regardless of position was the most common characteristic of the communist society in China, according to the Korean Chinese workers I interviewed. Contrasting it with the hierarchical social relations in Korea, these workers attributed the unequal power relations at their work to the capitalist system in Korea.

The lack of recognition of professionalism in care work is also found in their attitude toward occupational titles and certificates. While the state-issued yoyangbohosa certificate was a sign of

135 professional quality as a care specialist for the workers at the Seoul Center, Korean Chinese workers saw the certificate as simply a document that allowed yoyangbohosa, who are predominantly non-migrant, to work comfortably. See below, for example, for how a Korean Chinese worker describes yoyangbohosa when they work in the same setting. In her description of a non-migrant yoyangbohosa performing her tasks, she accuses her of not working “thoroughly” because the yoyangbohosa uses a mop instead of a cleaning cloth:

P1: The person [yoyangbohosa] helps her bathe and brings her to the washroom, and [she cleans] the room which the grandmother uses. So, I told her, “The one before you did a good job, but I see that you don’t do the work thoroughly. You just pretend to work.” She didn’t hand wash the cleaning cloth. Instead, she just used a mop, just walking around with the stick. But when I told her, she said that they are supposed to work like that. She said they don’t clean all the rooms. She said she came to take care of the grandmother, not to clean the rooms and curtains…Koreans talk well, but they are not with the grandmother for 24 hours, and they can suppress their feelings for only for hours,

flattering and saying just “yes” and “yes.”72

Participant 1, Focus Group Interview Session 1

To this worker, the yoyangbohosa who provided a limited range of service for four hours was not a good care worker, because she just “pretends to work,” giving lip service to the recipient. In Seoul Center workers’ narratives, preforming predefined tasks for the allocated hours and interacting with recipients using good manners is “good care” that trained professional yoyangbohsoa can provide. However, the interview participant above undermines the claim by re-conceptualizing the ideal of the “good care” in Seoul Center workers’ narratives.

4.3.2 Detouring Gatekeepers: Beyond Instrumental Informality and Personalism

A range of structural restrictions shape care workers’ individual and collective strategies to improve their work. Bakan and Stasiulis (1995) call these various mechanisms “gatekeepers” to emphasize their roles in shaping working conditions by intervening in the process of selection, allocation, and labour control. For migrant workers in the domestic service and eldercare sectors, immigration and labour authorities and placement agencies are key gatekeepers as they select

136 and channel these workers into the volatile grey market. They also play a role in shaping distinct working conditions by charging fees, imposing obligations, and abandoning these workers in the grey market.

The counterstrategies Korean Chinese workers use against gatekeepers center on ways to detour them. Korean Cheese workers embrace informality and personalism, and by doing so, they detour the gatekeepers. Once Korean Chinese people migrate to Korea with so-called co-ethnic visas, they are allowed to work in the limited sectors. They are also obligated to report their employment to the immigration authority so that the state can monitor them in the labour market. Yet such attempts by the state to control Korean Chinese are futile, because these workers, especially those who work in private homes, detour it easily. Using their knowledge, linguistic fluency and well-established network in South Korea, these workers stay outside the gatekeepers’ gaze.

The workers actively embrace informality and personalism at work to increase leverage in their relationship with employers. With the lack of regulatory mechanisms, these workers, who work and often live in private homes and hospitals, have nowhere to find help when conflicts arise. The risk of abusive treatment, such as physical and emotional harm from mentally ill elders, sexual harassment, and delayed or reduced payment, are always there, and the workers often lack information about places where they can find help. Personal relationships with employers/recipients become central in preventing abusive treatment, so making employment informal becomes a solution for these workers, as a loosely defined job can open the exit door in case of an emergency. In the sections below, I will explain how these workers detour external interventions and cultivate personalism at work.

Lying

Those who work in isolation face information asymmetry in the host society’s labour market, and employers and agencies utilize this asymmetry to minimize labour costs. Lying to placement agencies and employers is a widely used tactic among Korean Chinese workers to detour the gatekeepers. Knowing that revealing their lack of experience would only disadvantage them, Korean Chinese workers say that they have years of experience in domestic service or eldercare, even if they do not actually have any experience. Na-Hui, for example, was not ashamed at all

137 about lying because she found it justifiable. Explaining that as a migrant she could not afford the yoyangbohosa certificate, she said:

To study [for the yoyangbohosa certificate exam], I had to do it before evening, but I had to work. I needed money while I studied, but I couldn’t have any money if I didn’t work. It had been only a year since my arrival, and I’d spent a lot, so I had no way to pursue it [yoyangbohosa certificate study]. I thought, well, how can I dare to try it. So, I just got a job in a private home. When you search for an in-home job, they interview you asking about your work experience. I said, “I have three years of experience.” [I: Did you lie?] I

lied. I had to lie to get the job. I was confident so I lied.73

Note that Na-Hui did not hesitate to give untrue information to the employer because she was “confident” about domestic service. These workers not only see that requiring formal training or certification from them is unrealistic but, more importantly, they see it as unnecessary. This confidence, which is common among Korean Chinese workers, stems from their belief that they can perform their jobs without instruction and employers will not notice that they lack experience and training.

Another typical case where Korean Chinese lie to their employers is when they quit. Instead of giving them notice in advance, these workers inform their employers that they will visit their family in China or another country, then they do not come back to work. For instance, Do-Yeon explained why she vanished instead of telling her employers that she wanted to quit. She said:

Whenever I went back to work, I felt like I was being dragged to a slaughterhouse. I thought, “ah, how can I enter this house? I really hate this. I hate this.” Then it was 2014, ah, 2015, in May. I had my niece’s wedding in China, and that was when I quit. I talked to the samonim [madam], showing the flight ticket and saying that I had to go in early May. She said she would hire another person temporarily, so I should come back. She even gave me 200,000 won for my travel costs. That was nice, but I thought I would rather do manual

work in a restaurant.74

The source of Do-Yeon’s stress was her employer’s attitude, which she could not comprehend. The employer always showed her a well-polished smile, calling Do-Yeon imo (aunt), yet she never invited Do-Yeon to eat with her family, which made her feel like she was a sikmo

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(servant), not an imo. Do-Yeon did not try to solve the problem with her employer. Instead, like many other workers, she chose to disappear after lying that she would resume her position. Workers mentioned several reasons for this exit method: they feel sorry for the employer; they find it shameful to bring up specific issues that they know they cannot resolve; and discussing the situation will only bring more stress. Such reasons indicate that these workers do not want to jeopardize their relationship with employers by bringing up issues that may be uncomfortable for the employers.

Eroding Distinctions

The practical purpose of the labour contract that house managers attempt to introduce is to protect workers by defining the scope of their job. The contract also distinguishes paid services from unpaid favours and thus makes clear that the social relationship between the clients and workers is contract-based. Asking their clients/recipients to address them with official occupational titles reflects South Korean workers’ rejection of personalism at work.

Korean Chinese workers take the opposite approach to protect themselves and increase their autonomy at work. There is always a loosely defined job scope, but none of the workers I interviewed claimed the necessity of standardized service provision. As for the writing of labour contracts, most Korean Chinese workers responded negatively as well because, given the asymmetric power relations between them and their employers, binding the two parties with a contract only magnifies the potential risks to the workers. From their personal experiences, they are aware that there will be no external help they can seek out when workplace conflicts arise. Understanding their vulnerability at work, Korean Chinese workers try to make the employment relationship flexible and casual, so that they are not strictly obligated by anything. Asked about their opinion of labour contracts, Tae-Yeon, a 68-year-old Korean Chinese live-in worker and her daughter Bo-Mi, who also once worked in private homes, explained the potential risks:

Tae-Yeon: Without knowing about the employer in advance, I think it would be difficult to write a contract.

Bo-Mi: Then we would not be able to quit when we wanted.

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Tae-Yeon: Because if you write a contract, you are bound to it, without knowing how the

employer would treat you. My mom quit in a month sometimes.75

As Tae-Yeon and Bo-Mi said, signing a contract might shackle Korean Chinese, who are heavily disadvantaged in the asymmetric employer-worker relationship. Making the relationship loose and flexible, therefore, is a way to prepare an exit in case they face unbearable working conditions.

Cultivating personalism at work also plays a role in eroding the contract-based employment relationship. Given the lack of a labour contract that clearly defines the scope of the job, specific tasks and methods to perform them are gradually decided based on the relationship workers have with their employers. When this relationship becomes close enough to be like family, workers can enjoy a more favourable work environment without the feeling of being supervised. For instance, Mi-Jung, who at the point of the interview had been working for five years in a private home taking care of twins, was very satisfied with her working conditions. Her position was not a desirable one for other workers because there were four adults—the employer couple and one set of grandparents—in the home on top of the twins, and the unspoken expectation was that the worker would take care of the four adults as well as the twins. Mi-Jung, however, adjusted her workload successfully by developing a close relationship with the grandparent couple. She explained:

She [the employer] said, “None of the others who came for an interview wanted to work [in my place] because there are grandparents living here, and here you are. Would you like to give it a try, imo-nim [respected aunt]?” So, I said I would give it a shot…The first month was a bit uncomfortable, because the grandfather was at home, but I got used to it. The grandmother cooks, and the grandfather cleans when I come to work. Later as we got closer, the grandfather and I were having a meal together while the grandmother went to the market. Because of the twins we have to take turns, so I told them to eat together because they are a couple, but they said it’s fine. Once I told the grandmother, “People might think that I and grandfather are a couple,” but she said, “it’s fine.” I like corn and Korean melons, so they always brought them for me, saying “you like corn and melons.” It is such a nice place to work. They share kimchi when they make it in the fall. It is nice.

Very nice.76

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As we can see in the quote, Mi-Jung and the twins’ grandparents “take turns” caring for the babies, not being reluctant to share a dining table with her. The anecdote she chose to give as an example of the good treatment she gets at work also indicates that she can expect a lower workload as well as some level of respectability by cultivating a family-like relationship with her employers. By making herself a childrearing companion in the family, Mi-Jung not only alleviated some of the workload that would otherwise have fallen on her shoulders, but she could also position herself as a member of the family instead of a servant.

Embracing Informality: “Everyone was illegal back then.”

In the previous two chapters, I demonstrated that workers at the NHMC and the Seoul Center draw several stereotypical images of Korean Chinese workers in distancing themselves from “Chinese” workers: such stereotypes are that these “Chinese” are poor people from a backward society, and they lack the skills and vocational commitment required to be professional care workers. In contrast to the popular view that these people have the intrinsic characteristics of rule-breakers or potential criminals, interviews with Korean Chinese workers reveal that they came to develop boldness and rule-breaking practices from their experiences at the very bottom of the labour market.

Many Korean Chinese workers reiterated the sentence, “Everyone was illegal at that time” throughout their interviews, which indicates that being “illegal” was an ordinary condition of life for many of them. In their narratives around joseonjok people’s suffering in Korea in the 1990s, living in the shadows as invisible labour without any protections was a way of life to which everyone had to adjust. Indeed, half of the 22 Korean Chinese workers I interviewed came to Korea before 2007, when the H-2 visa was introduced. These workers, who were smuggled or migrated through bogus marriages or brokerages, had to endure years of exploitive working conditions often as undocumented workers. Some of them came to Korea under the Industrial Trainee Program but worked in service sectors, which are banned for trainees. Due to the vulnerability of their status as well as their lack of information, these workers relied heavily on brokers and agencies that charged heavy fees when they were newcomers. Yet, gradually, they came to equip themselves with better knowledge of alternative ways to negotiate the labour market on their own.

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Structural changes conditioned the development of the patterned and collective inclination toward informality. The influx of Korean Chinese since the late 1980s, along with the increased volume after the introduction of co-ethnic visa programs in 2007, shaped structural conditions that alleviated workers’ dependency on gatekeepers. As Korean Chinese came to be a major workforce in so-called 3D jobs, including live-in domestic service and eldercare, the state become reluctant to identify illegal employment. Only one worker I interviewed, out of 11 who had once been engaged in unlawful employment, had been caught by immigration authorities, but she easily deceived them by presenting her flight ticket to China. The rest of the workers had never been in trouble regarding their unlawful economic activities.

Growing demand for care that cannot be met by South Korean workers or the LTCI system also created more room for Korean Chinese workers. While Korean Chinese workers suffered expensive agency fees in the past, none of the workers I interviewed reported paying additional fees on top of the 10% matching fee off their first month’s salary now. Some agencies even have a policy of refunding 10% of the placement fee if a worker quits in a week or so. The implication of this changing dynamic is that Korean Chinese workers’ increased market share improved the workers’ leverage in their relationship with agencies and the state.

4.4 Conclusion: Production of Joseonjok Imo

I became rebellious. We are the same people and they shouldn’t treat us like that. We are all Joseon people. I have relatives in Busan. Our family was divided during the Korean war. My mother and father were all from Korea, so how come we don’t enjoy proper

treatment?77 Interview with Mi-Rae, Joseonjok Imo

Like many care workers in other societies, Korean Chinese workers in the low-paid informal care sectors find dignity in dirty work by placing emphasis on the affective and relational dimension of care and the kinship-like relationship between caregivers and recipients (Solari 2006; Stacey 2011b). What is unique in the case of Joseonjok Imo is how ethnicity and Korea’s diasporic migration policies further this project of familism in care work. In this chapter I examined how Korean Chinese workers link ethnonationalism to familism and how this linkage becomes a part of workers’ sense of self.

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Interviews with Korean Chinese workers revealed that they embraced the subjects “prescribed” by state policy regimes. My interpretation of this is that they do so because they can at least spare themselves from being treated as racial others and possibly improve their status in Korea. This is not because they are greedy or opportunistic. It is because they know that they are located in specific positions in Korean society as co-ethnics; they are aware of the prevailing stereotypes and growing antagonism towards them; and they know that the nostalgic image of Korea they once had in China, that is, the welcoming homeland, is an illusion.

In embracing policy discourses that instrumentally recruit them as co-ethnics, Korean Chinese workers locate the issue within transnational politics. In other words, these workers do not see the issue as a labour issue. Instead, they view their poor working conditions as unjust treatment for co-ethnics. As such, they see a movement focused on co-ethnic’s rights as a possible solution for their issue. Because they refuse to see themselves as foreign labour, and because the migration regime also does not see them as such, they refuse to build political alliances with migrant advocacy groups. Accordingly, they do not see the issue as a gendered struggle, and they do not embrace feminist discursive strategies.

Korean Chinese made their first contact with their imagined homeland of Korea as co-ethnics (dongpo), yet the daily reality they have experienced is far from their expectations. Immigration policies that seemingly give favorable treatment to co-ethnics only open undesirable jobs for them to fill the labour shortage. Their cultural affinity and linguistic fluency allow them to have better mobility in the Korean labour market, yet these older groups of co-ethnic migrant women workers are welcomed by only a few “backdoor jobs” in care sectors. House managers and yoyangbohosa initiated their collective struggles to re-value care work, but migrants are not viewed as fellow workers but as unprofessional others who undermine their movements. Given this reality, “choice” becomes a luxury, and to develop tactics to improve their working conditions within isolated and bounded labour settings becomes the focus of their survival strategies.

Fictive kinship is a crucial element in Korean Chinese workers’ construction of good care and good care workers. Distancing their services from standardized and professionalized services, these workers assert that they can be substitutes or extensions of the ideal caregivers, i.e. the women in the family who have the intrinsic characteristics of good caregivers. Good caregivers

143 for children, adults and frail elders are constructed as those who do not attempt to calculate the value of their time and effort when they carry out tasks, because money ruins genuine care that comes from love. Since good care means taking care of recipients as if they are workers’ own family members, a warm heart is much more important than knowledge or training that one can simply purchase with money. Just as mothers do not provide lip service but silently and selflessly do their work, these women workers sincerely cherish their lack of “capitalist” social skills. Fictive kinship also plays a pivotal role in these workers’ strategies to navigate the unprotected and dissimilatory care market. By developing a relationship with employers like fictive kin, these workers increase their leverage in the relationship. Otherwise, they could easily become the subservient ones in their isolated work environment. Embracing informality becomes a useful tactic, as it provides some mechanism of protection by maximizing workers’ flexibility.

In sum, the joseonjok imo is a social production invented in the matrix of ethnicity, migration and citizenship. The term joseonjok imo reflects the type of worker South Korean society expects these older groups of migrant women workers to be, that is, invisible, warm, sincere and hardworking without asking for proper remuneration, as a woman in the family. Yet at the same time, Joseonjok imo encapsulates the very care worker subjectivity from which Korean Chinese workers find their sense of self-worth, as well as a token of their membership in the Korean nation. No one calls Filipina or Vietnamese domestic workers in Korea imo. By asserting their political subjectivity as legitimate members of the nation—a nation that is imagined as racially and ethnically homogenous with a liner history for centuries—they not only position themselves above other migrant workers in the hierarchically structured labour market, but more importantly, they attach meaning to their poorly remunerated work. I argue that the term joseonjok imo, however, also reflects joseonjok workers’ survival strategies in South Korea. Throughout their migration journey, these workers face severe downward mobility, discrimination, and exploitive and often abusive treatment, which they never expected in their imagined ancestral land. Facing the brutal conditions for migrant workers in Korea, these workers found their own way to adapt to capitalist South Korea, namely being Joseonjok imo and fulfilling the social expectations placed on them.

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Chapter 5 The Paid-Daughters: Korean IHSS workers in the L.A. Koreatown

“Subjectivity is multidimensional”, because, “the knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (Haraway, 1988: 586).”

This chapter examines seemingly contradictory dual subjects emerging among Korean immigrant

IHSS providers54 who care for Korean immigrant elders in L.A. Koreatown55. One dimension of their subjectivity (daughters) centers on their sense of self as caring (and ethnic) self, while the other is a government worker subject, underscoring the responsibility of the state which pays these workers. Unlike yoyangbohosa and joseonjok workers, who are hailed as “care specialists” and co-ethnics (dongpo) respectively, IHSS policy does not interpellate these workers with explicit language around ethnicity or race: no one has ever set a rule commanding Koreans to work for Korean elders only. However, the market logic that organizes the U.S. welfare regime and California’s laissez-faire approach to the IHSS program, combined with the racialized U.S. labour market, has shaped IHSS in Koreatown as an ethnic care economy. Given the lack of signs from the policy regimes that prescribe their political subjects, workers in L.A. adopt the symbolic and material recourses that are available to them—one from their ethnic community and the other one from their union. Drawing upon 28 in-depth interviews with unionized IHSS workers and participant observations conducted in the Los Angeles Koreatown in 2016 and 2017, this chapter demonstrates how the conditions of the ethnic community in the L.A.

54 “Provider” is the official term for the workers. During the interviews, the workers themselves used the English word provider and ganbyeongin interchangeably. Ganbyeongin in these workers’ language does not refer to anything informal. They instead used the expression “cash job” to denote an informal job. 55 My fieldwork in L.A. was initially conducted as a part of a larger project by Cynthia Cranford with Jennifer Chun and Young Shin from Asian Immigrant Women Advocates “Immigrant Labour Markets for Personal Care Work”. I would like to ackolwedge funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant “Gender Migration and the Work of Care”, No: 895-2012-1021 (P.I. Ito Peng, project led by Cynthia Cranford with Jennifer Chun and Young Shin from Asian Immigrant Women Advocates “Immigrant Labour Markets for Personal Care Work”) for supporting my fieldwork in L.A.

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Koreatown shape the distinct ways in which these workers navigate IHSS work, a system that is state-subsidized yet heavily dependent on the market.

5.1 Unionized Immigrant Homecare Workers in a State-funded Program

5.1.1 IHSS Work in Koreatown: “The letter is just a letter.”

IHSS is a publicly funded program governed by formal documents and rulings. In its contracts, positions and work hours are defined on the basis of “Taylorized schedules” that administrators created to minimize what the state pays by intensifying some forms of labour and leaving out intangible yet essential others (Boris and Klein 2015:9). Once a service recipient applies for the IHSS program, a social worker visits the applicant, accesses the applicant’s service needs, and determines service hours based on the Hourly Task Guidelines (HTGs) specifying the “appropriate time” for each service, for instance, 15 minutes to move an immobile recipient, 30 minutes to shower and bathe them, and one hour per week for laundry. Workers then provide service for a certain number of authorized hours from an itemized list of services that the applicant can receive from a registered IHSS provider. The list of services covers a wide range, including housework, personal hygiene, and accompaniment to medical appointments, but IHSS regulations seek to limit specific tasks in a rigorous manner. For instance, oral hygiene service consists of “brushing teeth, rinsing mouth, caring for dentures, and flossing,” and a different amount of time is authorized for each task. As for housework, IHSS limits the service to fifteen specific tasks and allocates time for each one. The way in which IHSS actually operates in Koreatown, however, is very different from what is stated in its formal documents, which workers call “the letter.” 26 out of 28 workers I interviewed said their actual work schedule and what they actually do is different from what the letter describes.

