EMPLACING PARENTING: MIGRATION AND BELONGING AMONG KOREAN GIREOGI FAMILIES
by
Young A Jung A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cultural Studies
Committee:
______Director
______
______
______Program Director
______Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Date: ______Fall Semester 2014 George Mason University Fairfax, VA
Emplacing Parenting: Migration and Belonging among Korean Gireogi Families
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University
By
Young A Jung Doctor of Philosophy Korea University, 2003
Director: Debra Lattanzi Shutika, Professor Department of English
Fall Semester 2014 George Mason University Fairfax, VA
Copyright 2014 Young A Jung All Rights Reserved
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DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Ok Chae Kim, my little daughter, Jiwan, and my parents, Oon Hyung Chung and Kyungja Kim, who have always been supported me with all their hearts.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Reading an author’s acknowledgements has always made me imagine the orchestrated efforts and hidden supports systems that it takes to finish a work. Beginning with bearing a rough idea in the early phases, research is often a collaborative process. This dissertation was no exception. I received gread advice from colleagues and friends about the conceptualization of themes, selecting a research topic, and crafting research questions. My deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Debra Lattanzi Shutika, my adviser and a beautiful folklorist. She inspired me with insightful perspectives and methods as I was shaping the initial idea for this dissertation. Her courses on immigration and sense of place studies are the most memorable times in my doctoral study. Her multidisciplinary perspectives have helped me to approach migration studies with eclectic methods informed by folklore. I must also thank Dr. David Haines for showing me how to be a scholar. His comment, “Do not generalize!” on a final paper stays with me. I often return to this maxim as I collected and analyzed my narrative-based data. It was an honor to present a paper with him about Asian Diasporas at Korea University in 2009. I received first-hand experience interviewing and collecting data with Dr. Dae Young Kim from the Greater Washington Area Korean Community Research project. He showed me the importance of seeing the greater picture of a phenomenon while paying attention to the small details within the larger narrative. These great scholars have had a profound impact on my interdisciplinary approach to Cultural Studies.
I would like to thank the many friends I made during my doctoral study at George Mason University. The first year that I spent with my Cultural Studies cohort- Tara, Fan, Rachel, Win, MP, and Robert- is one of my best memories of Mason. They are brilliant scholars and cheerful friends. The early conversations I had with Cultural Studies colleagues Lia, Tara, Sangmin, Gyutag and the director of Korean Studies Center, Dr. Ro, Young-chan helped me to begin forming ideas for my research. My dear colleague, Hye-Young served as a valuable gatekeeper to the communities I studied by introducing me to many of the people I interviewed. M. Liz Andrews read and edited the final drafts at the end of my process.
Since I have finished my dissertation writing, I hope my husband, Ok Chae who has been so important in helping to make this happen, can resume his career as a writer. I received tremendous love and support from my family, especially my mother and father, Kyungja Chung and Oon Hyung Chung, who have trusted in my potential all the time. My loving daughter, Jiwan, who was born during my course-work, has assisted me with her laughter and sense of humor. Finally, I would like to thank all of my anonymous interviewees with all my heart. I could not finish this dissertation without their willingness to open their homes and lives. Most Korean gireogi mothers are diligent organizers. They put in endless efforts to offer excellent educational environments to
iv their kids, oftentimes while also studying English themselves. I hope this dissertation helps to illuminate the lives and experiences of Korean gireogi families so that the stereotypical images of these families can be replaced with more realistic representations.
