The Journey of Filipino Migrant Wives in South Korea
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Dreams and Agency: The Journey of Filipino Migrant Wives in South Korea Stella Jang March 2020 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University © Copyright by Stella Jang 2020 All Rights Reserved i Declaration of Originality I certify that this thesis is my own work and that to the best of my knowledge all sources have been acknowledged. 24 March 2020 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my panel members. My former supervisor Professor Hyaeweol Choi, who accepted me as a PhD candidate, helped me to narrow down my research and encouraged me to finish my fieldwork. I am also grateful to Dr. Ross Tapsell and Dr. Yasuko Kobayashi for their continued support and sharing their expertise. I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Shameem Black. Without her, the term reproductive citizenship that is central to my research would not exist. I have the greatest appreciation for my supervisor Professor Ruth Barraclough, who advised me through the toughest moment of my PhD journey on how to shape and finish the writing of my thesis. Professor Barraclough’s attentive reading, thorough and intellectual supervision taught me how to write and think critically as a scholar. I am grateful to be her student. During my PhD I had many different experiences. After one semester on campus I relocated to Indonesia for three years. During this period I completed my fieldwork in Korea and gave birth to my second child. As a researcher based overseas it often felt like a lonely marathon, but I was able to persevere with support from my panel members and family. Thanks and love to my supportive husband, beautiful children Onyu and Noah, parents and parents-in- law. I devote my research to the migrant wives I met during my fieldwork. As a migrant wife in Australia, I am also struggling to fit into a new country and juggling to maintain a balance between raising children and pursuing my career. Thanks to my sisters (Filipino migrant wives) whom I met in the field. They showed me how to be a strong woman and brave mother. They are incredible human beings. iii ABSTRACT Filipino migrant wives occupy a unique space in South Korean society. They are pioneers of South Korea’s distinct version of multiculturalism, having been among the first wave of migrant wives to enter Korea. Some have broken through intersectional barriers to become politicians, civil servants and film stars. Many more have pushed boundaries in their marriages and challenged patriarchal and patrilocal expectations that migrant wives should be confined to the home, deferential to husbands and focussed on caring for children and in- laws. This is even more striking given that husband dominance and Confucian values remain embedded in religious practices, education and immigration policies in South Korea. My research introduces the term ‘reproductive citizenship’ to explain how the Korean state encourages migrant wives to reproduce both biologically and culturally, giving birth to biracial children who they raise with Korean cultural values. If migrant wives fulfil the tenets of reproductive citizenship, then they are afforded social acceptance and security over residency. The state’s vision of reproductive citizenship is a gendered concept based on norms of female deference and husband control, designed to disincentivise migrant wives from leaving their husbands. Reproductive citizenship is the acceptable face of multiculturalism in Korea amidst record low birth and marriage rates. It enables Korean men at the bottom of the marriage market to find a wife whom they expect to focus on producing and raising children in a society with deep-rooted cultural expectations, where male maturity is linked with marriage and fatherhood. My research examines how the state’s framework of reproductive citizenship influences the key decisions and fertility choices of migrant wives. I find that Filipinas face discrimination linked to their gender, race and class regardless of whether they arrive as marriage migrants, migrant workers or as entertainers catering to US soldiers. Each type of migrant is separated by the boundaries of citizenship that divide groups within a society based on their legal and iv economic entitlements. Migrant workers and entertainers are incentivised to work and refrain from having children as their visas are tied to employer sponsors. For migrant wives, producing a child and devotion to one’s husband is the only way to attain substantive rights, respect and the protection of the Korean state. Reproductive citizenship attempts to push migrant women to maintain marriage as the only socially acceptable form of conjugal relationship. Multicultural programs focus on migrant wives and attempt to control and monitor their bodies, autonomy and agency using legal citizenship, welfare and social acceptance as rewards. However migrant wives, who have come to embody multiculturalism in South Korea, have their own dreams, which in the case of Filipinas extend beyond domestic care and raising children. Filipino wives are creating media and forming community groups to challenge cultural perspectives of Koreans who associate migrants from developing countries as being inferior and a homogenous collective group. Rather than being passive citizens, as envisaged by the state’s ill-conceived frameworks of multiculturalism and reproductive citizenship, Filipino wives are proactively reshaping practices of cross-cultural communication so that different races and cultures can be accepted in a more expansive multicultural Korea. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................ viii NOTE ON FIELDWORK, NAMES AND TRANSLATION .............................................. ix CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1 1. Vivian’s journey .......................................................................................................... 1 2. Competing discourses around the identities of migrant wives .................................... 4 3. Literature review ......................................................................................................... 9 3.1. The racial, class and gendered nature of cross-border marriage ............................... 10 3.2. Korea’s approach to multiculturalism ....................................................................... 16 3.3. Filipino migrant wives as a unique and insightful group .......................................... 20 4. Theoretical underpinnings ......................................................................................... 31 4.1. The concept of reproductive citizenship .................................................................... 35 5. Research questions .................................................................................................... 39 6. Methodology ............................................................................................................. 43 7. Chapter overviews ..................................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER II: NEW LIFE BEGINS: BECOMING A LEARNER ..................................... 50 1. Korea’s immigration system for marriage migrants ................................................. 57 2. Multicultural Family Support Centres and the moulding of migrant wives ............. 65 2.1. A gendered approach ................................................................................................. 70 2.2. Learning Korean language and culture ...................................................................... 73 2.3. The Centre: a safe space for migrant wives ............................................................... 79 3. Outside of the classrooms ......................................................................................... 81 3.1. Cooking class in Emart .............................................................................................. 82 Conclusion: disguised resistance ...................................................................................... 87 CHAPTER III: DESIRE DRIVEN AGENCY AS AN EARNER ....................................... 89 1. At first a worker, then a wife..................................................................................... 94 1.1. Financial autonomy ................................................................................................. 104 1.2. E6 visa holders: Entertainers, sex workers or trafficked victims? .......................... 110 2. Marriage came first, then work ............................................................................... 116 2.1. A Korean husband’s assimilation: Jasmine’s story ................................................. 127 2.2. Failed relationships and employment ...................................................................... 129 Conclusion: the agency of ‘earners’ and the disempowerment of ‘spenders’ ................ 132 CHAPTER IV: DREAMING OF A HAPPY FAMILY .................................................... 136 1. Living the Korean dream: why Filipinas migrate to Korea ...................................