The informality built into IHSS, however, makes the rules that define its service a mere scrap of paper. First, the “authorized services” are meticulously established, yet IHSS does not enforce the rules. Social workers visit program recipients once in a while to check whether they are receiving the services stated in the IHSS letter, but these visits are rare, and they cannot find out

146 if the recipients are telling the truth. Second, compared to the state LTCI program, which intervenes in controlling the labour force with a certification system, IHSS does not require any qualifications for providers. Albeit meagre and limited, the LTCI administration indirectly controls the quality of its service through official discourses on care specialists and legal regulations for LTCI agencies that dispatch yoyangbohosa workers. IHSS, through which the state pays workers directly, lacks any kind of intermediary. Third, unlike other states, California allows LTCI recipients to hire their family members.56

Informality is built into the structure of IHSS, so one must look at the actors who are involved in the program to understand the nature of this informality. The labor market is “necessarily localized within a geographically limited area,” as individual actors’ interpretations and enforcement of legal and policy edifices can change the actual operation of the labor market (Glenn 2004:2). I argue that the informality of the IHSS program is amplified when it operates within an ethnic community. When IHSS becomes a part of the ethnic economy, the rigorous boundaries of work posited by the government completely lose their teeth. Instead, unspoken cultural norms become a principle of the social organization of labour in the Koreatown IHSS, replacing the official rules. For example, Soon-Ja, one of the workers I interviewed, makes kimchi at her recipient’s house all day long at times, though the IHSS letter allots three hours per week for meal preparation. Some workers prepared their late elderly recipients’ funerals and took care of the recipients’ keepsakes. Virtually all the workers talked about their experiences visiting elderly recipients on Korean holidays and their birthdays. None of these tasks are stated in the letter, but they are commonly recognized among Korean IHSS workers as “necessary” and “essential” services for Korean elders, meaning that one must perform these unnoted and unspecified tasks to become a good homecare worker in the Los Angeles Koreatown. What are these unspoken rules, and how do they affect IHSS work in Koreatown? And, most importantly, how do workers make sense of these practices?

5.1.2 IHSS in the Ethnic Care Economy

56 The LTCI program once allowed yoyangbohosa to serve their family members, but currently only 20 hours per month are permitted when the yoyangbohosa is a family member.

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Family Care: Gendered Filial Piety

She [the recipient] is my mother-in-law. And you know, things can be a bit uneasy with a mother-in-law. I hesitated a lot when I started working, but she is a person whom I should take care of anyway, even though it’s not through IHSS. I must do this. Because I am her

daughter-in-law, the eldest son’s wife. So, I have to whether or not I get paid.78

On-Ja, age 57, IHSS provider

Gender norms that obligate women within the family to take care of elders play a pivotal role in shaping the organization of homecare work in Koreatown. Out of 28 workers I interviewed, 10 of their recipients included family members at the point of interview. When older parents, especially in-laws, come to need assistance in their daily lives, women in families are expected to answer the moral call. Like On-Ja, who thought that as a daughter-in-law she would have to do it anyway sooner or later, many workers conflated economic need and moral duty based on their gendered status in explaining their motivations to start IHSS work.

The pressure from the gendered filial piety is enhanced when women have limited economic opportunities in the gendered and racialized labor market. Most workers found that they did not have many options in their 50s, and IHSS work emerged as a suitable job for them. Even if they had other options, their relatively meager incomes compared to their male spouses convinced them to quit their jobs to perform filial piety as a family. For example, On-Ja had her own small business in Koreatown, but her moral obligations pressured her to close the declining business and make IHSS a career, when her mother-in-law claimed her moral license to get care from her daughter-in-law. When her mother-in-law said that she was waiting for On-Ja to become her provider, and when her husband convinced her that doing IHSS work would be better than keeping the small business, she had no choice but to take the job. Starting with her mother-in- law, she also took care of her mother-in-law’s sister and her husband’s younger sibling later.

Workers who take care of their family members often see their work as hybrid of paid work and performing filial duty, interpreting the IHSS as subsidizing their moral performance. Given the lack of state supervision of the labour process, social workers play a role in reinforcing such views. Similar to other ethnic communities in California, social workers often suggest family providers to consumers (Cranford 2020), and reassert a gendered understanding of filial

148 piety in their everyday encounters with workers. For instance, Jung-Sook, a 61-year-old worker who was with IHSS for six years, worked at her mother’s place for six hours every day even though IHSS only paid for three hours of authorized service per day. She found working for six hours every day overwhelming, but she could not ask for more hours from the social worker, who assumed that “having a daughter [as a homecare worker] is always good” and there was “no need for inspection.” Asked why she worked more than her three authorized hours every day, Jung-Sook explained:

Because she is my parent. I can’t say, “Mom, I’m leaving” when the time is up. I can’t do that. I just can’t. That is the difference from other people [nonfamily clients], from my experience…I can’t tell the social worker “I work this much, and I need more hours.” I just can’t say that. I would say so if she was not my parent, but she is my parent. I can’t when the government is paying me already. I think I should be thankful for that. You know, you

have to do this for your parents anyway, even if it is not paid.79

Both On-Ja and Jung-Sook also felt that it was wrong to demand more hours or complain about their working conditions. They and other workers who took care of their family members reiterated that they “can’t say no” to certain requests and “can’t” complain about anything when they get paid for doing their filial duties, because their moral sense told them that they were the ones who should undertake the burden of care whether they were paid or not. For women in the family, the only legitimate reason to refuse such a moral call for care would be competing duties, (Glenn 2010), which women in their 60s and 70s rarely have. This sense of moral duty is reinforced by the people around them in their everyday life, including family members and social workers, who are Koreans in many cases. Note that the very gendered expectations around being a good daughter not only affected Jung-Sook but were also deeply entrenched in the social worker’s assumption. This assumption, namely that female family members automatically make good care workers, not only reinforced Jung-Sook’s self-censorship about her moral duty, but also repackages gendered assumptions about the quality of service provision, further blurring the boundary between moral duty and legal obligation. Jung-Sook confirmed and even reproduced these gendered expectations by convincing herself that overworking without complaining was what she ought to do.

Non-family Care: Cultural Expectations and “Koreans’ Jeong”

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The notion of homecare as an amalgam of gendered moral duty and paid labour persists, even when clients are not family members. Being repackaged as an expression of Korean’s jung (a deep and ingrained sense of personal connection and obligation), workers’ sense of moral responsibility extends to co-ethnic elders. In explaining why homecare workers find it hard to say “no” to their recipients, Aronson and Neysmith have pointed to workers’ sense of moral responsibility, or the idea that they are the only ones who fully understand their recipients’ needs and whom the recipients can therefore rely on, which hinders workers from making rights claims (Aronson and Neysmith 1996). Likewise, as I will explain in the following sections, workers identify themselves as ideal caregivers for poor Korean immigrant elders, viewing their work as more than just providing the services described in the IHSS contract. For example, one of the most common complaints about clients in my interviews was that elders ask the workers to make kimchi for their children. Though they knew that it was not their job, and they were frustrated with the request, most workers said they accommodated their recipients because they understood the cultural context that shaped the elders’ desire to make kimchi for their children. While IHSS gives recipients the power to hire and fire providers, workers reasoned that they catered to the elderly not simply because they were afraid of being fired. Throughout the interviews, workers presented a strong consensus around their view of IHSS consumers in Koreatown, that is, that Korean elderlies do not care about the hours and tasks in the IHSS contract and think homecare workers are their maids. While some workers said that critical consumer education could change these older groups of Korean immigrants’ perceptions of IHSS, most of the workers interpreted the recipients’ needs as culturally specific needs for their generation.

The IHSS workers highlight the interdependent nature of care, yet the interdependency in their narratives is culturally specific. And it relies on nostalgia for the mythical Korean family, governed by filial piety. Instead of emphasizing the interdependency between autonomous individuals, these workers highlight the dependency of a culturally embedded subject, namely poor Korean elders, on Korean women, specifically middle-aged Korean women. Workers’ examples of cultivating “good relationships” with recipients, such as frequent visits and phone calls, doing work outside IHSS duties, celebrating Korean holidays and recipients’ birthdays, communicating with recipients’ children, and acting like recipients’ children or daughters-in-law in public to spare them shame is more than just assisting the elders in daily life as the IHSS program mandates. The “good relationships” in their narratives constitute more than just giving

150 recipients emotional comfort. Instead, they see their role as creating and maintaining the image of family life by doing physical and emotional work that is done mainly by women in the imaginary Korean family.

These workers’ practices in performing good care work are centered on what di Leonardo calls “kin work” (di Leonardo 1987). Rejecting popular perspectives that see kin as merely a by- product of reproduction or leisure activities, di Leonardo emphasizes that kin or quasi-kin ties are created and maintained with women’s work that weaves together networks. In illustrating the care work that Koreatown IHSS workers perform, I build on the concept of kin work, expanding the concept to capture women workers’ roles in reproducing their ethnic community. While di Leonardo’s original formulation emphasizes women’s work among households to maintain kin ties, I use the concept to demonstrate how workers deploy their ability to do kin work as a labor market strategy to negotiate with recipients whom they see as “hopeless” to be educated. In my expanded definition, kin work includes women’s symbolic, emotional and physical work to produce cultural intimacy among people, which then enables them to maintain a co-ethnic sense.

I use the extended concept of kin work to show how immigrant women’s work through a publicly funded program plays a role in maintaining their ethnic community, namely L.A. Koreatown. Facing constraints in the racialized and gendered labour market, Korean IHSS workers translate their own personal experiences of migration and collective imagination of Korea into their caregiving discourses, and by doing so, they not only produce a sense of co- ethnicity but also carry on the role of weaving together their very insular community. Korean workers in L.A. see poor immigrant elders’ vulnerability as a by-product of ageing in a foreign society where adult children “are not capable of taking care of” or “abandon their old parents” due to the lack of a culture of filial piety. By doing so, these women see that their essential role is to create and maintain a quasi-kin relationship with recipients by giving them a sense of belonging and respect. While this might provide some comfort for both workers and elders, it validates and even reinforces the gender norms around caregiving, now with a state subsidy.

5.1.3 An Ethnic Network within the SEIU

As Cranford (2020) has analyzed, coalitions across different interests have shaped the development of IHSS in California. While the Independent Living (IL) movement underscored

151 the dignity and flexibility of care recipients, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was interested in augmenting labour market security through IHSS providers’ right to collective bargaining. The coalition between the two achieved significant gains, such as legal recognition of IHSS providers’ workerhood and state responsibility, albeit limited. Unlike domestic service and eldercare under LTCI in South Korea, IHSS sees the recipients of the service as “hiring employers,” yet the state shares employer responsibility (Cranford 2020). The SEIU has won significant gains including wage increases, health benefits, overtime, and travel time in recent years. However, the SEIU’s social movement unionism approach, through its alliance with disability and senior groups, constrained the union’s active intervention in the labour process with IHSS (Cranford 2020). Given the lack of government supervision or protections at the intimate level in the labour process, workers face exploitive and disrespectful treatment in recipients’ homes, yet the union has not stepped in. In this absence of regulatory and protection mechanisms, workers find their own strategies to mitigate possible exploitation from their recipients. Korean immigrant IHSS workers deployed a two-pronged strategy that is closely tied to their worker subjectivity: the first one is a strategy based on their sense of co-ethnicity, and the other is based on their sense of self as unionized workers in the public sector.

Workers’ Ambivalent View of Recipients: Poor Korean Elders versus Exploitive Consumers

The workers I met in the L.A. Koreatown presented an ambivalent view of their recipients. On one hand, these workers described their recipients as emotionally and socially vulnerable people in need of a co-ethnic woman’s care. On the other hand, they described recipients as uneducated people who do not, or cannot, understand what IHSS is and who attempt to exploit workers. One might wonder how a vulnerable elderly could be an exploitive employer at the same time, yet the two seemingly contrasting images co-exist in these workers’ narratives. By interpreting the recipients’ needs through the notion of filial piety, they construct recipients’ needs as culturally specific needs. When workers construct recipient’s needs, saying “Korean elders need Korean ways of care,” they can easily see the mismatch between such needs and the IHSS service they are supposed to provide.

The workers could also be ambivalent because they are active members of the Korean group within the SEIU. This group offers a strong collective sense of ethnic belonging, providing workers with alternative conceptualizations of IHSS work for co-ethnic elders. These workers

152 are active members of the SEIU, yet most of their union activities are contained within the Korean group, largely due to the language barrier. Except for a few workers who speak English fluently, most workers rarely interact with union staff or workers from other communities. Ironically, it is participation in the union that strengthens their sense of co-ethnic identity. All the official union discourses are mediated to the Korean group through their monthly meeting, small- group activities, and informal gatherings led by captains. In this mediating process, workers embrace union discourses that underscore their employment relationships with consumers as well as the state. Embracing these official union discourses, workers understand their work as legitimate paid labour that bears labour rights. Yet at the same time, they develop their own internal discourses based on their hands-on experiences in Koreatown.

In an earlier chapter, I illustrated how house managers dismantle the separate sphere ideology, vigorously promoting discursive strategies that make up domestic service work—visible, valuable, professional, and public work. They see themselves as professionals with a set of skills, distancing themselves from the popular idea that any woman in the family can do the job of a domestic worker. For house managers, therefore, the home is their workplace where they are supposed to keep some distance to protect service recipients’ privacy. On the contrary, IHSS workers in Koreatown imagine the home as an ideal locus of good care. In many interviews, workers explained that receiving care outside the home, such as at senior hospitals, is considered a “shame” for Korean seniors because it implies that they were abandoned by their children. Workers often described the stigma around receiving care at senior hospitals (yangrobyeongwon). For instance, in an interview with Hyun-Sook, a 61-year-old IHSS provider, she states that going to a senior hospital is morally “imposing” on a recipient’s children as it indicates that they are doing their filial duties. She explained:

She [her recipient] thinks that it [going to a senior hospital] is a shameful and an imposition on her son. She says that her son, who doesn’t even come and visit her, came

yesterday, but it is in her imagination all the time. Her sons never come.80

Note that Hyun-Sook deeply sympathized with her recipient because she understood the cultural context around the image of abandoned elderlies. And it was not only Hyun-Sook, but many workers during the interviews who expressed such sympathy, describing their willingness to provide services to their recipients as if they were daughters-in-law caring for them at home. The

153 family as a locus of ideal care emerged in my interviews with Korean Chinese workers, but the IHSS workers’ view was different because of its ambivalence. While Korean Chinese workers’ narratives are clearly centered on their worth and capability of providing wholehearted care as fictive kin with genuine hearts, L.A. workers conflate and fuse the two seemingly contradictory motivations of care—self-interest and altruism. At times they express sympathy or jeong for their recipients: they call them “mom” (umma) and do additional work to give them a feeling of being cared for in a family. But other times, these workers express rage toward recipients who do not appreciate the physical and emotional toll their work takes on them, clearly recognizing that what they do is work. However, one thing is certain. While care workers often do not recognize supplementary work as actual work (Aronson and Neysmith 1996; Baines 2016), these L.A. workers clearly articulated that what they do is “additional,” and doing extra work is part of their IHSS tasks.

Before we unpack their ambivalence, a unique feature in L.A. workers’ narratives must be noted first. While most house managers’ ideal of good care is explicitly centered on the visible results of their service, that is, shinning clean homes and nutritious food prepared professionally, L.A. homecare workers said little about the physical aspects of their work. Part of the reason behind this diminished emphasis on physical aspects is the workers’ employment history. For those who previously experienced much more physically demanding service jobs, such as supermarket sales associates or Korean restaurant servers, working in a small senior apartment felt less demanding in a relative sense. Instead, the interpersonal aspect of their work becomes core. Consider, for example, the following quote from an interview with Soon-Shil, a 60-year-old IHSS provider. Elaborating on her idea of good care, she said:

To make them not lonely. Well, there are not so many things to do in those elderlies’ homes. You know, the ordinary things you do at home, like cleaning, doing laundry, that sort of stuff. But they are so lonely. Their children do not visit them often. I think that the state wants us to go and take care of them so that they are not so alone…You know, it is said that America is a country where children abandon their parents when they get old. Elders get around 800 dollars from the government, and they only pay around 200 dollars for rent so that they can live on their own. I think that makes their children think that it is okay not to take care of their own parents. Koreans have an idea that they will live with their old parents, but there is no such idea here. Because here, the state takes care of you

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when you are poor. I think that to make them not lonely is the most important. They

[elderlies] like jung—there are not many things to do.81

Unlike house managers and yoyangbohosa who distinguish services provided by them—the professionals— from those by non-professionals, all the workers I interviewed in L.A. used expressions such as “ordinary things” and “things you do at home” when they described their work. Like Sun-Shil, workers did not elaborate in detail on how they do laundry and clean dishes, because these tasks were simply reduced to “ordinary things.”

Why do interpersonal relationships take such significance over other skills? What do they mean by “good relationships?” The quote from Sun-Shil exemplifies the common theme that many workers narrated, namely elders’ loneliness. Many workers described how Korean immigrant seniors’ [alleged] solitude stems from the absence of their recipients’ children and daughter-in- law. By doing so, they presented a view that constructs the recipients’ needs in terms of a lack of filial piety. In this narrative, Korean elderly recipients’ needs in IHSS service stem from emotional vulnerability: the fact that these frail elders do not have anyone who would have filial piety for them makes them extra vulnerable, and workers need to meet such needs.

“Managing a good relationship with the grandmother is the key.”: Conform to Cultural Norms

Asked what good care is and what makes one a good care worker, the majority of workers in Koreatown responded that managing an excellent interpersonal relationship with the consumer is the key. In a gathering of the SEIU Korean group, Myung-Ja, the leader of the group, emphasized that maintaining a good relationship with recipients should not be compromised even when they ask for service outside of IHSS authorized tasks. While some interview participants distanced themselves from Myung-Ja’s opinion, which privileges interpersonal relationships even when their working conditions are sacrificed, workers all highlighted good interpersonal relationships as a necessary and sufficient condition for them to be good caregivers. The remaining question is, then, what do they mean by “good relationships?” What types of relationships are “good” in the context of in-home care? And why is this so important to them?

Cultural knowledge is essential to providing good care in Koreatown, as it allows workers to interpret subtle cues and decide what services they should provide. The culturally interpreted

155 needs of the recipients structure IHSS work, replacing the formal rules and documents. Being understanding of recipients often leads workers to do additional, and excessive at times, work beyond the IHSS letter. Consider, for example, how Soon-Ja ended up making kimchi with her recipient. She said:

We can’t just say no, although deep inside it is mentally demanding. For me, one of my clients who passed away used to prepare a box of cabbage and ask me to make kimchi…I could not say no to her…I visited her after I finished my prayers at dawn around 5:30 or 6:00, then I could finish my work there around 5:00 p.m. Then she felt sorry as I worked so much, and she was a nice and conscientious person, so she gave me some tip, like 30 or 40 dollars. Because I worked too much, and she felt sorry about it. Then we make kimchi together [laughs]. And when her children visited her on the weekend, she distributed the

kimchi we made together.82

In the IHSS letter (job description), Soon-Ja is required to prepare a small number of meals for her recipient, not kimchi for her children. She knew that it was not her job, but Soon-Ja felt she could not say “no” because she understood and sympathized with the poor elder who did not have many things but at least wanted to give some kimchi to her children. Yet sympathy, or Korean jung, alone did not determine her decision to do the work. Because Soon-Ja knew that her recipient was a “nice and conscientious” person who tipped her for being understanding and doing extra work, she decided to make kimchi even though it is physically demanding.

Practices around tipping in IHSS work reveal its inner workings in Koreatown—a hybrid of public and private, and a state-funded program operating in a reciprocity-based gift economy. It relies not only on payments allotted by the state, but also involves intangible rewards of recognition and gratitude. Soon-Ja was not the only one who mentioned a “nice” and “conscientious” recipient “with good discretion and proper manners” (gyeonguga issda) when workers described cases where recipients give tips in exchange for extra work, such as giving them rides to places other than hospitals and making lots of food for a recipient’s family event. Workers’ portrayed tipping practices as more than just material compensation for their work. Like Mi-Hae describes below, many workers accept tips not only as a reward for their labour but also as a sign of recognition. Mi-Hae said:

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When the grandmother gave me a tip, I refused to receive it. But she insisted, saying she was so thankful. So, when she gave me 100 dollars, I refused to take it and said, “20 dollars then.” She gave it [tip] to me on holidays…I said, you shouldn’t give me that

much. 20 dollars is more than enough for me.83

Another type of extra work is linking recipients to their adult children. Workers provide updates and consult with children about the recipient’s condition. They often play a role in the recipient’s funeral together with family members. In case of emergencies, especially when a recipient is hospitalized, many workers described their experiences of taking care of recipients in the absence of family members. When Mi-Kyung’s recipient was hospitalized unexpectedly, Mi- Kyung took care of her on behalf of her children and communicated with them. The children wanted to pay her, but she refused:

I said, No way! Why should I receive that money? I am not taking it. I just did it out of jeong. I didn’t take it, and then her daughter brought a nicely wrapped Shiseido cosmetics

set with lotion, toner, and everything and gave it to me.84

Since Mi-Kyung refused the money, the recipient’s daughter gave her a skin care gift set. While she said she took care of the recipient “out of jeong” without looking for any compensation, the following conversation with Mi-Sook, another interview participant who talked with me and Mi- Kyung, reveals an interesting expectation concerning reciprocity:

Mi-Sook: At least they are people with discretion and proper manners [gyeonguga issneun saramdeul].

Mi-Kyung: Oh yes, they are. You shouldn’t just let them take our help for granted.85

Note that Mi-Sook’s comment on Mi-Kyung’s recipient’s daughter emphasizes the moral element of having “discretion and proper manners,” which is within the scope of IHSS rules. But Mi-Kyung’s response suggests the unspoken rules around reciprocity: although she refused to be paid, saying that she did it “out of jung,” she also said that the recipients should not take her extra work for granted. Tokens of recognition and gratitude, therefore, though they are not mentioned in the IHSS letter, are essential to continue to receive good service.

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As shown in the examples above, a common element in workers’ narratives around devoted and good care workers is the absence of the recipient’s family. When workers do the work of kin, largely outside of their official duties, they emphasize how demanding their work is but how genuine their motives are and how caring they are. In taking care of a hospitalized recipient “on behalf of her children,” making homemade side dishes when the recipient’s “daughter-in-law doesn’t come by,” and doing emotional work when the recipient eats the food they bring or cook, worker perform the work of kin. These sorts of work are also not part of the IHSS letter, but they are necessary to be recognized as a good worker by both recipients and other workers.

I visited an IHSS recipient’s home with two workers I interviewed. Young-Sook, one of my interviewees, wanted to check on the condition of her former recipients after she learned that they had fired the worker she introduced to replace her. At the elderly couple’s senior apartment, I sat watching Young-Sook cleaning the place, feeding the couple, and saying goodbye to them, saying “mom, I will come back tomorrow morning, around 8:30.” The next day, at the union meeting in the afternoon, she stepped up to the podium and started criticizing her successor vehemently, saying:

I know that there are many bad grandmothers, but I think there are also so many bad ganbyeongin [IHSS providers] as well. How she [the worker who currently take care of her old recipients she visited with me] works is so bad: if you look at the meals she prepares, it’s horrible! She just prepares the meal then leaves! She never calls [the recipients] on Saturday and Sunday! The grandmother passes out when she comes back from the hospital, but she just made a huge pot of soggy rice porridge! I am telling you that we have to think about ourselves this year. Grandmothers are our bosses and we only work 40 or 50 hours out of 80 hours. Then what should we do in return? Clean the balcony and everything!

Don’t be so picky! [strong applause]86

The elderly couple I met the day before were not Young-Sook’s clients anymore. Yet Young- Sook, a captain who was also cited by many other workers as a “good worker” during my interviews, criticized her fellow worker for doing her duties only according to the IHSS contract. Her vehement speech and the enthusiastic applause well illustrate how unionized workers are convinced to comply with the cultural norms in Koreatown: the dominant discourse within the Korean union group urges the workers to prioritize the relationship with recipients, even when it

158 comes with the cost of performing tasks that are not authorized by IHSS. However, the quote above also suggests that workers make an interesting trade-off in their practice of prioritizing elders’ needs. With the exception of one worker, all those I interviewed responded that they work less than their authorized hours. In exchange for meeting recipients’ needs, workers not only get employment security, they alleviate the poor remuneration of IHSS work.

5.2 Becoming Paid-Daughters

5.2.1 “We are not Sikmo”: Unsettling Class Assumptions

IHSS workers in Koreatown said they normally cater to recipient’s needs, but all the workers stated that they have a clear bottom line. First, many workers described a feeling of being degraded as a major reason that ignites conflicts with recipients. In the previous chapters, I illustrated how house managers and yoyangbohosa workers at the Seoul Center expressed great rage when they felt that they were treated like “poor desperate women” or “ajumma next door” who have no work expertise. Korean Chinese workers, on the other hand, were resentful when they felt that they were not treated like a part of the family. For workers in Koreatown, it is a feeling of being looked down upon. These workers express strong aversion when their recipients, who are welfare reliant elders, treat them as people in the lower social strata. Like Myung-Ja recounted in the quote below, many workers used the exact same expression, “treating me like a sikmo,” when they described unacceptable treatment from the recipient. When workers describe unbearable stress at work, other pejorative terms that refer to domestic workers, such as pachulbu (part-time domestic worker), and momjong (handmaids) reoccurred.

Few people recognize us as ganbyeongin who work under IHSS and get paid by the government. The elders do not pay us, but I’d say that 99% of them [recipients] have the idea that we make a living because of the them, so we are their helpers, personal maids, or

servants, and we have do obey them.87

Sikmo refers to live-in servant girls from rural areas that were prevalent during Korea’s industrialization, which entailed rural to urban migration until the 1980s. These poor school-age girls were sent to relatives or acquaintances in urban areas, being forced to work as live-in domestic workers with extremely low wages, or even without wages at times, simply to

159 unburden their impoverished natal families. Sikmo is not just a different name for a domestic worker. It is a historically specific type of domestic work that is embedded in a specific social context: while the work of female servants in feudal times was obligated by their status in the caste system, sikmo’s work had elements of paid work based on a contractual relationship that has been accentuated in their successors, such as pachulbu, doumi, and house managers. In essence, the prevalence of hiring poor girls as sikmo until the 1980s and the resurgence of domestic service and eldercare work in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis both reflect Korean women’s gendered survival strategies in the gender-stratified labour market. Working in private homes as live-in sikmo was virtually the only viable option for girls in rural areas who were poorly educated but were forced to support their families, especially the education of male siblings in the aftermath of the Korean War. Entering domestic service and the eldercare sector through the government’s workfare or social service programs was also a feasible option for women in their 50s and 60s in dire economic need. Despite this continuity, the strong class connotation that the term sikmo carries triggered sharp animosity among the IHSS workers, who do not consider themselves as impoverished people.

Being “treated like a sikmo” is not only the major stressor for workers, but it is also a point of reference for defining who they are not. House managers and yoyangbohosa also drew a boundary against sikmo, but they did so because they see sikmo as a symbol of women who lack professionalism at work. In the Koreatown workers’ narratives, sikmo is not constructed in terms of skills; rather, the class connotation in sikmo attacks their sense of self. By saying “we are not sikmo,” these workers challenge the constant association between home care work and impoverished, uneducated women from lower social and economic backgrounds.

What sort of experiences at work are then described as “treating me like a sikmo” in workers’ narratives? The most prominent theme that emerged in workers’ portrayals of recipients who treat them this way is the attitude that the worker is not an equal person. Workers sense this attitude from various verbal and behavioral cues in their daily interactions with recipients. For instance, Mi-Kyung described a day when she realized how her client treats her. When the recipient’s daughter-in-law brought some food to share, Mi-Kyung sat on the sofa with her recipient, and the daughter-in-law sat on the floor to eat the food together. Her moment of realization came unexpectedly a few days later. She said:

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I ate the food with them on the sofa. The daughter-in-law had a seat on the floor, so we just ate. Then a few days later, she [her recipient] told me that her heart broke. I asked, “How come your heart broke?” But then I realized, of course her heart broke. Because the ill- hanun-nyun [servant woman] should have let the daughter-in-law sit on the sofa. I should

have gotten up quickly. It is because I cluelessly occupied the sofa and ate [laughs].88

Calling the recipient “mother” and doing all the work that her daughter-in-law would do, Mi- Kyung tried to create a “family-like” atmosphere, but when the real kin, namely the daughter-in- law was present, her kin work was relegated to the work of an “ill-hanun-nyun” (servant woman). Like Mi-Kyung, The vast majority of workers I interviewed in L.A. called their recipients “mother” (eomeoni) or “mom” (eomma) in order to show their effort to provide an authentic feeling of being cared for, in contrast to house managers and yoyangbohosa who called their recipients “customer” (gogaeknim) or “respected elder” (eoreusin). However, as the workers find that their recipients use such quasi-kinship relationships simply to exploit and gain control over them, they realize that the illusionary family-like relationship, in fact, obscures the lack of intimate justice in caring work.

In Chapter 2 I described how house managers guard their dignity by dressing and talking “professionally” when they interact with clients so that they are not seen as just poor desperate women who are willing to do “dirty work.” While IHSS workers in Koreatown also disassociate themselves from the stigmas around working at home, their use of sikmo as a point of reference was different from its South Korean counterpart. Similar to house managers and yoynagbohosa, IHSS workers negated the sikmo label, highlighting that their work is paid work with clearly defined job descriptions and tasks with hours allotted to specific recipients. However, emphasis on their skills or the professional quality of their work is not salient in the narratives that distinguish their work from what sikmo do. Instead, a strong class consciousness that negates the class gap between the workers and their recipients is prominent, constituting a building block for their narratives of IHSS providers as state-paid workers, not subjugated individuals. For instance, consider how Hyun-Sook, a 61-year-old IHSS provider who had worked in a bank in Korea, described her recipient who was never willing to have a meal with her over the past five years. She said:

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Those grandmothers who are receiving in-home service here [L.A.] mostly came to the states in the 1960s and 70s from our country [Korea]. So, their way of thinking is stuck in Korea in the 60’s. Korea: the way they look at us is not even as helpers, just sikmo. She does not say it out loud, but I can tell from how she acts. I’ve been taking care of her for five years, but we haven’t had a meal together. [I: Does that mean that she doesn’t want to

eat with you at the same table?57] Yes. She wouldn’t yell at me, but there are those invisible things. I cried for six months. But now that I am in my sixties, [and I admit that] my current situation is this [working as an IHSS provider], no matter how many years I

have worked at a bank in Korea.89

Hyun-Sook’s former recipient was from an affluent family, went to a prestigious university, and even had a handmaid (momjong) back in Korea. Yet in reality she was, according to Hyun-Sook, a poor and lonely immigrant who was living in an illusion of her glory days in the past, misusing her power to abuse homecare workers. For Hyun-Sook, who was from a middle-class background in Korea, recipients’ attempts to boss her around were absurd, because, after all, they were poor, foreign, and frail elders who needed daily assistance to live. Calling the former recipient a sarcastic nickname, “the precious one” (gogwihasin bun), Hyun-Sook described those condescending recipients as “the real weak ones” (yakja) in opposition to their views on workers, specifically weak, poor, vulnerable, and exploitable women.

What we do is in-home service. Because they are frail elders [neomu noyakja], we go and help them with things that they can’t do by themselves, since they live alone. And you know, living in America [miguk saenghwal], they can’t rely on their children even though they have children. That’s life in America. So, they need us. We make pairs [with

recipients]. I could be in their situation in the future. I see myself in helping them.90

In workers’ portrayals of their elderly recipients, they are represented as abusive at times, but also as “frail,” “lonely,” and poor immigrants abandoned by their children. And this paternalistic

57 “Gyeomsang anhandaneun geoeyo?” Gyeomsang (兼床) literally means sharing a dining table. Historically n Korea, women in the family and servants were not allowed to eat with men at the same table in aristocratic households.

162 view, as Ok-Sook states above, allows workers to say that these elderlies “need” them. The negation of the class gap with the recipients also enables the workers to claim that what they do is not from status obligations that servants, maids, and sikmo carried out in the past, but it is work, or economic activity based on recipients’ “needs.” Workers then interpret their additional work for the recipients, like providing extra services and doing emotional labour, as motivated by sympathy or Korean jeong for poor immigrant elders.

The IHSS workers in Koreatown clearly see that the recipients exercise power over them, power to exploit them physically and emotionally. Yet while these workers acknowledge the asymmetric power relationship, they find it absurd and unreasonable, as they also see the recipients as vulnerable immigrant elders who live off welfare. Hyun-Sook, therefore, brought a cake to her condescending but poor recipient, whose children never visited her on her birthday, out of sympathy. However, she had no reason to assent to all the recipient’s excessive requests, such as a request to pick her up early in the morning at short notice. When her recipient suddenly changed the schedule, Hyun-Sook made it clear that she was taking care of her because it was her job:

I am sorry, samonim [madam], but you are not the only person I am taking care of. How can you call me now and tell me to park my car downtown in front of your apartment by 8:20 a.m. tomorrow morning? I have to leave at 7:30 a.m. from my house in order to be at your place by 8:20 a.m.…If you need to go to the hospital with me in the future, arrange it with me at least a week prior. You get the appointment confirmation from the hospital a

week earlier, right?91

5.2.2 “The government pays us, not you.”

Given the triangular employment relationship of IHSS work, which makes conventional collective bargaining strategies difficult to apply, the SEIU has utilized a strategy to promote the state as a nominal employer of homecare workers. By emphasizing homecare workers’ contributions to society and by pointing out that they are part of the public healthcare system, the union has been pushing the state to take more accountability in improving homecare workers’ working conditions. Koreatown IHSS workers, who are active members of the union, embrace union discourse in building their claim about what service recipients can expect and to what

163 extent. Many workers reiterated that “the government pays us since they [the poor and elderly] can’t afford this [in-home service],” when they complained about demanding recipients. For instance, Mi-Sook, a 62-year-old worker with four years of IHSS work experience, said, “The government pays for this [IHSS] since they [recipients] can’t afford it, but they have so many requests and ask this and that very meticulously”92

Like Mi-Sook, workers connect the union discourse around the publicity of the IHSS program to the claim that recipients should not expect too much because they are not paying out of their own pocket. Unlike LTCI, the government directly pays IHSS providers, which bolsters the union discourse underscoring the employer role of the state. On top of that, workers draw on the fact that IHSS is a publicly-funded program run by money from taxpayers like themselves in their rights discourse, making a claim that they are providing a sufficient service to recipients who live on welfare. For example, Hyun-Sook complained:

Because, on top of cleaning, I have to be ingratiating with them [biwido majchwojwoya doego]. Despite the fact that they receive this service from us with government money, elderly people are very fastidious that everything has to be spotless [tikkeul hana eopsi]

with vacuuming and wiping.93

Note that Hyun-Sook points to the interpersonal element of IHSS work, which is that IHSS workers are under pressure to be ingratiating with their recipients. To do this with Korean immigrant elders requires emotional labour as well as cultural knowledge to interpret subtle cues in daily interactions. Hyun-Sook and other workers maintained that this interpersonal element is real work. However, the IHSS letter does not recognize any emotional aspect of the work as an “authorized” task. Given the lack of official recognition in the policy, the workers make the claim that recipients must take the intangible aspects of homecare work into consideration when they make requests.

The “government pays us” narrative provides workers with political leverage to guard their dignity. By saying that the recipients are not actually paying for their service, they deny the recipients’ power over them. On-Ja, for example, said:

There are many times when those people [the elders with dementia] are sane. There are many times when they strategize, thinking “how to take control of her [the homecare

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worker]?” We, however, also don’t want to be subjugated by them at this age. They are not paying me. I just want to do my work, and I want to be treated like a human being. I don’t

want to live like their maid even when they are paying me.94

Another example, You-Ra’s case, shows how workers efforts to maintain a family-like relationship with elders coexist with their government worker subjectivity. When her recipient, whom she called “mom” (eomma), fired her after an argument, You-Ra argued:

I won’t go! I can’t quit. Mom, you hired me because you wanted me, so I worked here, but I quit when I want…You elders don’t have sympathy for young people who struggle to live. Those who worked as doumi [ domestic workers] are even worse! Can’t you just think about how hard it is and be more understanding when I am a bit late? You elders are ridiculous! Are you paying us? No, it’s the government who pays us. You think I am a

sikmo?95

You-Ra’s argument in the quote clearly illustrates how workers’ interpretation of the policy, which is mediated by the union, provides them with political leverage in the employment relationship. As implied in You-Ra’s argument that she is not a sikmo but a worker paid by the government, some workers also drew their understanding of homecare work as a public good in order to develop the claim that they deserved better treatment than servants/maids. For example, Mi-Young links her narrative on public goods to her rights claim. Explaining why she firmly says “no” when she gets an excessive request, she said:

I clearly tell them what I can to and what I can’t. I do tell them. We are often considered as servants. They [the elders] think of us as meosum [servants]. Yes, they think of us like that, but I don’t think so. They are getting benefits [IHSS] because I pay my taxes after working

like this.96

Including Mi-Young, some workers used expressions like “jungboo” (government job) or “gongmoowon” (public worker) when they explained why they prefered IHSS work over other options and why their recipients should not treat them like servants. The quotes below help us to understand other salient building blocks of workers’ meaning-making around the term “government worker,” which differ from yoyangbohosa workers’ national care expert subjectivity. In explaining what the IHSS job as a “government job” meant to her, Ok-Sook said:

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The government endorses us. We work with government-issued numbers that we obtain after we sign and do the fingerprints. In a worst-case scenario, what can protect us is the government when something happens [to us]. We are protected by the government, so to speak. We should work with so much pride! But grandmothers look down on us too much.

We tend not to confront that, but grandmothers hurt us because of that.97

Ok-Sook reinterprets the very minimal government regulations, such as getting workers’ fingerprints and signatures, which in fact were largely designed to prevent welfare fraud and to protect consumers from abuse, to bolster her argument that IHSS workers are endorsed by the government. She further links her argument with the claim that “we should work with so much pride.” This is similar to the yoyangbohosa workers’ case in the sense that both groups of workers find the source of their pride in their relationship with the state. However, the IHSS workers in Koreatown find the proof of state endorsement in their own interpretations of the policy, while the Seoul Center yoyangbohosa workers flesh out the empty policy discourses around professional care with meanings they have developed collectively.

IHSS workers’ government worker subjectivity is more than just working with pride. It enables the workers to have discursive legitimacy that they can deploy when they call for government responsibility in improving working conditions. In their responses to the question of who is responsible for the various problems at work and why they participated in the union protest, most of the workers called for government action to improve their working conditions by, for instance, making medical benefits accessible for Korean speakers and increasing the number of social workers whom Korean workers can reach out to. Asked why it was the government’s responsibility, Young-Mi responded:

Because the government is in charge of this [IHSS], the government has the power to decrease our hours and get rid of us. That’s why it is the government. These patients [IHSS

recipients], the patients have no power.98

Although IHSS workers described the major difficulties at work largely in regard to their recipients, no one blamed the recipients for the structural issues of IHSS, such as low-wages, poor benefits and lack of accessibility for non-English speakers. As Young-Mi says above,

166 workers are aware of the limited power of the recipients, that is, they may hire and fire workers, but they have no power to make changes at the policy level. Even when workers complained about their recipients, they attributed the exploitive relationship with their clients to the lack of education for IHSS recipients rather than demonizing the elders.

5.2.3 “I call her mom.”

While the workers acknowledge that the larger labor market is racialized and gendered and thus their employment opportunities are limited to jobs in Koreatown, they also see themselves as ideal workers for Korean elders. Along with their low English proficiency and limited ability to communicate with recipients, workers mentioned the lack of cultural compatibility as a prime reason why they cannot envision themselves working with non-Korean elderlies. Indeed, with three exceptions, workers said that they cannot or do not want to work for non-Korean recipients for these reasons. For example, explaining why she prefers Korean elderlies, Mi-Hae, a 60-year- old worker who graduated from a university in California and speaks English fluently, said:

How can I cook for a non-Korean [oegugin]? I can speak English, but I don’t want them [non-Koreans] to be around me…I am not a racist and I do see many international couples who get along. I don’t want to work without emotional connectivity [jeongseojeogeuro anmajeumyeon]. It’s not that I hate them like a racist, but my heart does not open. I am fine

with talking and doing business with them [non-Koreans].99

Asked why they work with Korean elderlies only, the most common and immediate responses I heard from workers was either “How can I cook their food?” and “What about language?” Yet the next thing workers commonly mentioned was their capacity of understanding their elderly recipients based on cultural affinity. The idea that Korean women are ideal workers for Korean elders, combined with the idea of home as an ideal locus of care, leads these workers to construct their worker subjectivity based on familiar ideals around care. Living and working in such an insular community, IHSS workers in Koreatown derive the value of their work from their fictive- kin or quasi-daughter roles with their recipients. Some workers responded that they call their recipients “mom,” presenting themselves as replacements for recipients’ family members. The co-existence of seeming conflicting subjectivities, namely, a government worker and fictive-kin

167 worker subjectivity, is not easy to comprehend for outsiders but is a viable configuration for workers in the L.A. Koreatown, given the economic and social reality they face.

5.3 Production of Korean

5.3.1 Redefining Korean

While their community in the union is demarcated with an ethnic boundary, this boundary is much more permeable compared to those of the three cases in previous chapters. Membership in the Korean community is broadly defined in the L.A. Koreatown compared to Seoul. While there was not a single migrant worker in the two care workers’ organizations in South Korea, I encountered some Joseonjok workers in the SEIU Korean workers’ community. In Korea, house managers and yoyangbohosa workers at the Seoul Center differentiated themselves from Korean Chinese migrant workers by seeing themselves as real Koreans who could provide quality care, while constructing Korean Chinese workers as suspicious, ill-trained communists from a backward society who only deserved “dirty jobs.” In L.A., where women of color are overly represented in the IHSS workforce, the boundary that demarcated Koreans and Korean-Chinese was much more porous and blurrier.

One reason for this permeability might be Korean workers’ experience working with Chinese immigrants in the union. Unlike house managers and (non-migrant) yoyangbohosa who have stereotypical images of Chinese, Korean workers in L.A. entered the union through the Chinese community, as they shared cultural affinity as identity as Asians. Interview data reveal that L.A. workers’ understanding of the term “Korean worker” is relatively loosely defined compared to their counterparts in Seoul. For instance, Mi-Young, a Korean Chinese worker who tried to join the Chinese group, became an ambassador of the Korean group after it was established within the SEIU. Describing how she was encouraged by other Korean-speaking workers to join the union, she said:

I went to work at those [senior] apartments, standing in the parking lot. And I saw her, so I asked her, “Are you doing homecare? You don’t seem to live here. You look young.” Then she said, “Yes, that is correct.” I said, “My goodness, then come to our union.”…When I

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go to the senior apartments, I speak to people with pride. Because I speak with so much pride, when I meet grandfathers on the elevator, they say “you seem really kind. You greet people really well.” Then I say that I am doing homecare, like that. There are times when I get asked if my parents live here. I say that I do homecare. Then they say “Ah, I will call

you when I need you, so give me your phone number.”100

Mi-Young spoke Korean fluently but with an accent that easily let me know that she was from China. She also mentioned that she still finds it difficult to prepare South Korean food, as Korean Chinese food is more a fusion of North Korean and Chinese style food. However, these seeming differences did not hinder her from cultivating membership in the Korean group in the union. What is most crucial in defining a Korean member of this group is not cultural markers, but rather a worker’s readiness to conform to the rules in the Korean community. By joining the Dandelion team within the SEIU Korean group, by getting along with fellow workers online and offline, and by actively participating in Korean group events, Mi-Young found herself fitting in with the Korean group more than the Chinese one. As she described in the quote above, when she politely greeted Korean immigrant elders on the elevator and gave them a signal that she was “really kind,” with verbal and non-verbal cues, she instantly became a candidate for a good Korean care worker who can work with Korean elders in Korean ways.

The government worker subjectivity that Mi-Young and other workers share in the Korean group also allows workers to see Mi-Young in a more inclusive manner. I was invited to a workers’ gathering in Koreatown during my fieldwork, and they contacted Mi-Young to ask her to come and talk with me. When Mi-Young was telling me that many Korean Chinese women in L.A. work in erotic massage parlours or saunas, and they ridicule her for doing such hard work for little money, Young-Sook, a worker at the gathering stood up and said, “But we are doing a government job!” Mi-Young agreed enthusiastically, responding, “Right! My husband tells people that I am a government worker (gongmuwon)!” The two women and the other workers at the gathering easily reached a consensus via shared worker subjectivity. That is, they do valuable and morally legitimate work whereas those in the sex industry earn money by doing morally corrupt work. The shared sense of morality, meaning, and pride attached to their work enable these workers to have a sense of community in the name of Korean ethnicity.

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Lastly, the accessibility of the union to Joseonjok further blurred the boundary between Korean immigrants from South Korea and China. Whether or not it is an official rule, most NHMC branch staff workers maintained that they do not want Korean Chinese workers as their fellow member house managers. In the Seoul Center, yoyangbohosa did not see Korean Chinese workers as their own kind, namely national care experts. Staff at the center were open to Korean Chinese workers as long as they were eldercare workers, but they had no knowledge about Korean Chinese workers’ distinct needs. In other words, none of these organizations that advocate for low-paid care workers’ rights are willing or ready to share their symbolic and material resources with Korean Chinese workers. Their narratives that elevate their position within the hierarchical labour market always assume that there are workers below them, and this degradation was repackaged with professionalism and moral language. Because the language of ethnic membership is available to Korean Chinese, they constantly rely on it, further reinforcing the reification of the two groups.

5.3.2 Unfit Others

One might think that Korean Chinese would blend into the Korean community, as they would share a sense of comradeship as fellow immigrants or minorities. However, many participants expressed antagonistic attitudes when they described other immigrant groups. Chinese workers were portrayed as somewhat close to Koreans, since workers located them in the same overall ethnic category, but the language barrier and workers’ assumption that Chinese workers are not willing to comply with the rules in Koreatown made it difficult to create pan-Asian solidarity among IHSS workers. Explaining that each community has their “own rules” and operates IHSS in their own ways, You-Jin said:

Different communities have their own rules, but it seems that Chinese work all the hours. [I: How so?] I don’t know, maybe they are honest? We [Koreans] have a culture of “hurry hurry.” Hurry! We just do things quickly. Mexicans do things slowly, so they need longer work hours. We are, say, if we are supposed to go three times per week to do 80-something hours a month, then we can be flexible by doing an hour on Monday and Friday, really quickly, and work a bit longer on Wednesday. We do things in a flexible way. But then

when they ask me to make kimchi, I’ll do it [with the remaining hours].101

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Working flexibly and catering to recipients’ needs in exchange is the “rule” in Koreatown, according to You-Jin. And because Koreans have a culture of “hurry hurry” and because they follow the rules of reciprocity, they make fitting workers for elderly recipients in Koreatown. On the contrary, Chinese and Mexican workers are portrayed as unfitting because Chinese workers lack flexibility and understanding of reciprocity, and Mexican workers “do things slowly” and thus cannot be efficient or flexible.

Despite the prevalence of Latinx IHSS workers in L.A., Korean workers did not have much to say about them. In some workers’ portrayals of Latinx workers, they were described as people who “lack work ethic,” who “are okay with living with daily cash jobs,” who come “with a lower education level,” and “with a culture of having too many children.” IHSS work for Korean elderlies is, therefore, something these workers are not capable of because of their nature. Instead, Latinx workers are described as suitable for manual jobs in Korean supermarkets or domestic service.

5.4 Conclusion

All the groups of workers in this study are composed of older women who do low-waged and stigmatized care work. However, their struggles reveal distinctly different features in terms of the types of organizations in which they are mobilizing. House managers’ struggles are part of the KWWA’s gendering struggle in the gender- and age- stratified Korean labour market; the struggles of yoyangbohosa carry out their struggles through the Seoul center, a quasi-government organization, in order to augment their security in the labor market by embracing and promoting professionalism in care policy; and Korean Chinese workers’ ethnic mobilization around the Joseonjok Coalition to claim their rights as legitimate members of the nation. The IHSS providers I met in the L.A. Koreatown are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), but the mode of their mobilization was a hybrid form of unionism and ethnic mobilizing.

Compared to the other three groups, which are hailed as “worker citizens” (house managers), “care experts” (yoyangbohosa), and “co-ethnics” (Korean Chinese) in the care and migration policy regimes in Korea, IHSS does not provide any signs that its workers can deploy. Instead, the market logic that organizes the U.S. welfare regime and California’s laissez-faire approach to

171 the IHSS program, combined with the racialized labour market in the United States, has shaped the organization of IHSS work as an ethnic economy. In navigating their unprotected jobs in an insular community, workers find value in performing kin work. Viewing their recipients as poor immigrant elderlies who live on welfare and do not receive appropriate care from their female kin, workers construct good IHSS care as work that a daughter-in-law and wife would do in an imaginary extended Korean family. Emphasizing that they are equipped with kin knowledge and have the capacity to read subtle cues and behave according to cultural scripts, by which they can cater to recipients’ emotional needs and therefore perform their kin work, they identify middle- aged Korean women workers as ideal for taking care of Korean elderlies in the L.A Koreatown. Their performance of IHSS work in alleged Korean ways often involves blurring the boundaries between tasks, expectations of being on-call at all times, and performing culturally specific but physically or mentally exhausting labour. However, I also find that workers utilize their seeming constraints, converting them into recourses for labour protection. Workers negate the class gap between them and their clients, and by doing so, they make clear that clients do not have the right to exploit their labour. Instead, workers say that the extra work they do is out of sympathy or Korean jung. Constructing a good worker subject as flexible and well-rounded, workers also tactically utilize cultural norms to protect themselves, by making trade-offs with their recipients.

Workers also embrace union discourses in forming their worker subjectivity. The union discourses that underscore the state’s accountability and promotion of IHSS are reflected in the workers’ subjectivity as government workers. While certification is a token of the Seoul Center yoyangbohosa workers’ state-endorsed professionalism and pride, IHSS workers, who are not required to go through certification to become providers, highlight the structure of IHSS to make the claim that they are government workers. By drawing on the fact that they are directly paid by the government and that IHSS is part of a welfare program that runs on taxpayers’ money, IHSS workers derive value and meaning from the public work they do.

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Conclusion

This study is about the worldview of low-paid care workers who have long been simply categorized as poor women who do unskilled work for survival. As neoliberal capitalist tactics to stratify marginalized groups of women into different types of low-paid care jobs become sophisticated, notwithstanding the increasing demand for care, achieving recognition of care work as a whole has become increasingly challenging. Each group of care workers, however, develops distinctive understandings of the world they inhabit. On the one hand, these workers all refuse to be lumped into residual and reifying categories of poor and desperate women, sikmo and servant, by developing distinct worker subjectivities based on a sense of self-worth as a care worker. On the other hand, they develop alternative ways of perceiving the hierarchically structured labour market by constructing the differences between themselves and others.

This study inductively identifies the salient criteria each group of workers draws on to evaluate worth by analyzing how they define “good care:” first, house managers draw on feminist understandings of reproductive labour to re-value their care work, defining it by their particular knowledge base and set of skills, which are not necessarily recognized as such in the androcentric notion of skills; second, national care experts similarly underscore the professional qualities in their work, which they see as undergirded by state-led credentialing processes; third, joseonjok imo deploy familial ideals of care in evaluating the services they provide as fictive-kin; fourth, paid-daughters in L.A. Koreatown also invoke gendered and ethnicized imaginings of care to stress the unique quality of their services vis-à-vis their recipients, yet they also highlight their contributions to the larger society by drawing on union discourses that emphasize the value that homecare workers produce in the public sector. My inquiry into these divergent subjectivities not only allows us to recognize emerging inequality among these workers, but it also helps us understand workers’ own logics without assuming any salient dimensions in categorizing care work.

The centrality of worker subjectivity in this study sheds light on the possibility of transformative politics for social change in care workers’ struggles. Care work literature has delved into various coping mechanisms in which low-paid care workers find dignity and value in their work that is alternative to the market price of their labour, such as internal rewards from the relational aspects of their work and their moral sense (Aronson and Neysmoth 1996; Baines 2016; Chun and

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Cranford 2018; Glenn 2010; Solari 2006; Stacey 2011b). By interrogating how “good care” is defined in relation to their workerhood, and by highlighting how workers’ alternative conceptualizations of “work” and “worker” are linked to their right claims, this study expands the micropolitics-focused literature to the collective level.

House National Care Joseonjok Paid-Daughter Manager Expert Imo (IHSS providers) (yoyangbohosa) • Gendered • Gendered morality • Gendered • Gendered morality Structural servitude • Neo-liberal turn to morality • Neo-liberal turn to • Neo-liberal welfare state • Neo-liberal welfare state factors turn to welfare (deinstitutionalization capitalist (deinstitutionalization state +marketization) integration of +marketization) (workfare) Korean diaspora repackaged with reparation politics

Policy • Job creation in • Institutionalizing • Downloading • Downloading care to care gendered moral care to ethnic communities regime obligations ethnicized • Job creation in care workers

• Racialized labour Labour • Competition • Ethnically- • Competition market with Joseonjok segmented, two- with non- • No competition market tiered labour market migrant (monopoly) within • Competition with workers Koreatown Joseonjok

Organizing • Partnership • Government • Ethnic • Along with the union with feminist subsidized NGOs mobilizing (SEIU, social through NGOs (grass- (top-down) (grass-root) movement unionism root) • Distancing approach) from migrant • Fuse union and workers ethnic networks movement

Care • Professional • State-certified care • Fictive-kin • Hybrid of home manager professionals government worker worker and (fictive)kin

subjectivity

Others • Unprofessional • Professionally and • Cold capitalist • Broad racializing others morally inferior (non-migrant discourses. Othering? others yoyangbohosa)

Table 4. Comparison of the four groups in this study

Table 4 above summarizes findings of this study. In analyzing the processes of the construction of care worker subjectivities, I deploy a multilevel analytical frame focusing on the dialectical

174 interplay of processes between policy regimes and care workers. Rather than confining the analysis of subject formation processes to the individual level or structural level, this study shows that workers reinterpret and further articulate policy discourses by giving meanings to them with their own reinterpretations of policies. The distinct care worker subjectivities I illustrate, namely house managers, national care experts, joseonjok imo and paid-daughters, emerge from divergent configurations of policy regimes, organizations and labour market dynamics. Migration and care regimes classify and channel marginalized women into the low- paid care market through targeted forms of recruitment that rely on gendered and ethnocentric discourses such as “co-ethnics,” “self-sufficient women,” and “care experts.” These discourses also signify the kinds of care that different groups of workers are expected to provide. For example, by repackaging low-paid eldercare with the language of professional care and filial piety, yoyangbohosa workers are expected to provide quality care at a low cost. A new neoliberal policy discourse around worker citizens repackages women’s economic needs with their empowerment and self-sufficiency, encouraging women to work in unprotected and poorly remunerated sectors to become proper citizens in society. Yet workers’ sense of self is not simply determined by the state’s policies. In the interactive processes of reinterpreting policy discourses, organizations play a significant role in translating state policies into alternative languages that support workers in different ways, providing them with a source of pride and a sense of entitlement as legitimate right-bearers along with vocabularies to express it.

In this study I compare care workers who are stratified into different sectors of the care market according to gender, ethnicity, migration, and citizenship. The multiplicity of care worker subjectivities reflects workers’ divergent strategies to prove their socioeconomic and moral worth as care workers within their locations in the structure of inequality. In both Korea and L.A. Koreatown, the gendered duty of care was transferred to the market, making care work cheap and unskilled work for marginalized groups of women. However, we also see variations of neoliberal tactics that locate each group in different social positions in two sites. While women’s empowerment through economic participation was the state discourse to channel middle-aged Korean women into a state-funded long-term care program undergirded by a large-scale informal migrant workforce in Korea, the gendered and racialized labour market set the context in which middle- aged Korean immigrant women were funneled into quasi-governmental yet precarious care jobs in L.A. Koreatown, an insular community where tacit cultural norms replaced government

175 regulations. Hence, for migrant and non-migrant workers whose care subjects compete with each other, re-valuing their work entails delegitimating others’ right claims in Korea, whereas the same tendency is rarely found in the case of Koreatown workers who monopolize the ethnic care economy.

By comparing the construction of worker subjectivity among four groups of workers who are unequally positioned yet do similar work, I demonstrate how boundary work becomes a part of subject formation. Each group applies what Lamont (2009) calls workers’ own “measuring stick” to re-value their socioeconomic and moral worth. In doing so, they also reinterpret and evaluate various others in their lifeworld. Workers’ professional and moral standards enable them to draw boundaries against those whom they label “bad” or “unprofessional” care workers. Yet workers’ criteria that demarcate “good care workers” are often conflated with ethnic boundaries. House managers and national care experts draw upon popular images that circulate widely about Chinese to use against Joseonjok workers, namely that they—Chinese—are undisciplined, untrainable, dirty and depraved. Korean-national non-migrant workers thereby construct the differences between them and Joseonjok workers in moral terms, that is, Joseonjok workers are morally inferior because they only care about money. While such boundary drawing may be logically coherent in these workers’ worldviews, the structural conditions that shape migrant workers’ lives in Korea are ignored. For example, part of the reason for the underrepresentation of Joseonjok in the yoyangbohosa workforce is the structure of the LTCI credentialing process, which systematically penalizes migrant workers. However, non-migrant workers’ explanations of why Joseonjok workers are concentrated in the informal sector obscure such structural conditions, justifying the exploitive working conditions that migrant workers face. In L.A. Koreatown, however, I do not find the othering process that bring the broader stereotype into workers’ labour market strategies. Korean immigrant IHSS providers in L.A. draw stereotypes about African American and Latinx, yet they do not bring these into their narratives around good care worker; instead, they make sikmo as their point of reference. This finding suggests that labour market competition becomes one of the dynamics that shape the othering process. When there is competition in the labour market, care workers subjectivities are closely tied to the other groups, therefore, boundaries are much more rigid.

Findings of this study show that uneven formalization that institutionally divide care workforce affects how workers see themselves and others. If we could recognize informal care workers’

176 contributions and grant them rights as workers by law, the boundaries between formal and informal workers would be potentially eroded. Another policy implication from this study is that this study confirms that market-oriented policies feed up racist/ethno-centric ideas and practices. Empirical findings of this study showed how insuffcient hours in LTCI not only created the ethnically segmented two-tiered labour market but also leads for-profit private agencies to maximize by actively utilizing ethno-centric ideas. Rather than seeing care as a major target to cut welfare cost though gendered workfare, burden of society or a blue ocean for business, we need new policy discourses that truly socialize care that come with reasonable service hours for the seniors so that they do not rely on cheap labour.

While organizations play an integral role in workers’ developing subjectivities, they also pose major obstacles in creating coalition access different groups of workers. The KWWA leaders are not free from racism and ethnocentrism, allowing their member workers to develop antagonism towards migrant workers; the SEIU is silent when racist discourses circulate within the Korean group and so did the Seoul center. While I am aware of their limited resource and organizational capacity, I argue that critical education for their staff and members is urgent to foster solidarity among care workers across race and ethnicity.

Epilogue: Another Crisis, Disproportionate Impacts, and Different Responses

When LTCI was introduced, people in Korea were gratified that the state would take care of the

elders in our families and our neighbors.102 And we yoyangbohosa had hope that we could provide socially essential care through decent and stable employment. Are we seeing all of these now in care? …While everyone has been practicing social distancing, we care workers have been taking care of the elderly closely to prevent an absence of care. What are we getting in return for risking our health to provide care work (dolbom nodong)? We yoyangbohosa, therefore, demand the following to the Ministry of Welfare, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and LTCI service provider facilities

Official Statement of Seoul Yoyangbohosa Association on July 1, 2020—Yoyangbohosa Day

The ongoing crisis of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020 has brought disproportionate impacts on each group. Among all those working on the frontlines, low-paid care workers like those in this study were the ones who were placed in jeopardy in hospitals, nursing homes and private homes

177 where they could not (or were forced not to) leave the frail behind. While in both Korea and the United States care workers are touted as “essential” workers and heroes, no substantial improvements in low-paid care workers’ working conditions have been made yet. No groups of workers in this study were protected like doctors or nurses in Korea. If anything, the pandemic revealed how the existing inequality among care workers was magnified along ethnic, migration, and citizenship lines, having disparate effects on different groups of workers. Because most of these workers provide in- home service, house managers, IHSS workers in the L.A. Koreatown, and home-visiting yoyangbohosa workers quickly lost their jobs during the pandemic. In April 2020, 44.5% of yoyangbohosa who responded to the survey conducted by the Seoul Center58 were unemployed for more than a month. The NHMC announced in its official statement on International Domestic Workers Day that house managers’ average monthly income dropped by 38% in April compared to the previous year.59

However, the crisis hit informal workers the hardest. Located near the initial epicenter in China, Korea saw a sudden and rapid surge of cases in February 2020. The first massive cluster infection started in a hospital where 111 patients and care workers were confirmed positive in a day, and after this mass infection the virus spread to the entire region where the hospital is located. As the cluster infection triggered a national crisis, public opinion was greatly agitated with the question of who exactly had brought the virus from China and passed it on to others in the first place. Simply because the absolute majority of informal care workers (ganbyeongin) in hospitals in Korea are Korean Chinese workers, the general public and the media blamed them groundlessly, urging the government to closely monitor them. The public uproar did not easily die down, and widespread false accusations, namely that Korean Chinese workers were bringing the virus from China, fueled anti-Chinese sentiment. With the labor shortage, which has even deepened during the pandemic, Korean Chinese informal workers are confined to hospitals, continuing to care for frail elderlies without any protective gear. However, their vital role has been easily overshadowed by anti-Chinese sentiment.

58 The Seoul center conducted an emergency survey in April 2020 (n=3,456) to find out the impact of pandemic on yoyangbohosa in Seoul.

59 According to the official statement form the KWWA on the International Domestic Workers Day on the June 16, 2020, the average monthly income of house managers was 1,070,400 won (1,211 CAD) to 665,000 won (7,252 CAD) in April, 2020.

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The crisis, however, also reveals how different worker subjectivities provide different degrees of political leverage. During my fieldwork in 2015, Korea underwent a MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) outbreak, during which many joseonjok imo either lost their jobs or were quarantined in hospitals. MERS showed that when their real kin’s lives were at stake, Korean society easily set aside the safety and rights of fictive kin. Amid rising anti-Chinese sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, Joseonjok imo’s voices are completely muted. On the contrary, house managers in the NHMC condemned the exclusion of domestic workers in the government’s aid package for waged workers, accusing the government of failing to recognize the characteristics of feminized jobs. Yoyangbohosa workers organized through the Seoul Center also released a statement under the name of the Seoul Yoyangbohosa Association in March. They condemned the reality that yoyangbohosa workers are forced to work without masks and gloves because of their elderly recipients’ repulsion against them. They also appealed to the public, declaring that 98% of yoyangbohosa in Seoul work through private agencies and are therefore purchasing masks out of their own pocket to protect themselves, and this imposes an unjust financial toll on them. Shortly after their statement was featured in the media, the workers also posted an e-petition on the Blue House website on March 6th, requesting that the government distribute masks to yoyangbohosa workers who are doing crucial work during the pandemic. On March 17th, the Seoul city government also announced that it would distribute fifty thousand masks immediately to yoyangbohosa, but workers have been calling for more just treatment in return for risking their lives in the face of a national crisis. In California, SEIU 2015 pressured state legislators in Sacramento to recognize the vital role homecare workers were playing during the time of COVID-19 and helped get any further cuts to IHSS removed from the state budget through the end of 2021.

To what extent these newly born political subjectivities can bring changes in the social perception and renumeration of care work after the pandemic remains an open question. One thing, however, is certain: without recognizing the multiple and complex ways care workers’ vulnerability is shaped, and without conversations about these subjectivities, voices from some kinds of care workers will always be unheard.

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Appendices

1. The NHMC Domestic Servie Mannual

Object of work Job description 30 40 50 60 pyeong pyeong pyeong pyeong

(1,067.5 (1,423.3 (1,779.1 (1,779.1 ft2) 2 ft2) 6 ft2 ) 6 ft2 )

1 Ventilation and - Open the window 25 27 29 31 Proportional preparation for mins. to the size of cleaning - Pick up stuffs on the floor housing

2 Laundry - Do the laundry 40 45 50 55 Proportional to the -Take in the dried laundries and number of fold them up family members - Dry the first-session laundry

-Dry the second-session laundry

3 Kitchen - Do the dishes 45 55 65 75 Proportional to the - Clean the stove area number of family -Sterilize the dishcloth members

4 Floor cleaning - Clean-mop-door area clean 50 65 80 95 Proportional to the size of housing

Break 10 10 10 10

5 Washroom 1 - Bathtub 50 56 62 68 Proportional to the size of (a bathtub)+ - Sink housing

Washroom 1 - Toilet

(a bathtub) - Floor

6 Wrapping up Wrapping up and washing the 10 15 20 25 Proportional and washing cleaning cloths to the size of the cleaning housing cloths

7 Taking out the Food waste 10 12 14 16 Proportional garbage to the Recycles number of

184 185

family Litters members

The time required in total 240 285 330 375

(minutes) (4 (4hrs 45 (5hrs (6hrs hours) mins ) 30mins) 15mins)

2. Historic Shift of Domestic Service in Korea

Time period Forms of domestic work Demographic features of Demand and workers Supply

Late Joseon Dynasty Multiple servants for specified jobs Women and men from less Abundant supply privileged caste

Colonial period Semi-servants or employed live-in and Adult women from rural Abundant supply (1910~1945) live-out workers (haengrangsari, areas. anjamjagi etc.)

Early stage of Live-in Sik-mo. Poorly paid or even Girls (under 20) from rural Abundant supply industrialization unpaid. areas. from rural areas

(1960s) Poor peasants' daughters or daughters of distant Industrialization relatives. Decline in supply but high demand (1970s)

Rapid economic Pachul-bu. Employed, paid, and part- Poor married women in their Decline in supply development time job. forties and fifties from and demand outskirts of big cities. (1980s)

Introduction of migrant Live-in Filipina domestic workers Filipina workers are young Increase in supply workers and educated women, and demand Live-in Joseonjok imo (Auntie) whereas Joseonjok and (Late 1980s~1990s) South Korea-born workers Pachul-bu for South Korean-born are in their forties and fifties. women workers

Deeping commodification Josoenjok workers moved to live-out. Increase in supply and and demand Professionalizing efforts of non-profit Joseonjok and South Korea- workers’ counter movement organizations (house managers and born workers in their 50s doumi) and 60s (2000s ~ )

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Emergence of platform work in domestic service sector managers.

1 그래서 면접 보러 갔어 갔더니 “아이, 생각보다 나이가 많네요. 연락 드릴게요.” 그리고 안 오는거야. 연락이 안오는거야. 몇 번 씩이나 그러는거야. 에이 안 한다 그랬지.

2 어떤 사람이 성당 다니는 사람이 구청이나 시청인가에서 하는 시니어 클럽에서 사회적 일자리가 있다 그래 갖고 거기를 한번 들어가서 가정으로 한번 들어가봐라 그렇게 된거야. 애들 어리잖아. 그때 초등학교 1 학년 3 학년 이래 됬잖아. 애들 돌봐야 되니까 밤일 이런건 생각도 못 하는거죠.(생략)그 빌라에 독거노인들이 사는데, 거기를 나를 인제 사무실 분들이 인도 하시더라고. 하루에 두 시간씩 해 달라고.

3 예. 웨이트리스로 저도 거의 십년 넘게 했죠. 그래서 이제 얘를 만난거고. 그리고 오래 하다 보니깐 LA 바닥 좁잖아요. 그리고 우리는 큰 식당에서만 거의 일을 했거든요. 그러니깐 웬만한 사람들이 얼굴을 보면은 인제 아줌마, 여기서 일 해요? 아직도 일 해요? 이러고 그러니깐.

4 IMF 당시에는 인제 그 인제 다 건설업 은행 쪽이라던가 전부 다 대량실업이 됐잖아요. 그런데 사실 내실을 보면 그 전 까지는 맞벌이 가정이 거의 없었어요.전업주부가 대부분인데, 신랑들이 퇴직을 당하니까 그 다음에 마구 쏟아져 나온 게 5-60 대 여성이었어요.그래서 5-60 대 여성들의 구직자율이 500 이상 증가를 하게 돼요. 그리고 실업자 대안에 국가가 성금 주고 쌀도 주고 그 일을 같이 했거든요. 근데 상담을 하다 보니까 대부분이 중장년 중고령 여성들이 오는 거에요. 근데 와 갖고 일자리를 찾는 거죠. 한번에 ? 안되니까. 들어갈 수 있는데가 없었어요. 지금도 마찬가지지만 경력도 없고 기술도 없고. 하다못해 그때는 은행도 내가 가서 처리해 본적이 별로 없는 분들이 많았어요." "그쵸. 팩스라는 건 뭐 보지도 못했고, 예를 들어서, 그래서 이 분들이 1 년 내내 컴퓨터 훈련을 받을 수 있는 것도 아니고. 나이도 많고. 그래서 빨리 실생활에서 할 수 있는걸 찾아보자 하니까. 그래도 4-50 년 동안 집안일을 해 오셨잖아요. 그래서 이거를 갖다가 빨리 속성으로 훈련을 시켜서 해야되겠다 생각 했구요.

187 188

5 첨에는 그거는 자활 오기 전에 동사무소에서 했던 일이고, 자활에 왔을때는 간병쪽 교육을 이론 교육도 받고 또 인제 가정방문으로 해서 저소득층 노인 혼자 사시는 노인들이나 뭐 이런 분들 계시는 집 들을 다니면서 서비스로다가 조금씩 해 주면서 가사 그런것도 좀 봐 드리고 그러면서 교육을 받은 거죠 YS:그때는 그러면 첨에는 간병부터 시작하신 거에요? 네 몇개월만. 가사도 많고 간병도 있고 뭐 여러가지 있었죠 그때는 미싱도 있고

6 저를 기억 해 주실 때 내 일에 대해 자부심을 갖고 일을 하는. 가사서비스지만 훌-륭 한 직업은 아니지만 나는 제 일에 대해서 자부심을 갖거든요. 언니는 어떻게 남에 집 가서 어떻게 하나 아는 동생 하나 얘기를 했더니 “어우 언니 어떻게 남에 집 가서 설거지를 해? 어우 어떻게 남에 집 가서 변기를 닦아?” 그래서 “남에 집 아니야. 직장이야.” 얘기를 하죠. “직장 이야. 너는 니네 집에서 변기에 손 넣고 닦을 때 너 돈 안 받잖아. 나는 나와서 남에 집 변기에 손 넣고 닦으면 돈을 받아” 이렇게 얘기를 하거든. 직업이라고 생각을 해요. 직업이지 청소야 그냥 남에 집 가서 일하는 거 이렇게 생각을 안 하고 내 직업이야. 가정관리는 내 직업이야.

7 이게 미쳤나 왜 나한테 이런 일을?

8 나는 내가 이 일을 하는 사람이 아니라고 생각을 했어요.

9 아니 티비에 보통 나오면 그 옛날 그 무슨 회장님 댁에 무슨 여주댁~ 김천댁~ 이거잖아요 (중략) 그래서 처음에 와서 가사서비스의 실제 이런 거 비디오로 교육을 시키는데 이게 미쳤나…? 내가 아무리 생활이 그래서 힘들게 살았어도 그렇지 언니한테 이런 일을 하라 그래? 이렇게 생각을 했어요 처음에. 인제 교육을 받으면서 아 이게 그런 사람들만 하는 일은 아니구나 이게 잘 하면 괜찮은 일도 될 수 있겠구나 생각을 했어요 교육을 다 받고 첨에 간데가 사회적 일자리 하는 곳에 갔었는데 그거 하면서 느꼈어요 점점 아 이게 여주댁이 하는 일이 아니구나 이거는 사회가 꼭 필요로 하는 일이구나 누군가는 꼭 해야 되는 일이구나.

10 가사노동은 여성들이 주로 하는 일이어서 사회적으로 인정을 받기 어려운 것일까요? 아니면 사회적으로 인정을 받기 어려운 일이어서 여성들이 몰리는 것일까요? 마치 닭이 먼저인지 달걀이 먼저인지 하는 아리송한 문제인 듯 해결이 쉽지 않아 보입니다. 여하튼 현실에서는 여성들이 많이 189

하고 있는 것이 사실이며 동시에 ‘여성의 일’이라고 이야기되고 있습니다. 그런데 같은 청소일이라도 길거리 청소에는 남성 환경미화원도 있는데, 아직까지 가사노동자의 일은 웬만해서는 남성들이 참여하지 않는 것처럼 생각됩니다. 왜 그럴까요? 환경미화일은 집 밖에서 일하는 것으로 간주 됩니다. 청소하는 일이라는 면에서는 비슷하다고 해도 집 안을 청소하는 것이 아니라 공공의 장소를 청소한다고 간주되는 것입니다. (한국여성노동자회, 2014, 계약서를 씁시다. Retrieved from: http://kwwnet.org/?page_id=4517&pageid=1&mod=document&keyword=계약서&uid=416)

11 그니까 남자들도, 저번에 누가 얘기했는데 남자 가정관리사가 없는 이유가 보수가 작아서 없다 라고 말씀 하시더라구요. 그니까 간호사들도 남자 간호사가 많아지잖아요. 보수가. 이것도 만약에 보수가 높아진다고 하면, 지금 쉐프들 남자들 많잖아요. (생략) 서로 그런 인식들이 높아간다고 하면 좀더 진짜..잘 할 수 있는 사람들이 할 수 있는. 잘 할 수 있는 일은 이제 맞는 건데, 많이 할 수 있는, 많은 사람들이 직업으로 그 일을 직업으로 들어올 수 있는 그런 분위기를 좀 만들어가야 하지 않을까.

12 정부에서 이게 괜찮은, 사회에 필요한 일자리이고 이게 노동자라고 인정을 해 주셔야지, 일단 기본, 그래야 아 이들도 믿고 쓸 수 있는 일하는 사람이구나 라는 생각도 들 것이고, 그 담에 일 하시는 분 들도 내가 이 직업을 구하시는 분 들도 아 이거는 일자리구나 그냥 가서 남에 일 허드렛일 하는게 아니라 전문적인 지식을 전문적인 기술을 가지고 일을 할 수 있는 그런 직업이구나 라는 것을 인식을 시켜야 돼서.

13 “엄마는 남에집 가서 일을 하지만 가정 관리를 하는 가정관리사고 넓게 보면 서비스업이야. 이게 돌봄서비스라고 해서 어디 가서 엄마 직업에 대해서 뭘 써야 되거나 말을 해야 될 기회가 있으면 돌봄서비스업에 있다고 얘기를 해라. 그러니까 저희 같은 경우 서비스업이라고 해서 다 똑같은 게 아니잖아요 서비스가 다 똑같은 게 아니니까. 서비스 종류가 많으니까. 그래서 전 아들이나 딸한테 늘, 작게, 직업을 구체적으로 얘기 할 때는 가정관리사지만 넓게 봐서 직종을 따져서 엄마 직업이 뭐냐고 하면 돌봄서비스직이라고 써라 이렇게 얘기를 해요. 190

14 어제 오셔서 말씀 하시는데, 아 그러면 뭐 가사 일은 뭐 집에서 늘 하는 일인데 기술은 필요 없겠네요? 이렇게 말씀 하시길래 “아닙니다 기술 필요합니다. 기술도 필요하고, 기술이라기 보다는 사실은 노하우가 필요합니다. 이 노하우가 없으면 쉽지 않다. 내 집에서는 하루 종일 여기 하다 저기 하다 뭐 열 시간을 하든 상관이 없지만 이거는 네 시간 안에 모든 일을 다 완벽하게 하고 나와야 하기 때문에 굉장히 기술을 요하는 일이다. 그래서 사실은 오래 살아남는 사람도 많지 않구요.

15가사가 힘들잖아요. 4 시간. 페이는 세지만 굉장히 근골 말 그대로 근골격계질환 예 몇 년 하게 되면. 이것도 굉장히 요령이 필요하거든요. 힘으로 하는게 아니에요. 그러니까 기술. 기술이 있어야 돼요. 그러니까 단순하게 생각해서 이건 단순한 일이니까 내가 집에서 하는 일 얼마든지 아니에요. 그렇게 생각하면 크게 오산이에요. 현장에서 일하면 고객님 보고있죠, 잘 하던것도 고객님 보고 있으면 뭐를 하나 빼뜨린다거나 막 두서가 없어져요.

16 말을 할 수 가 없어요. 근데 그 애기 엄마가 살림을 할 줄을 모르는 거야. 그리고 그냥 며칠 먹은 거 쌓아놔 (웃음) 며칠 먹은 거 쌓아놔요. 그러면 그 주방일 할 때 시간이 오래 걸려요. 왜냐면 막 기름 범벅 되어 있잖아요. 그런 거 닦을라면 팔목이 너무너무 아프고.

17 이 일을 15 년 이상을 하다 보니까 너무 실증 나고 그런 것도 있겠죠. 그러니까 내 체력이 인제는 딸리고 그리고 사십 한 중반 정도 뭐 오십 대 까지는 뭐라 그럴까 이게 한창 빨라요. 스피드. 일 하는 스피드 머리 회전. 머리 속에 딱 그림이 그러 져 있어요. 뭐뭐뭐 탁탁탁탁 이게 계산이 서요. 근데 지금은 안 서. 그래서 내가 너무 답답한 거에요. 그래서 아 이 일도 못 하겠구나 이 생각이 들어요. 진짜로 많이 들어요. 그래서 왜 내가 남한테 남의 일을 해주려면 성격이 진짜 완벽한 거 좋아하고 이렇게 해주는 내가 그 집에 있는 한은 진짜 철두철미 하게 해 주고 싶은데 내가 그 집에 민폐가 가면 안되잖아요. 그러니까 그런걸 생각 했을 때는 아 내가 적당한 선에서는 이것도 그만둬야 겠구나 이걸 느껴요. 그런걸 생각하면 한 육십? 육십 하나 둘 되면는 어느정도 덜 하고

싶은 생각이 들어요. 191

18 기본적으로 뭐 들어가서 인제 예의 인제 이렇게 기본적인 거 청소 어떻게 첨부터 시작 해야 되는지 그런 거 두루두루 그런 거 배웠던것 같애요. 왜냐면 첨에 인자 딱 들어가서 방문을 하면은 어떻게 해야 될 지 모르니까 방문을 해가지고 이렇게 어떻게 일을 인제 잡는 거 부터 배웠던 것 같애요. 차근 차근 차근 어떻게 인제 주방 하고 주방 어떤 순서대로 욕실 하고 쓸고 닦고. 저는 그거 참 좋았어요. YS:실제로 도움이 많이 돼요? 네 그걸 토대로 많이 했던것 같애. 청소기도 우리 집에서는 막 했지만 그 비디오 보면서 교육 받으면서 차근차근 그렇게. 저같은 경우는 좋았던것 같애요. 교육은 다 좋은 것 같애. 일단은 해 보면은 내껄로 만들면은 좋은 것 같애. 가끔가다 그리구 교육도 사무실에서 하면은 가서 듣고 그래요.

19 보수교육은 그런거죠. 어…좀 일을 계속 하다 보면 나태해질때가 있어요. 그니까 기존 뭐 오래 된 과리사들이라도 오래 되다보면 한 집에 오래 가는 경우도 생기거든요. 그러면 새로운거에 좀 어둡게 될 때가 있어요. 가전제품 같은 경우도 이 요새 청소기도 새로 나온 것 들 많잖아요. 하다못해 저희 신입 교육 받으시는 분들 드럼세탁기 못쓰시는 분들도 계세요

20 파출 용역은 교육을 안 해요. 교육을 안 시키고 그냥 내가 가서 등록을 하면은 그냥 무조건 어느 집으로 일을 가라 그러면 인제 그냥 가는 거에요. 그러면은 인제 제가 아는 분들 중에서 그렇게 해서 가는 사람들이 그쪽 동네에 있나본데, 맘에 안 들 수 도 있죠. 교육을 솔직히 철저히 안 시켰으니까는 맘에 안 들면 그냥 그날로 그만두고. 여기는 철저하게 두 세번 실습 내보내고 하니깐 그래도 믿을 만 하고.

21 (어머니회에) 가입비를 일년에 8 만원 정도 내고 우리가 가입을 하면은 그 사람을 인제 뭐 얼마 보내 준다는 것도 없이 그냥 아무데나 식당이고 어데고 그냥 보내는 식이고. (another worker: "우리는 가정 관리사") 우리 가정관리사라는 그 집안을 관리해주는 그런 자부심을 갖고 일을 하는데 그 사람들은 관리가 아닌 하루살이, 당일치기, 돈만 주면 아무데나 가는, 그런 사람하고 우리가 똑같이 취급을 당하고 있거든요.

192

22 저는 좀 분장을 좀 많이 하고 왜냐면 저희가 하는 일이 그런 일 이잖아요 고객들을 만날 때도 별로 좀 꿀리고 싶지 않아서 조금 분장을 하고 가는 편이에요.

23 우선 나라는 사람을 신뢰성이 가게 소개 라던가 모든 거를 하고 우선 시간을 잘 지켜야 돼. 시간을 잘 지키고 우선 또, 이 아무리 기분이 나빠도 일단 가면은 얼굴이 스마일이어야 되고. 찌뿌등 하고 있으면 불편하잖아요. 그니까 기본적인 고객 한테 우리가 대해야 되는 거 지켜야 되는 거.

24 딱 가면 새집 가면 ‘아 저 고객은 말을 좋아하는 고객. 립 서비스 좋아하는 고객. 뭐 아 말하는 거 싫어해 아는 척 하면 싫어해 그게 조금 보여요 말 몇 마디 하다 보면. 그러면 인제 거기에 맞춰서 하죠. 뭐 저 고객은 말 하는걸 좋아하고 일하는 걸 책임 완성 하는걸 좋아한다 그러면 인제 그렇게 맞추고. 또 이 고객은 그래도 어느정도 놀고 대화하고 차 한잔 마시는걸 좋아한다. 인제 그렇게 어느정도 수준이 있는 고객들은 보면은 아무한테나 나를 터 놓을라고 안하는 것도 많아요. 모든걸 보여주기 싫어하는게. 근데 신뢰를 하고 그러면 편안하게 말을 해요. 그러면 그런 고객들은 차 한잔 마시고 또 한 2-30 분 또 얘기하고 놀아요 또 오래 된 집은. 원하면은. 근데 그래도 무조건 놀 수 만은 없지. 어우 나 이거 이거 해야돼요. 그러면 아이 오늘은 안해도 돼요 이렇게 말 하면 상관이 없는데 그렇지 않은 집은 내가 할거로 바쁘지 놀았으니까 일할라믄. 그니까 무한정 받아주지는 않는데, 그것도, 그것도 일종의 서비스에요. 우리가 하는 일에서.

25 이 가사 일이, 가사만 해야 된다는 그게 아닌것 같애. 일단은 그 고객분들 말 하시는게, 가사도 중요하지만 때로는 우울하거나 좀 마음이 병이 있는 사람들 있어요. 그런 사람들 이렇게 말 벗도 해 주고 그러면 참 좋아해. 예를들면은 올해는 할머니 고객이 없는데요, 작년 제작년에는 내내 할머니 고객들이 많았어. 그런 분들 자기 집을 갖고는 있지만 청소도 안돼지만 그런 분들은 거의가 인제 말벗. 얘기 좀 들어줘라 뭐 그런 저기. 그니까 그런거 보면은. 그리고 우리 지금 고객분도 그래. 청소도 당연히 중요하지만 자기하고 이렇게 말이 통하고 그런 사람이 더 좋겠다고 그러더라고. 그니까 일단은 얘기 하면은 다 들어주고 청소도 열심히 하고 그런 사람을 좋아하는것

같아 요새 고객분들은. 자기하고 말을 해서 대화가 되고 그러면 다. 우리 몰라여기 고객분들 다 193

좋아하세요. 그니까 말이 너무 안 하거나 자기 일 만 해서도 또 그것도 안되는것 같애. 너무 재미없어. 나 우리 고객분들 얘기 하면서 그 서로간에 뭐 저기 한것도 도와주고 그분이 좀 요새 뭐 많이 힘들어하면 아우 힘이 되는 얘기도 좀 해주고. 그러면은, 그 사람대 사람으로 보는것 같애 우리 고객분들은 지금 있는 분들은.그렇지 않은 분 들은, 사람대 사람으로 안 보면은 ‘저 사람은 일 만 하는 사람이야’ 또 어저께 그 할머니 같은 사람은 ‘저 사람은 많이 먹으면 일을 안 해’ 그런 사람들은 ‘저 사람은 그냥 일 만 하는 파출부야’ 그렇게 생각 하는 사람과 ‘이 사람은 나하고 대화도 되고’ 청소야 해주지만 그렇지만 일단은 서로간에 이게 맞아야 되는것 같애.

26 할머니들은 일차적으로 가면은 막- 얘기를 하고 싶어하잖아요. 며느리들 흉도 봐야되고 뭐도 해야되고 혼자서 맨날 집에 계시니까. 그래서 가보면 며느리 흉이 1 차. 우리는 4 시간 안에 빨리 끝내고 와야 되는데 계-속 불러서 말을 시키고. 그 할머니 댁도 옛날에 갔어요 제가. 갔더니 돈을 일주일치를 줬는데 돈을 이렇게 촤악 촤악 흐트려. 아유 이 할머니가 뭔가가 또 화가 났구나. 그 전날 제가 정수기 물을 안 갈아놓고 갔다고 화가 나신거에요. 정수기 물 아시죠 이만한거.

27 고객 분들도 말을 하고 싶어 하는 사람이 많아요. 같이 대화가 되고 같이 그거 이렇게 그런 거 같애요. 근데 그 분 들은 그게 또 안되잖아요. YS: 아 조선족분들이. 일단은 조선족 사람들은 우리 생활을 잘 모르고, 말을 해도 그게 딱 파악이 안되잖아요. 우리 같은 경우에는, 예를 들면 애들 얘기만 해도 “요새 방학 했죠?” 그러면 “아 우리 애 요새 방학 했어요.” 그렇게 되지만 조선족 같은 경우에는 방학 할 애도 없고 외국에 있으니까 그게 안 돼잖아. 예를 쉽게 말하면 그런 거구, 일 하는 것도, 나 같은 경우에도 한 번 할 때 깨끗하게 해 주고 싶은데, 그 사람들은 음 이렇게 지저분하고 좀 왔다 가도 티가 안나 고 흔적이 남고 그런 식으로.

28 제가 애들 학교가고 종일 하는 집이었어요 학교 갔다 와서 애들이 냉장고에서 뭔가 꺼내면 기본적으로 쟁반을 받치는게 기본적인거잖아요 근데 그런게 훈련이 안된 집이죠. 그래서 애들이 먹을걸 갖고 가면 "어 이거 쟁반에 밭쳐서 먹을래?" 이러고 쟁반을 갖다줘. 그러면 처음에는 그냥 애들도 저기 했는데, 근데 인제 엄마 눈에 내가 인제 애들한테 잔소리 하는게 된거죠. 그냥 나는 쟁반만 갖다줬을 뿐인데 (웃음) 그게 인제 본인이 시키지 않는 교육을 내가 시키는 게 싫은거지. 그런것 때문에, 그렇기도 하고 인제 뭐 이렇게 뭔가를 치우면서 옷 같은 것도 사방에 이렇게 194

걸어놔요. 그런 거 정리 하면서 이렇게 반씩 이라도 개켜서 차곡차곡 놓거든요. 근데 차곡차곡 넣고 고객님한테 "이거 어디 농에 넣을 거면 넣으시고 빨래거리면 세탁기 옆에 갖다 놔 주면 안될까요" 그게 자꾸 말이 되는거죠. 근데 이게 고객 입장에서는 자꾸 내가 가르키는 게 되는 거야 (웃음) 그래서 나중에는 자기가 눈치를 봐 가면서 사람을 쓰고 싶지는 않다고.

29 어…그니까. 그게 딱 그냥 저는 가정관리삽니다 말씀 못 드리는 이유가, 이 쓰시는 분들 입장에서도 보면 아이나 인제 집안 식구들이 "니가 할 일을 왜 다른 사람한테 주냐" 이게 그러니까 쓰는 사람 자체도 떳떳하지 못한 것 같애. 거의 대부분은 아니지만 그런 분 들이 계세요. 그래서 가면은 애들이 "엄마 누구야?" 이렇게 물어볼 때 "엄마 아는 친구분이야. 엄마 좀 힘들어서 도와주러 오신 이모야." 이렇게 얘기를 할 때가 있어요. 그럴때는 궂이 뭐 관리사라고..그냥 그렇게 호칭을 바꿔줬으면 좋겠으나 그게 이 엄마의 입장도 있는거라. 그냥 두는 편이죠. 그니까 이게 제가 아까도 얘기 했지만 제 고객들이 좀 젊은 편들이라 뭐 옛날처럼 옛날 나이드신 분 들 처럼 "아줌마!" 이런거 아니고 그냥 "이모님 이것좀 해주시면 안돼요?" "이모님 감사합니다." 이렇게 표현을 하니까 그냥 두는 편이에요. 물론 사무실에서 우리는 그렇게 불리면 안 된다 교육도 하고 항상 얘기를 하죠. 근데 굳이 그렇게 까지는 안해요. 근데 제가 문자나 이런거 보낼때는 관리사 김수정입니다 이렇게 보내죠. 근데 이제 그 분 들도 "관리사님" 이렇게 하니까. 이게 인식이 변하고 있는 과도기적인 시기인 것 같긴 해요.

30 예를 들면은 냉장고 닦는다 해도 음 우리집거는 내가 자주 닦으니까 괜찮아 그런 생각이 있지만 고객 집은 아니야 한번 닦을 때 깨끗이 닦아야돼 그렇게 달라요. 그니까 하고 볼 때 저 사람이 “아 깨끗해” 라고. 평가잖아요. 솔직하게. 직업은 평가야. 남이 약간 저기하지만 그 사람 눈으로 봐서 평가를 하는거야. 솔직하게. 딱 들어와서 봐서 깨끗해 그러면은 어 맘에 들어. 근데 우리 집은 (웃음) 내가 주인이고 내가 그러니까 깨끗하지 않아도 괜찮아. 저 청소하는 방법 다 알아서 쉬어서 내일이면 금방 때 뱃길 수 있어. 내일이면 뭐 저거 이렇게 이렇게 하면은 상관 없어. 약간 덮는게 있죠. 근데 인제 직업이라는거는 책임감이 있고 이왕 한 번 해 줄 때 깨끗하고 그 사람 손이 안 갔으면 좋겠어. 그래 우리 고객들은 그게 좋대요. 관리사님 오셔서 하시고 가면은 자기가 손을 안 대도 될 정도로 딱 맘에 든다고. 그 소리가 제일 좋은것 같애. 근데 관리사님 왔다 갔는데도 자기가 만졌다 하는거는 그만큼 관리사가 좀 저기하지 않는거지. 그 차이인것 같애. 저는 모르겠어 설겆이를 해도 지금 같은 경우에는 천천히, 조금 늦어도 천천히 깨끗하게 해 주자. 옛날같으면 막 195

덤벙덤벙 우리집 같으면 덤벙덤벙 대충대충 했잖아요 옛날같으면. 근데 지금은, 성격이 많이 차분해 졌어요. 그게 스스로 만든 것 같애 내 스스로가. 이왕이면 잘 해주자. 그게 원리원칙대로 그냥 딱 가요. 딱 한 시간 안에는 그걸 해야되고 그리고 지금 머리에는 그게 집에 들어가면 딱 보여요 대충 인제.

31 어느 집은 갔을때 다음주에 갔더니 머리카락이 떨어져 있다고 그래서 머리카락은, 내가 머리카락은 신경 쓰면 머리카락이 좀 빠지는 편이에요 그래서 그거는 항상 조심을 해요 항상 머리를 묶고 나서 하는데, 그래서 아 머리카락이 다음주 가니까는 “도우미님”, 그때는 인제 도우미니깐, “도우미님, 안방에요 가시고 났는데 머리카락이 있어요” 그래서. 아 솔직히, 그게 왜 있을까? 그래서 지금은 인제 뒤로 걸레질을 하고 문으로 나가요. 그러니깐 이게 내가 앞을 보고선 거꾸로 나가야 머리카락이 안 떨어져있지 바로 정상대로 훔치면서 나가면 뒤에 내 머리카락이 떨어질 수 가 있어요 제가 머리카락이 많이 빠지기 때문에. 항상 그거 조심하는데. 그래서 그 다음부터 하는게 뒤로 나가는거에요. 그래서 그 다음 부터는 머리카락 있다는 소리는 제가 안 듣고.

32 국가에서 책임지고 여 가정..돌봄 여기에 대한 뭐 인증서라던지 확실한 도장을 하나 준다 던지 그래 갖고 어머니회와 같은게 아니고 여기는 정말로 한마디로 메이커, 우리 노동자로서 메이커, 국가에서 인정해주는 메이커다 하면 그런거 우리는 별 도움 안 받고도 우리는 얼마든지 우리 고객한테 큰소리 하고 우리 권리를 당당히 하면서 일 할 수 있는데, 그런 거 없이는 어머니회나 이거나 똑 같은 취급이야 고객들한테

33 그거 이거는 퇴직이라는게 없고, 내 나이가 되면 그렇잖아요. 근데 서비스업종은 나이가 되면 인제 점점 홀에서 있던 사람도 주방으로 들어가야 되고, 인제 나이가 있으면. 그래서 그런 시기 때, 그래서 따게 된 거예요. 우리 엄마를 내가 모실까 하고. 딸이 다섯이 있는데, 제가 셋째 딸이거든요. 근데 엄마 옆에서 많이 살았기 때문에 그 엄마 성향, 성격, 그 스타일을 제일 잘 알아요, 제가. 그래서 일년에 한 두 번 이래도 가서 전체적인 대청소를 해주고 오고, 거기서 자고 있으면서. 토요일날 가서 일요일날 오면서 인제. 전체적으로서 그렇게 진행을 했기 때문에 그 엄마 성격이라던가 그런 걸 젤 잘 맞춰줬었죠. 그래서 인제 요양보호사 자격증을 따면서, 그거를 케어를 196

해줄라 그랬어, 인제. 엄마를 해줘서, 엄마를 좀 편안하게. 딴 사람보다는 내가 더 잘 아니까. 그래서 사시면 얼마나 사시겠는가, 싶어서. 그 때는 한 뭐 그래, 그냥 교통비하고 40 만원 좀 넘으면 효도 하는 셈 치고 엄마 친구들도 해줘야 되겠다 했었어요.

34 우리 남편이 갑자기 세상을 떠나서 그 때부터 인제, 아, 우리가 애들 다 가르치고 봉사하고 살자 그랬는데 그거를 못보고 갑자기 떠났어요. 그래서 내가 그 사람 몫까지 일 년만 이 세상에서 제일 험악한 일을 하자, 하고 한 게, 그거였어요. 내가 그거를 얘네아빠 아플 적에 따놨으니까 험한 일일거 같으더라고. 근데 가서 보니까 진짜 못하겠었어요. 수도 없이 울어갖고. 진짜 다 못하겠었어요. 일 년만, 내꺼 육개월, 얘네아빠꺼 6 개월 한 게, 약속을 하느님한테 지킨게 2 년 걸렸어요. 1 년은 조금 담담하고, 못 다니고, 또 못다니겠어서 내가 이걸 왜 해야돼나. 그만두면은 또 안되지, 사람하고 약속도 아닌데 지켜야지. 그걸 지키는데 2 년 걸렸어요. 그러다보니까 그게 익숙해져갖고, 다른 일보다 그게 인제 나보다 못한 사람들 위해서 한다는게 보람 있고. 그러고 어르신들이 고마워요, 고마워요 그러면 그 순간 또 애틋하고 그래서 하다보니까 인제 지금은 떠날수 없는 입장이 됐어요.

35 천하고 더럽고 남편 없는 여자들이나 하는 일 이라 생각해서 자존감 없는 사람들 많아요

36 그럼 가만히 이렇게 있어요. 그럼 우리, 우리들 간에도 호칭이 없으면 선생님이라고 불러야 되잖아요. 그럼 누구라고 불러, 윤여사님이라고 불러요? 왜냐하면 사무실은 다 자기네들끼리 과장님, 팀장님, 실장님 다 붙이고 있어요. 그럼 우리는 그런 게 없잖아. 어? 그럼 우리는 그렇게라도 불러줘야지. 우리들이라도. 왜 우리는 우리가 천대를 하고 그러냐고.[생략]그러니까 그래요. “아니 그럼 우리가 노가다판이지 뭐, 똥 치우고 오줌 치우고 뭐 별 다른 거 있어?” 이렇게 말하는데 왜 자기가 자기를 천대시 하냐구. 그렇게, 왜 그렇게 얘기할 거 뭐가 있어요.

37 만약에 치매 어르신 집도 가면, 제가 없는 날은 그냥 드시게 하고 주무시게 하고 치매니까 뽁뽁이 같은거 삑삑 하게 하고 티비 보게 해요. 그럴 수 밖에 없잖아요. 내 자식을 내가 못 가르치듯이, 선생님이 필요하듯이. 그 분들도 마찬가지에요. 제가 가면 벌써 “우리 어머니가 이도 197

안 닦으려고 해요. 안일어나세요.” 저는 그렇게 안 하잖아요. 그게 기술이잖아요. 그게 요양보호사의 역할이고. 할매, 인제 치매 어르신 할매 “나 왔어” 하면 “누구에요” 그럼 “친구에요” 그럼 “친구 왔는데 누워있을까?” “아니지” 일어난다고. 일어나면 “우리 이 닦고 세수 하고” 그렇게 해요. 제가 하자는대로 따라 하죠 그니까 딸도 놀라죠. 왜냐면 우리 엄마는 못 할 줄 알았는데 운동도 할 줄 알고 스스로 이렇게 저렇게 할 수 있는 거. 그런 거 교육적으로 하죠 치매니까. 치매니까 인제 그 사람에 따라서 해요. 어떤 분은 치맨데 글을 쓴다던가 이런 거 원치 않는 사람들이 있잖아요. 이야기를 나눈다던가 운동을 한다던가 하소연을 들어준다던가 그런 거 원하는 사람은 그렇게 하고. 그 분에 따라서.

38 아유 간병인들은 그냥 단순하게, 인제, 뭐 저기 육체적으로 뭐 해 주는 것 같고. YS:육체적으로? 응, 해주는 것 같고. 근데 요양보호사들은 아무래도 배운 게 있으니까, 교육 받은 게 있으니까, 좀 생각해서, 환자가 원하는 대로 안 해 주죠. 꼭 뭐 우리가 도움이 안 될 것 같으면 안 해주죠. 해주지 말아야 하잖아요 싸우더라도. 그래야 될 것 같아요. YS:육체적으로 해주는게 뭐에요? 뭐 인제 소변통 같은 거 비우고 간단한 거. 옷 입히고 화장실 갈 때 도와주고 그런 거.

39 요양보호사 중에서도 전문화를 시켜서 하고 우리도 전문적인 입장으로서 딱 가서 무슨 말을 하면 전문 용어를 써야 그냥 옆집 아줌마하고 나하고 수다 떠는 거와 그 요양보호사하고 얘기하는 거와, 오히려 요양보호사한테는 묻고 싶지 않고 옆집에 누구 엄마하고 얘기하고 통화 하고 아 이러면 좋겠다 그러면 안돼. 그니까 요양보호사들도 계속 공부 하고 공부를 어떤 연구를 하고 그렇게 해서 해야 이게 봉급도 그렇고, 봉급도 기본적으로 그렇고, 모든 부분이.

40 오후에 가는 집은 치매 어르신이니까 화투만 해달라고 했는데, 제가 보니까 아 어르신이 반듯해. 앉아있는 모습이. 그래서 스트레칭을 가르쳐가지고, 스트레칭을 저 보다 더 잘해. 허리 휘는 것도 그래. 그래서 제가 글씨를 가르쳐봤어요 글씨를. 감사합니다. 이렇게. 그랬더니 글씨를 쓰시는데, 불러주면은 감사합니다 감,사,합,니,다 밑에 받침도 없이 하더라고. 그래서 제가 A4 용지에 감사합니다 써주니까 그대로 잘 쓰시더라구요. 그런 식으로 해서 지금은 인제 꼭 우리가 필요한 내용들 , 젊은 사람들이 들어야되는 내용들을 제가 적어두고 쓰라고 그래요. 그리고 그림은 이렇게 198

카톡에 보여주면서 그걸 그리라고 그래요. 그리고 이제 좀 고마워해야 할 사람들 한테 표현하게 해요. 5 분 후에는 잊어버리지만 그 시간들은 그냥 할 수 있어요.

41 그래갖고 내가 가서 그렇게 하고 할머닌데, 딸이, 이 어르신이 떡을 좋아하시는거야. 그래서 이 딸이 떡을 사다놓고 우리 엄마 데워주세요 한거야. 그래서 그날도 오전에 간식 주는 시간인데 어머어머머 김유주씨 빨리 와 보라고 할머니 큰일 났다고 빨리 와보라고 가보니까 얼굴이 새파란거야. (YS:걸린거에요? )

그렇지 그렇지. 새파래가지고 그 자리에서 침을 질질 흘리면서 그 자리에서 똥을 팍 싸는데 그게 말은 들었지 그렇게 가는 줄은 몰랐지. 그래갖고 물리치료 하는 뚱뚱한 간호사 있어. 그 간호사를, 바나나를 먹여서 그렇다 서로 막 탓을 하는 거야. 서로 막 탓을 해. 그래 갖고 그 요양보호사는 왜 물리치료사가 왜 그렇게 바나나를 줘가지고 저렇게 걸렸다고 그래갖고 그 물리치료사가 그 어르신을 거꾸로 이래갖고

(YS:아 그거 하인리히법인가 그거 토해내게 하는 거) 그렇지 그렇지 그래갖고 막 하는데 안 나오는거야 (YS: 어유 그럼 어뜩해요) 그래서 “나와보세요” 어떻게 딱 잡으라 그랬지. 그리고 손가락 넣고 뭐 어머 그 순간에 경찰이 왔다 갔다 하고 뇌리에 스치더라고 그래갖고 손을 넣어보니까 안에 보니까 목에 절편에 이렇게 침하고 고여가지고 딱 들어붙은거야 절편이 이래 넘어가지도 않고 그러니까 숨을 못 쉬어가지고 기도에 막혀갖고. 그걸 꺼냈는데도 하나가 아니라서 이러고 있는거야 그래갖고 세상에 그걸 꺼내고 나니까 휴 이러더라고. 그래갖고 할머니 살았잖아.

42 그게 현장 일 모르고 원칙론으로 하는 얘기지. 네네 하기만 하면 그러니까 똥기저귀나 갈고 있지 라고 하며 얕본다고. 누가 약자야?”

43 데이케어에서는 발까지는, 발톱까지는, 손톱은 잘라도. 발톱은 못 자르게 돼있어요, 균들이 많아서. 그게 딴 사람들 옮으니까, 옮긴다고. 잘라주고는 싶어, 근데 간호조무사가 터치를 하더라구 . 응? 터치를 하더라구. 그런 거까지 해주면, 응? 안된다고.(생략) 이게 자르지도 못해요. 199

칼 같은 거, 가위 같은 걸로 이렇게 해 놔야돼요.안 쓰지. 하여간 그 어르신은 진짜 몰래 몰래 그런 것도 케어 해주고, 사무실 사람들 없을 적에.

44 그래서 내가 어르신 맨 첨서부터 이러는 건 아니라고. 내가 어르신한테 이러는 건 어르신이 나를 그렇게 만들었다 그러셔도, 악담을 해도, 좋게 좋게 해야 나도 어르신한테 좋게 하죠, 그래요. 무조건 따르기만 하는 건 아니지.

45 중국인들 많아. 너무 많 아. 중국인들은 절대 안돼. 중국인들은 시간만 채우고. 중국인들은 철저하게. 그 사람들은 돈에 대한 것 만 생각하지 사람에 대한거는 우리하고는 틀려요. YS:어떻게 틀려요? 그 사람들은 웃으면서 잘 해요. 표정은 밝아. 웃으면서 정말 잘 해. 시간을 칼처럼. 시간 외에는 단 1 분도 해주지 않아요. 왜냐면 그게 돈이랑 연관이 되거든. 그 사람들은 돈을 벌라고 왔지 그 사람들은.

46 굳이 뭐, 데이케어에서 조선족을 쓸 일이 없죠. 한국사람도 들어올라고 하는 사람 많은데.(생략) 전혀 안 넣죠. 데이케어는 지원서 안 넣어요. 그 사람들도 알고, 안 되는걸 아니까. (YS: 점점 많아지고 있지 않아요 근데?) 많았는데, 제가 얘기 했잖아요. 요양원 쪽 있고, 간병인 쪽 있고, 그런 쪽이라고. 그리고 그 사람네들은요, 돈이 목적이잖아요. 벌러 왔으니까. 이거 갖고는 안 되죠. 요양원에도, 보통 24 시간 한 일주일 동안 하고 하루 쉬고 하면 200 정도나 뭐 얼마 받거든요. 그런 쪽을 원하죠. (생략) 시간을 더 많이 하니까. 그 사람네들은 우선 먹고 자고. 집에 가서 해먹는, 사 먹질 않아요, 그 조선족들이. 거기서 다 해결이 되잖아요.

47 나 또 중국에서 신랑이 없었어요. 애들이 어려서 돌아가니까 벌어먹기 힘들잖아요. 아 대한민국 가면 돈은 많이 번다는데 그래 중국 땅에서 내 중국 땅에서 이만한 사람 많이 거늘이고 식당을 하고 돈은 많이 벌었는데 대한민국 가서 내 이런 거 안 하고 뭐 화장실 청소를 해도 돈을 번다는데 가서 해도 중국에서 뭐 누가 아나? 간다! 하고서리.

200

48 사진 찍어서 우리 친구한테 보내고 이 언니한테도 보내고. 그게 세스콤이다 그게 작동 해야 본다. 그래서 옷을 갈아입는 거 오로지 화장실, 오로지 화장실만 없잖아 그게. 오로지 화장실만. (생략) 요즘은 여름이 되서 요즘은. 갈아입어도, 팬티나 브라자를 갈아입어도. 안되잖아. 내 집에서 맘대로 자유스럽게 해야 되는데 그게 화장실을 간단 말이야. 옷을 만날 들고 화장실 가. 만날 들고. 그러면 우리 집에 있는 애가 뭐라는 줄 알아요 “할머니, 왜 이걸 가져와?” “야 저기 있잖아” “안 돌아가” “안 돌아가긴 왜 안 돌아가. 할머니 온지 얼마 안 됬는데 할머니 이 핸드폰 가지고 게임 놀았는데 아빠가 어떻게 알아. 돌려봤길래 알지. (생략) 그래 이 지간에는 니 보겠음 봐라 보면 니 난처하겠지 웃도리 벗고 브라자만 입고 있어요 일부러. 보겠음 보라 그거지.

49 없었어요. 그 전에 그런 일 없었는데 중국 사람 오고 나서. 그리고 사위가 노트북 사가지고 갔는데 분명히 봤는데 아니라고 하는 데는요, 거 장할 재간이 없대요. YS: 훔치는 걸 봤대요? 가져가는 걸 봤대요. 그런데 아니라고 하는데, 뭐 카메라 찍지 않는 이상 뭐 당할 재간이 없잖아요.

50 이집에도 내가 왔었을 때 그 쭝국인 아줌마가 있었는데 근데 일 년, 거의 일년 후에 집에 손님을 치루는데 형제들끼리 모여서 시어머니 생신 때 밥을 먹어야 되는데 은수저 있잖아요. (웃음) 은수저가 열 개 가 있었는데 그 전날 은수저를 보니까 은수저가 다섯 개 밖에 없는 거에요. (생략) 나는 그런 거에 대해서 당연히 해 놔야 된다고 생각을 하는 사람이고 그리고 내가 완벽하게 남에 물건에 손 대는 것도 아니고 그러니까 당연히 나는 해 놔도 괜찮다 이런 그런 생각을 가지고 있어요 그래서 상관은 없다고 생각을 했어요.

51 예 할아버지 엄청 불편하죠. 당뇨가 있는데다가 뭐 연세가 많으시니까 그 일어설 때 제가 혼자 못 하잖아요. 그래서 할머니 하고 같이 부축하고 그랬는데 샤워할 때 그럴 때는 제가 요령을 배워서 휠체어 밀고 화장실까지 대기하고 그 다음에 할아버지 손잡이를 딱 잡아주고 변기에 앉으 면은 제가 이렇게 물비누 칠해서 다 씻기고 YS: 아 씻기는 거 까지 다 해줘야 할 정도였어요? 네 제가 다 했어요. 하나도 투정도 안 부리고 그렇게 잘 하니까 세상에 우리 아줌마 이렇게 착한 아줌마 그리고 그 집 아들은 저도 모르게 소개소에 착한 아줌마 보내줘서 고맙다고 그냥 그리고

201

근데 가정집에 가서는 뭐 이아줌마 아무것도 못한다 모른다 이런 말을 안 듣고 했던 것 같아요. 다 인정 받을 정도로 열심히 했어요.

52 그래 그 집에서 한 6 년 했어요 한 집에서. 근데 집이 너무 크니까 대리석이고 하니까 그냥 닦아야 하잖아요. 그러니까 이거 무릎이 나간 거에요. YS:그 때 무릎 잘 못 쓰시더라구요 춤 연습 할 때 예예 지금도 그래요.근데 지금은 요즘은 더 아픈데 옛날에도 그랬어요 안 아프던 게 대리석에서 너무 엎드려 하니까, 잘 하느라고.

53 아니요. 아니 시키는데 우리가 탁 보면 반짝반짝 해야 되잖아요. 그래 그거 위해서. 오로지 돈을 위해 왔는데, 남의 주머니 돈 벌자면 내가 힘써야 되잖아요. 그러니까 나쁜 생각 안 한 거야. 그 집에서 아주머니 먹을 거 다 주고 남편이 와인 먹으면 아주머니도 한 잔 스테이크도 하나 자기네 들이랑 같이. 잘 하는 집인데. 그니까 대우도 괜찮고 그거 첫째 줬어요 퇴직금 줬어요 그 집에서 그 집에서. 그니까 잘 해 주니까는. 사람이 여유 있게, 쉬는 시간 주고 아 오늘 손님 왔다 가면 보너스 딱 주고 제 생일 챙겨주고.

54 어차피 사람을 써도 도우미를 써도 그 돈인데 거기서 여기서 주는 돈 빠지니까. 예를 들어서 240 만원 준다 하면 여기서 70 만원 빠지니까 170 만원 자기 돈으로 하는 그런식 으로 하는거죠. (생략) 왜냐면 이분들은 그 목적이 돈을 벌러 온 목적이니까 자기 돈을 벌기 위해서는 그 수모를 다 참죠. 웬만한 거는. 어떨 때는 인간 이하의 어떤 경우도 있어요(생략) 불편하다는 이유로, 그러니까 이 사람들을 쓴다 이렇게 생각하는거야. 나는 내 돈으로 너네를, 뭐 노예까지는 아니지만 어쨌든, 너무 슬플 때 많았어. 진짜. 그래서 제가 어떨 때는 그런 생각이 드는 거야. 어머 내가 저 사람들 저런 입장이였으면 어떻게 됬을까. 내가 저런. 저기서 중국에서 조선족이 안된 게 얼마나 감사한가 그런 생각이 들었어요.

55 근데 먹을 거 안 주는 거야 이 집에서는. 먹을 거 주지 않는 거야. 그래서 두부 하고 콩나물 밖에 주지 않는 거야. 근데 나 중국에서 두부 하고 콩나물 제-일 싫어하는 음식인데 딱 두가지만 주는 거야. 김치도 안 주다가 어쩌다 한 번 주면 배추 뿌리만 주고. “할머니 저 이거 안 먹어요” 하고. 202

56언니, 언니네 부자라던데 음식 이렇게 먹는가. 우리 이런 거 안 먹어. 언니 중국 개도 이런 거 안먹어 (웃음). " 얼마나 열 받았으면 그랬겠어 . 그 아들 이라는게 걔가 나를 짐승만 못하게 취급 한단 말입니다. 그러니까 나도 열 받는 게지.

57 P1: 먹으란 소리도 없어요.

P2:같은 물건 썩어가면서도 안 먹으라 그래. 물건이 썩어 나가면서도 이래 좀 많아도 먹으란 소리 안 해. 상해도 그 썩어가 버려도 아줌마를 안 주는 거에요. P1:가족같이 이렇게

P2: 그렇게 생각을 안 하는 거지.

P1: 네, 그냥 일꾼으로 생각 하는 거지.

P3: 그러니까 우리는 하등 인물로 생각 하는 거지. 오는 날에 아들이 이러더라는 거지 아줌마 일본에서 치료 받고 다시 오라는 거지 뭐. 우리 어머니는 아주머니를 인정 하시는데 다시 우리 집으로 와 주세요. 이러 더라는 거지. 일본 쪽으로 갔다 한국 쪽으로 침도 안 뱉는다고 내 이랬어. 왜요? 이랬지 뭐. 나는 중국에서 이 한국 왔던 게 다 같은 민족이고 하니까 아주 기대했고 굳게 믿고 왔는데 실재 한국땅에 와서 이렇게 있어 보니까 한국사람 너무 치사스럽다고. 짐승취급하고 치사스럽다고.

P2: 중국사람 너무 못 먹고 온 줄 알아요.

58 지금도 못하고 있어요. 자꾸 저 10 만원 올려달라 저 말을 못 했어요. 그거 내 그 집 외할머니가 내 말 했어요. 저 실은 이 동네에서 저 월급 제일 작은데 저 말을 못 하겠어요. 근데 그거 자기네끼리 말 하겠지만은, 근데 뭐 인가 하면은 나를 일을 절대 더 시키지 않아요. 딱 하는지 에서. 응. 안 시켜요. 딱 보내고 내일은 쉬세요. 그니까 제가 저를 안 시키니까. 낮에 절대 집에 전화 안 해요. 제가 어디 가든 상관 없어요. 그러니까 그거 한가지 내 여기 있자. 불만 있어도.

203

59 가정집이 있잖아요, 내가 해보면, 애기 같은걸 보고 힘들고 하면 이 사람들이 면접 볼 때 말 해요. 한 달이나 석 달 지난 다음에 월급 올려주겠다고 얘기 해요. 이런 얘기 안 하고 벌써 딱 보고 답이 나오는데 월급을 안 올리고 140 이라 하면 아 이게 이게 강도가 얼마길래 월급이 얼마다 딱 나오는데 그거 왜 올려달라 해. 굳지 올려 달라 할 필요가 없어요. 일이 힘들면 그 사람들이 알아서 올려 주는 거에요. 그러다 올려달라 했다가 일이 힘들지도 않은데 올려 달라 했다가 나 안쓰겠다 하면 쫒겨나야 돼지 뭐. 안 그래요? 돈이라는 게 다 계산이 해서 나오는 거에요 월급이. 아유 그걸 굳이 왜 올려달라 그래.

60 이 여자 되게 깔끔해요. 근데 매일 이불 털어서 비만 안 오면 냅다 널어야 되는 거에요. 비만 안 오면 이불을 털고 옥탑에다가 말려야 되는 거에요. 지금 생각 하면 그까지 꺼 하는데 그 당시에는 매일 옥탑에 올라가야 되고 밧줄에 다 해야 되고 흰 빨래 잖아 그거 다 걸고 두드려야 되잖아. 두드리고 집게로 해 놔도 너무 높으니까 이층집에 높으니까 때로는 떨어져요. 그거를 매일 해야 돼요.

61 첨 한국 올 때는 생각 없이 왔어. 솔직히 말해. (생략) 내가 솔직히 말해 살기 힘들고 이랬더라면 내가 왔겠는데 사는 것도 힘들지 않고 뭐 살 수 있고 이러니까 나는 이 한국에 와서 돈 버는데다 아니 신경 안 썼어. 근데 우리 옆집 아주머니가 (웃음) 한국 왔다가 집에 왔다가 한국 또 다시 가고 하면서리 내하고 아 어느날에 한국 간다 그래서 “오? 그럼 나도 같이 가자.”

62 YS:그럼 첨에 한국 오실 때는 한국 가서 돈 벌어야 겠다 생각 하시고 오셨다 하셨잖아요. 수정:그럼요 YS:그럼 어떤 일을 해야 겠다 라고 생각 하셨던 거에요 오실 때? 수정: 나는 뭐 다리가 아프니까는 식당에서 할 자신 없잖아요. 그래서 간병이나 하면 좋겠다 이 생각을 했어요.

63 저는 뭐 호칭은 상관 없어요. 한국사회가 어떻게 호칭하면은 그렇게 가는거니까. 어차피 뭐 교폰데. 어차피 그런 일 하는건데. 어떻게 부르면 어쩔건데. YS:그런 일 이라니요? 제일 막일이잖아요 . 한국 분들이 안 하고 꺼리는 일을 저희들이 다 하는데 거기에 무슨 호칭을 멋있게 불르면 뭐 나은 게 아무것도 없지. 204

64 2000 년도에 저는 뭣대갈 모르고 하도 동포들이 그 때는 돈 주고 다 브로커 돈 주고 한국에 오니까 사람들 고조 그 교통경찰만 봐도 심장 덜어갖고 막 도망가고 이럴 때에요. (생략) 다음엔 이게 우리 임광빈 목사가 와서 막 토론하고 이런 게 동포들 어려운 문제 털어놨거든요.이게 동포들 무슨 문제 있겠는데 이게 어떻게 조선족만 이렇게 돈 주고 오는가 일본 동포들은 돈 아니 주고 미국 동포들은 돈 아니 주고 하는데 이 뭐 뭐이가 있다고 이래서 그때는 우리는 컴퓨터 볼 줄 모르니까 목사님이 갖고 온 게 재외동포법 이란 게 있었어요.(생략)그래서 재외동포법 할 때 1948 년 기준 해가지고 그 사람들은 F4 를 줬어요 그래 우리는 못 줬거든 중국 동포들은 그니까 브로커 자꾸 돈 해서 이렇게 오게 되는 거에요 이게 브로커만 살리고 근데 내가 와서 벌고 빚 다 갚으면 또 남편 데려오느라 또 브로커한테 돈 주고 또 남편 데려오면 또 아들 데려오느라 또 브로커 한테 돈 주고.영원히 브로커만 살리다 남은 이 조선족은 살 수 가 없거든요. 그래서 아 이 재외동포법은 어쨌든 같은 민족이기 때문에 이게 통일되야 된다 어쨌든 자유왕래 같이 해야 한다 우리 싸울 수 있다.

65 이게 합법화 되니까 지금은 애기 생일이야 며느리 애기 낳아요 무슨 요새 맘대로 왔다 갔다 하잖아요. 그럴 때 아 그래도 우리 고생한게 좀 괜찮구나 이런 생각 들지 (생략) 그리 아들이 엄마는 그때는 한국에 오겠다고, 엄마 도 벌어서 빨리 브로커 돈 주고 한국에 날 보내달라고 이렇게 전화 오지 그러면 내가 그랬어요 “야, 자유 왕래 할 때 오라.자유왕래 우리 한다.” 그러니까 “엄마 꿈같은 소리 한다” 고 서니“무슨 자유왕랜가 딴 집은 엄마들 다 돈 벌어 아들 데려가는데 엄마는 정신 없다” (생략)돈을 포기하고 그저 봉사하니까 편안해요. 또 돈이 인생의 전부가 아니고 또 먹고 살잖아 여기서 먹고 자지.

66 그럴 때 사람이 딸이나 며느리라 할때 어쩌다 방이 비어서 그런데 한번 효도 해보면 안돼요? 이거 우리는 날마다 해요. 날마다 하는데, 그사람들은 당당해요 우리는 돈 내고 맏겼다 그러니까 우리는 간병사들한테 마음대로 말할 수 있다 그렇게 생각하는데, 우리는 그렇게 생각 안해요. 우리 이렇게 계속 고생하다가 한번 니 어쩌다가 이런 일이 있는데 효더도 하면 안되냐,자식으로서. 난 이런 생각이 있어요. 며느리도 자식이고 딸도 자식이에요. 며느리인지 딸인지 내 모르겠어요 근데

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어쩌다 와서 일회용 수갑 끼고 한번만 더러운 냄새 맡으면 안돼요? 그래 내 그랬어요. 저런것들이 집에 시애미를 똥에 파뭍어 있겠다.

67 가정집에서 일 하는게 솔직히 뭐 아침에 일어나면 애들 밥 해주고 뭐 청소 해주고 빨래 해주고 다리미질 해 주고 뭐 화장실 청소 하고 하여튼 여자들이 집에서 할 수 있는 거 그거가 뭐 보통 여자분들은 다 그런 일을 할 수 있잖아요. 그러니까 저는 그게 내한테 적합하다고 생각하고 지금까지 다른데 취직 안 하고 딱 가사도우미 일만 했어요 왜냐면 여자 할 일이니까. 그냥 집에서 아주 순리롭게 할 수 있는 일이니까.

68 그냥 라면 주는데 저는 한 번도 안 끓여 주는데 걔가 너무 떼를 쓰니까 남자에가 열 살 되는게 끓여주니까 그때 사모님 한다는 얘기가 맘대로 라면 먹였나 그래 “사모님도 그렇게 먹이잖아요” 그러니까 내 주는거하고 아주머니 주는게 같냐 내 선 자리에서 막 울었어요. 사모님 대상에서 막 울었어요. YS:그게 무슨 뜻이죠? 내가 주는 거 하고 아주머니 주는게 다르다는 게 무슨 말이에요? 그러니까 내 맘대로 했다는거죠. 우리 애를 내 맘대로 주면 안 된다는거죠. 내 맥이는건 괜찮지만 내 주면 안된가 그거죠.

69 기실은 사실 우리 병원에서 간병 해 보면 교포들 일 더 잘 해. 교포들이는 말 없이 꾸준하게 환자를 진심으로 돌봐주지만 이 한국 여사님들은 아니야. 입으로 해먹어. 보호자들이 오면 고조 좋은 말은 다 하는 거에요. 그 앞에서는 보호자들 일단 오면 그 앞에서 좋은 말은 다 오고 교포들이 있으면 필요 없는 말인데 그 우리는 한국인이 되서 너네보다 더 잘하고 그런식으로 YS: 아 대놓고 참견을 해요? 응 그래. 그러니까 간병 하면서도 교포들하고 한국인들하고 차별이 생기는거야. 기실 일 하는 거는 교포들이 더 진심으로 하고.

70 근데 한국분들 그거 잘 해요. 싫으면서도 그 사람하고 얘기 할 수 있는데 조선족들 그걸 좀. (생략) 사회 환경이 그렇게 만들잖아. 한국은 그래야 되는 삶이고, 그러지 않으면 살아갈 생존이 얼마나, 각박한 세상에서 안 그러면 어떻게 살겠어. 근데 우리는 자유자재로 살았단 말이에요 중국에서. 자유잖아요. 그리고 그렇게 막 치하?를 하는게 아니었어요. 오히려 중국에서 뭐랄까 더

허술? 하게 살았기 때문에 그렇게 굳이 안 해도 내가 직장에서 동료하고 사이가 나빠지거나 206

직장에서 짤리거나 인간관계, 그니까 제멋대로 산거에요. 남에 눈치를 안 보고. 근데 한국에 오니까 남에 눈치를 안 봤다가는. 그러니까 우리 보기에 한국 사람이 조금 교활하다 할까?

71 옛날에 나는 지금 그렇게 말 하는데 옛날에 중국에서 지주가 사람을 착취 해서 못 사는 사람을 착취해서 일을 시키고 돈 안 주듯이 대한민국도 이게 있구나. YS: 아 지주가 중화민국이 생기기 전에 말씀하시는거에요? 옛날에 그랬죠. 아 옛날에 뭐 중국에서 그랬더만 너 대한민국 선진국이라는게 너네도 이런 게 있구나. 결국은 착취 아니에요? 돈 준대도. 부려먹는거지.

72 그래 내가 이랬지. 접데 먼저왔던 언니는 잘하던데 이렇게 하는 거 보이까는 그저 대충대충, 눈감뱅이로 한단 마리요 그저 걸레도 안씻고. 쭉, 쭉 밀고 댕기매 이래. 그래 이번 온 사람까 그렇게 말했더만은 이거는 우리 이렇다는게야, 이래 와 하게 되면 시시콜콜 이짝방도 닦고 저짝방도 닦고 이렇게 하는게 아이라는게야. 할머니 때문에 우리가 여기와서 할머니 돌볼러 왔길래, 할머니 돌보고 할머니 화장실 다니는 방이나 닦고 거기나 닦고 이래하지 커텐닦고 이방닦고 이렇게 할라는 안왔다는게야. (생략) 그런까 한국분들은 어쨌든 말을 잘하니까나 24 시간 붙어있는거 아니고 4 시간동안 꾹 참는데 그저 어쨌던간 비우를 맞춰서 그저 예 알았습니다 어쨌슴다 이래 하지.

73 내가 공부를 하자면은 내가 저녁전에 해야되고 일을 못하면 안되고 내 보험 돈이 짤려나가는데 일을 못하면은 내 그 짤려나갈 돈이 없잖아요. 1 년 나 왔으니까 내가 그 전에 번 돈에서 짤려나가는것도 많은데 어떻게 하겠나 해서 에이 내 팔자에 무슨 그런 거 할 팔자라고 내 그거 하겠니 해서 가정집에 들어갔어요. 가정집 들어 갈때는 면접 볼 때는 경험이 얼마냐 되냐고 이래요. “한 3 년 됬어요.” YS: 뻥치신거에요? 뻥쳤죠. 내가 일 하기 위서는 뻥 쳐야죠. 나는 자신이 만만하기 때문에 뻥친거지.

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74 그래서 내가 여하튼 내가 거기 출근 할 때 마다 딱 도살장에 끌려가는 그런 기분 인 거에요. 아 오늘은 이 집에 어떻게 들어가지 정말 싫다. 싫다. 이러다가 14 년, 15 년 5 월이었어요. 둘째 언니 딸이 결혼이 있었어요. 중국에 갔다 와야 하는 상황이었어요. 그래서 그 집을 그만두게 됐거든요. 사모님 하고 얘기 했어요. 비행기표를 내밀면서 내가 이쯤에 5 월 초순에는 가야된다. 그러니까 사모님은 갔다 자기네 집에 다시 오라고 그동안에 다른 사람을 쓰겠으니까. 그러면서 비행기표에 보태라고 20 만원 더 주더라고. 그래서 그거는 고마운데, 다시 오면 내가 어디 식당에 가서 막노동을 해도 그 집에 가고 싶다는 생각이 다시는 안 들더라고.

75 태연:계약서 쓰는게 이 일을 하면 처음부터 계약서를 쓸 수 가 없잖아요. 이 주인은 어떤지 모르기 때문에

보미: 그럼 우리가 어떤 때는 못 나오기 때문에

태연: 계약서를 쓰면 그만큼 해야 되잖아요. 자기를 어떻게 대해줄지 모르는데. 엄마도 한달 있다 나오고 그러잖아요.

76 글쎄 근데 면접 온 사람들이 다 할머니 할아버지 있어서 안 간다 해서 내가 왔는데 그럼 이모님은 내일부터 어떻게 부딪혀 보겠어요? 그러더라고. 그래서 그럼 일단 부딪혀 보죠. (생략)그래 한 달은 할아버지 계시니까 조금 그렇더라고. 며칠 지나고 며칠 지나고 하니까 할아버지 익숙 해 지는거야. 할머니가 밥을 하고 할아버지 내가 출근 가면 청소를 해요. 그니까는 할머니 밥을 하고 그 다음에는 부딫혀 보니까는 할머니가 모란시장 다니고 그 다음에 아침을 할아버지랑 내가 마주 앉아 먹게 되더라고. 애 둘이니까 누가 먼저 봐야 되잖아. 내가 먼저 보겠다고 하니까 할머니 할아버지 부부니까 같이 잡숴라 하니까 아이 괜찮대. 마지막에 내가 그랬어 “할머니 할아버지하고 나 부분가 하겠네?” “괜찮아” 그러더라고. 그리고 나는 옥수수 좋아하고 참외 좋아하고 그렇게 강원도 가면 옥수수 사다가 자네 이사람은 참외 좋아하잖아 옥수수 좋아하잖아. 정말 좋은데 들어갔어요. 김장철에 김치 하면 김치도 다 하나씩 주고. 너무 좋더라고. 좋아요.

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77 같은 동포끼리 그러면 안 되는거라. 이런 반발심이 나는 거에요. 우리 다 조선사람이잖아. 부산에 우리 친척이 있어요. 625 때 이렇게 갈라지고 끝난 거에요. 우리는 엄마 아버지 거기에서 이 사람들 건너오니까 갈라졌다 하는데 우리는 왜 대우 없는 거야 대우!

78 저 같은 경우도 시어머니에요. 시어머닌데, 좀 이렇게 아무래도 시어머니는 더 어렵잖아요. 시집 식구 잖아요. 그런 건데, 이거를 어머니를 처음 시작할 때 저도 많이 이렇게 많이 생각을 많이 했죠. 해야 되나 말아야 되나 그랬는데, 어차피 또 내가 또 그거 아니더라도 내가 돌봐 드려야 되는 분이에요. 돌봐 드려야 돼요. 며느리니까, 큰아들의 와이프니까 해야 하는 건데, 그걸 그렇게 생각을 하니까, 아 그러면 해야 되 겠다 그러고 시작을 하는데, 어쨌든 감사 하잖아요. 내가 그 돈을 안받고도 해야 돼요.

79 엄마 일은 이렇게 치우다가 시계 딱 됐다고 “나 가요” 못 해요. 못 하죠. 못 하지. 그게 부모 하고 또 자식이 그게 또 남 하고 틀리더라구. 내가 해보니깐. (생략) 근데 소셜 한테는 ‘나 이렇게 일 하는데 나 안 올려줘요?’ 그 소리는 못 하겠더라고. 못 하겠더라구. 남 같으면 아니 남 같으면 ‘저 여기 와서 이렇게 일 하는데 너무 시간이 작잖아요’ 그 소리는 하면 하겠어. 하지만 내 부모 한테는 못 하겠더라구. 내 부모한테는, 내부모는 안 되더라구요. 지금도 정부에서 돈을 주고 있는데. 그러니깐 그걸로 감사하다고 생각하고. 내 부모는 안 줘도 해야 되잖아. 그찮아요.

80 그 기본에 깔려있는 자기가 양로원에 가는 거는 수치라고 생각을 하시고 아들한테 뭐 무슨 큰 누가 된다고 생각하는데. 아들, 오지도 않는 아들을 맨날 상상 속에서 어제 왔다 갔다 그러는 거야. 아들들이 안 와요.

81 아, 외롭지 않게 해주는 거. 뭐 그렇게 일을 할 게 많지는 않아요 노인들 집에 가면. 뻔하지 뭐 맨날 집에서 청소 하고 빨래 하는 거 하고. 그렇지만 외로운 사람이 너무 많아. 자식들 있어도 잘 안 와요. 외롭지 않게 해 줄라고 나라에서 가서 돌봐 주라는 거지. 무슨 뭐 그렇게 빨래 청소가

매일같이 있겠어. 난 그렇게 생각해. (생략) 미국은 자식들이 나이 들면 부모를 버리는 나라라고 209

그러잖아. 나라에서 돈 기본 800 얼마씩 나오지 아파트 있지 200 얼마 내지 그러니까 충분히 나머지 갖고 살잖아. 그러니까 더 안 돌보는 것 같아. 한국 사람들은 엄마 아버지 늙으면 같이 살아야지 그런 생각이라도 하잖아. 여기는 그런 거 없잖아. 아예 못 살면 나라에서 다 해주니까. 외롭지 않게 해 주는게 제일 첫 째 에요. 그 작은, 그러니까 그 정을 좋아하지 뭐 그렇게 뭐 할 일이 뭐 많아.

82 근데 그렇게 막 해달라고 하는데 우리는 성격상 막 자르지는 못해요 속으로는 좀 힘들지만. 저 같은 경우도 지금은 돌아가셨는데 그분이 배추를 한 박스를 딱 한 박스를 사 갖고 그 대신 그 분이 절이고 그런 거를 다 해요. 그러면 우리는 인제 시다 넣고 마는 거야. 근데 그거를 이거를 안됩니다 이렇게 말을 할 수 가 없어요. (생략) 아침에 새벽기도 끝나고 5 시반 6 시 반 쯤에 가면 그때부터 마켓 봐서 사 갖고 저녁 5 시가 되야 끝나요. 그러면 일을 너무 많이 했으니까 사람은 또 좋은 분이라 그냥 팁으로 좀 얹어서 줄 수 있지 30 불 40 불. 일을 너무 많이 하고 미안하니까. 그러면 양념 막 같이 막 해. (웃음) 그래가지고 주말에 자식이 오면 노나주고 한 봉지 씩 주고.

83 할머니가 팁 줄 때도 나 안 받는다 그랬거든요. 너무 고마워서 그런다고 팁을 막 줘요 100 불 주면 안 받아요 20 불만 주세요 이랬거든요. 명절에 한번씩 주고. 100 불 주면 제가 20 불 받았어요.

84 그래도 딸이 그 날 그 말 하더만 안 된다고 돈 받고 하라고 그래 내가 죽을래? 내가 돈을 그걸 왜 받냐? 안 받아요. 아이고, 그간 정이 있지. 그걸 뭐 하러 받냐구. 나 안 받았어, 그랬더니. 딸이 저기 Shiseido 화장품, 로션, 스킨 해서 다 포장해서.

85 미숙: 그래도 딸이 그 날 그 말 하더만 안 된다고 돈 받고 하라고 그래 내가 죽을래? 내가 돈을 그걸 왜 받냐? 안 받아요. 아이고, 그간 정이 있지. 그걸 뭐 하러 받냐구. 나 안 받았어, 그랬더니. 딸이 저기 Shiseido 화장품, 로션, 스킨 해서 다 포장해서

미경: 그래도 경우가 있는 사람들이네.

미숙: 그건 그냥 지나가면 안 된 말이야, 그건 그렇다고. 210

86 그러니까 나는 할머니들도 나쁘지만 간병인 애들도 나쁜 애들 너무 많아. 그리고 걔가 어떻게 했냐면 가서 밥상을 보면 너무 형편 없어. 밥상을 차려놓고 그냥 나오는 거야. 그리고 가. 토요일 일요일 전화 한통이라도 해야 되는데 안 해. 할머니가 병원 갔다 와서 쓰려져 있는데 죽이라고 누룽지 끓여가지고 한 냄비 뿔어가지고. 그니까 올해는 정말 우리들도 반성하자고. 아까 얘기 했잖아. 할머니가 우리 보스고 그 할머니 덕에 80 시간인데 우리 40 시간 50 시간밖에 일 안 하잖아. 그럼 나머지 30 시간은 뭘로 보답을 해 드려야 돼? 베란다 청소도 하고 다 해줘야 된단 말이야 왜 뭐 때문에 따지냔 말이야 우리가. (큰 박수)

87 우리들을 이렇게 하나의 간병인 IHSS 에서 일하는 정부에서 돈을 받고 일하는 사람들이라고 인정을 하는 사람들이 거의 없어요. 본인들이 그냥 돈을 주지는 않지만 본인들 때문에 우리가 돈을 벌어먹고 사니까 너네들은 도우미다, 펄스널 메이드, 너네들은 종이다, 너네들은 우리가 시키는 대로 해야 된다 하는 그런 이미지를 아마 99%는 갖고 있을 것 같아요.

88 그래서 나는 아무 생각 없이 앉아던 거 그냥 앉아 있었어. 그랬는데, 며느리가 밑에 바닦에 앉더라고. 그래서 먹었어 하여튼 간에 먹었는데 몇 일 지나서 하는 얘기가 자기는 너무 가슴이 아프대. 아, 뭐 가슴이 아파요? 그랬는데, 아 가슴 아프지. 일하는 년이 며느리를 앉혀야지. 빨닥 일어나야지 그래 버티고 앉아서 처먹었으니깐. (웃으며) 노인네 생각은 그거거든.

89 할머니가 여기 지금 여기 저 인홈 서비스를 받는 할머니들이 여기 오신 나이든 분이 연대를 보면 우리 나라 한 60 년대 70 년대 그때에 오신 분들이 많아요. 그러니깐 당신 사고 방식이 60 년대, 70 년대 한국에서의 그 사고방식이 딱 굳어져 있어요. 그래서 우리를 보는 눈이 완전히 도우미도 아니야, 그냥 식모. (생략) 그런 거에 대한 생각으로 이렇게 말은 안 하는데 행동으로 이렇게 하는게 그니깐 그 분을 제가 한 5 년 동안 돌보면서 같이 밥을 먹어 본적이 없어요. YS: 겸상 안한다는 거에요? 예. 그런 것들 있잖아요. 뭐, 소리를 지르거나 그런 게 아니라 보이지 않게. 그래서 제가 6 개월동안 울면서 왔다 갔다 하면서 울면서. 근데 이제 내가 나이가 육십이 다 돼서

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내가 아무리 한국에서 은행을 오래 다녔고 어쩌고 저쩌고 했어도 지금은 현실은 내 현 주소는 여기야.

90 근데 이렇게 뭐 너무 노약자다 보니깐 혼자서 할 수 없는 일들, 혼자 사시니깐 가정, 우리가 인홈 서비스잖아요. 그러니깐 혼자 할 수 없는 걸 우리가 가서 도와줘야 되는 그런 일 또 뭐, 혼자서 뭐, 계시지만은 자녀들을 의지 할 수 없잖아. 미국 생활이라는 게. 그러니깐 우리가 필요한거고 우리는 하나의 짝이고. 그러다 보니깐 앞으로 나는 일하는 입장에서 앞으로 내 모습이 될 수도 있고 그 분들이 도와주면서 또 내 모습을 보는거구.

91 그래서 제가 그랬어요. 사모님, 죄송해요. 제가 사모님 일만 보는게 아니라 다른 분들도 돌봐 드리는데 어떻게 지금 전화하셔서 내일 아침 8 시 20 분까지 그 다운타운 거기다가 차를 데라고 하시냐구, 아파트 앞에다가. 그러면 제가 8 시 20 분까지 사모님 댁에 갈라 그러면 제가 집에서 7 시 반에는 나와야 돼요. 거기 그날 아침에 그 출근 시간 traffic 막혀서 8 시 20 분, 7 시 반쯤 에는 나와야 돼요. 그리고 앞으로 병원을 가셔야 돼서 시간을 땡기실 거면. 일주일 전에 병원 예약한 시간 아시잖아요. 일주일 전에 미리 연락을 주세요. 죄송해요, 그리고 전화를 끊었어요.

92 자기 돈으로 안 되는 거 정부 저기 하는 건데도 그런 거는 뭐 굉장히 세심하게 뭐, 뭐, 뭐도 해달라 뭐도 해달라 요구 조건이 많구.

93 비위를 맞쳐줘야 되잖아요. 비위도 맞쳐줘야 되고 그 청소를 해야 되잖아요. Vacuum 하고 다 닦고. 노인네들이 의의로요 정부 돈으로 사람 쓰는 건데도 굉장히 깐깐하게 하여튼 티끌 하나 없이 해놔야 돼요. 그렇게 시켜요.

94 어떻게 보면 그 사람들이 멀쩡할 때가 많거든요. 머리 쓸 때도 되게 많고. 어떻게 머리를 써서 저 사람을 내 수하에 넣을까 그러는데 저희도 이만큼 나이가 먹었는데 그 사람 수하로 들어가고 싶지는 않잖아요. 그 사람이 돈 주는 것도 아니고. 나는 내 일을 하고 당신한테 대접을, 대접까지 212

아니지만, 인간 대접을 받고 싶지 당신이 돈 주는 것도 아닌데 내가 당신 maid 로 살고 싶지는 않아 그런 생각이 저한테는 있어요.

95 그래서 “안 간다고!” 그래서 왜 안가녜. 그래서 “나도 못 그만둬. 엄마가 원해서 나를 채용을 했지만, 엄마가 원해서 나 여기 왔다 갔다 일을 했지만 나갈 때는 내 맘대로 나갈꺼야.” (생략) 그러면서 청소기를 밀면서 문 앞에다가 대고 “노인네들이 말이야 젊은것들이 돈 좀 벌어먹고 살라 그러는데 안쓰럽게 생각은 못하고, 도우미 했다는 엄마들이 더해” 그러면서 “질투는 무슨 질투. 그냥 얘 힘들겠다 너 조금 늦게 오면 어떠냐 이렇게 이해를 하면 안돼나? 노인네들이 말이야, 웃겨. 그리고 말이야, 정부에서 돈 주는 거지. 본인이 돈 주나? 식모인 줄 아나봐”

96 예. 할 수 있는 건 하고 못 하는 건 못 한다, 이렇게. 예. 그리고 우리는 가면 이게 종 이잖아요. 그 집에 생각할 때는 우리를 머슴으로 생각하는 거죠. 예. 머슴으로 생각하는데 나는 그게 아니에요. 나는 내가 이렇게 일 해서 세금을 냈기때문에 당신이 혜택을 받습니다. 내가 이걸 해주는 거예요.

97 우리는 이거를 우리를 보증 하는 거는 정부에서 우리를 보증하거든요. 우리가 싸인 까지 해서 다 지문 찍고 다 정부에서 우리 번호 나와갔고 이렇게 하는 거야. 최악의 경우, 무슨 일이 있다. 그럼 우리를 보호 할 수 있는 거는 정부에서 우리를 보호 해주는 거거든? 말하자면. 그럼 우린 아주 자부심을 갖고 일 하라 이거야! 지금 정부에서 하던 대로, 지난번 교육 받을 때도. (전화벨) 그런데 할머니들은 우리를 너무 이렇게 우습게 보는 거지. 절대 그것만 보거든. 근데 우리는 딱 이해 하고 넘어 가는 거 이것 때문에 할머니들이 우리 한테 피해를 줄 때가 많아.

98 정부가 이걸 관리 하잖아요. 정부가 이거를 없앤다 하고 시간을 줄인다. 그 정부에서 잡고 있어요. 그러니깐 정부에요. 환자들은, 환자들은 힘이 없어요.

99 외국인을 밥을 내가 어떻게 해줘? 그리고 나는 영어를 할 줄 알아도 외국인을 같이 내 가까이 두는 거는 원치를 않아. 그거는 차별이 아니고 외국인 하고 결혼한 사람들 많잖아요. 잘 살거든요. 213

근데 난 싫어요. 애기 낳고 얼마나 좋아요. 근데 정서적으로 안 맞으면 난 싫어요. 나는 싫어. 이게 인종차별적으로 싫은 게 아니고 나의 가까운 사람으로는 싫어. 마음이 열리지가 않아. 얘기 하고 이렇게 비지니스 하고 볼 일 보는 거는 괜찮아.

100 근데 제가 그 아파트 일 가 가지고 파킹 이제 하기 기다리는 데에 서가 내려가지고 “젊으시니깐 여기 사시는 분은 아니시고 홈케어 하시는 분이세요?” 이랬어요. 그러니깐, “네, 그런데요.” “아유, 그럼 우리 union 에 나오세요” 내가 막 이런 거예요. (생략) 그렇게 저는 어디를 가나 자랑해요. 자랑하니깐 elevator 에서 만난 할아버지들도 “아유, 너무 착해 보인다, 인사도 하고” 이렇게 배려해주면 그럼 이제 저는 홈케어 왔어요. 이렇게. 부모, 부모 계세요? 이렇게 물어 볼 때 있거든요. 아, 나 홈케어 다니세요. 그러면 “아휴, 전화번호 하나 달라고 내가 이따 필요하면 부르겠다고” 이렇게 하는 거에요.

101 뭐 다른 커뮤니티도 여러가지 편법이 있어요 네네 나름대로. 근데 중국 애들 보니까 걔네들은 다 하더라구. YS: 그 분 들은 왜 그렇게 하실까요? 걔네들은 그래도 좀 정직한가보지 (웃음) 우리는 빨리 빨리가 있잖아요. 빨리빨리 (웃음) 네 그러니까 이렇게 빨리 빨리 하고 또 인제 이게 만약 그렇게 하라면 멕시칸 애들 경우에는 이렇게 느릿느릿 하더라구. 이렇게 시간을 길게 하잖아. 근데 우리들은 80 몇 시간에 세 번 간다 그러면 월요일 한시간 빨리빨리 가서 하고 금요일 날 가서 빨리빨리 해주고 수요일 날 좀 오래 해주고 이런 거 있잖아요 YS:아 좀 유도리 있게 하시는구나. 네네 근데 인제 그러다가 김치 좀 담아 달라 그러면 해줘야지.

102 제도가 시작되는 날, 대한민국의 국민들은 이제 국가가 나의 가족과 이웃인 노인을 돌봐준다고 기뻐했습니다. 우리 요양보호사들은 안정적이고 좋은 일자리에서 사회가 필요로 하는 돌봄을 할 수 있다고 희망에 찼습니다. 그런데, 현재 노인돌봄의 현장을 그러합니까? (생략) 감염의 위험으로 모두가 사회적 거리두기를 할 때 돌봄노동자들은 돌봄 공백이 없도록 초밀접하게 건강상 취약한 어르신들을 돌보아 왔습니다. 그러나 감염병으로부터 건강의 위험을 무릅쓴 돌봄노동의 대가는

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무엇입니까? 그래서 요양호보사들은 보건복지부, 기획재정부, 장기요양기관에 다음과 같이 요구합니다. (진한 글씨 원문 강조)