Doing a second doctoral study was not always a smooth process. Through my doctoral work, I have expanded my conception of what counts as text into broader one of social context. My introduction to a folkloric approach to migration studies was an invaluable asset while I was doing ethnographic research. I appreciate the innovative efforts and accomplishments of previous migration studies scholars. I offer this dissertation as a contribution to scholarly discourse in migration studies.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Note on Romanization of Korean…………………………………………………….. ix List of Tables……….…………………………………………………………………. x List of Figures……………..………………………………………………………….. xi Abstract...... ……. xii Introduction: Gireogi, A New Transnational Family………...... 1 At the Airport ...... 1 Education Fever ...... 4 Why Study Gireogi Mothers’ Transnational Practices and Sense of Belonging ...... 11 Research Design...... 13 Evidence and Method ...... 13 Field Sites...... 15 Observations ...... 19 Interviews ...... 20 Organizations of Dissertation ...... 21 1. Emplacement and Belonging of Korean Gireogi Families……………………….. 27 Literature Review...... 28 Transnational Social Field ...... 28 Sense of Place ...... 39 Sense of Belonging ...... 41 Social Capital ...... 47 Korean Gireogi Families ...... 48 Interactive Constructions of Belonging ...... 50 2. A History of Korean Education Immigration ...... 55 A Deep-rooted History of Yuhak until the Late Joseon Dynasty ...... 55 Early Contacts with Western Imperialism and the Korean-American Treaty ...... 57 The First Korean Students in America...... 61 Independence Movement and ‘Refugee Students’ ...... 67 Elite Yuhaksaeng under the Strict Yuhajsaeng Policy ...... 73 Diversified Oversea Yuhaksaeng Groups and a Path to Immigration...... 75 Early Study Abroadt ...... 78 3. Everyday Practice of Place Making: Organizations of Gireogi Mother’s Lives ...... 82
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3-1. A Week in the Life of McLean Mothers ...... 83 McLean CEO Mom ...... 84 Educational Consultant, Hagwon ...... 89 Multiple forms of Competitions ...... 92 Student Mother, Role Model Mother, Professional Mother ...... 95 Exclusive Sharing of Educational Information under the Guise of Religious Meeting ...... 98 3-2. A Week of Centreville Mothers...... 105 Daily Lives in Centreville ...... 105 Invisible Neighbors, Working and Studying Mothers to Maintain VisaStatues107 Making and Imagining Home among Gireogi Families………………………112 4. Feedback of Local Community and Renegotiating Parenting ...... 117 Feedback and Reconstructing a Sense of Belonging in a New Environment ...... 120 Images of Gireogi Families: Feedback from Media Sources in the U.S. and Korea ...... 122 Who are We? Straddling National Boundaries ...... 125 Playing with Images, Struggling against Misrecognition ...... 128 Imagined and Real Families...... 130 Feedback of Native Local Community ...... 137 Feedback of School: Silenced Voice, Voiced Silence ...... 138 Recognition of Public Service: Multilingual Policy, Diverse Community...... 140 Renegotiating Parenting: What is Good Education, After All? ...... 142 5. Three Times Moving of Mencius Mother ...... 147 Everything for a Good School District ...... 149 Longing for Upward Mobility, Downplaying Current Reality ...... 154 Social Performance of Story Telling, Narrative Belonging ...... 161 School District Belonging and Place Making ...... 169 6. Educational Transnational Field ...... 174 Educational Transnationalism at the Government Level ...... 176 Educational Transnationalism at Institutional Level ...... 182 Educational Transnationalism at Familial and Personal Level ...... 186 Performing Educational Citizenship ...... 191 Conclusion: Emplaced Transnational Spaces and Belonging among Korean Gireogi Mothers…………………………………………………………………195 Again, At the Airport ...... 195 Social and Cultural Capital and Structural Belonging ...... 197 Feedback and Relational Belonging ...... 201 School District Belonging and Narrative Belonging ...... 204 Theoretical Implications ...... 208 Limits of Research ...... 211 Suggestions for Future Research ...... 213 Appendix 1. Demographic Characteristics of Participants ...... 216 Appendix 2. Interview Questions ...... 218 References ...... 220 Bio ...... 235
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NOTE ON KOREAN ROMANIZATION
All the Korean words’ romanization in this dissertation follows the 2007 revised Korean romanization rule of the National Institute of the Korean Language.
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LIST OF TABLES
Table Page 1. Mrs. Kwon’s Weekly Schedule ...... 85
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page 1. Centreville Grand Plaza 2013 ...... ……17 2. Dachi-dong Cram Schools 2011 ...... 19 3. Byeon, Su’s Original Tomb and the Newly Built Tomb by the Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States-Greater Washington in May 2003…………………………………………….…………………………….. ……64 4. A Statue of Seo, Jae-pil standing in front of Korean Council in Washington, D.C ...... 66 5. Dachi-dong Hagwon Street ...... 95 6. Centreville Korea Town Shopping Mall ...... 101
ABSTRACT
EMPLACING PARENTING : MIGRATION AND BELONGING AMONG KOREAN GIREOGI FAMILIES
Young A Jung, Ph.D.
George Mason University, 2014
Dissertation Director: Dr. Debra Lattanzi Shutika
This dissertation explores emplaced transnational families’ dynamics through an analysis of the categories of class, sense of place, sense of belonging and parenting among the so-called “Korean gireogi families”. A Korean gireogi (wild goose) family is a distinct kind of transnational migrant family that splits their household to educate the children in an English-speaking country for a temporary period. Using mixed research methods, including ethnographic field work, in-depth interviews, and textual analyses of media representations and historical documents, this dissertation examines gireogi families in a historical and a transnational context. The majority of the research focuses on mothers and children who live in McLean and Centreville of
Fairfax school district located in Virginia, just a few miles from Washington, D.C. I argue that these transnational families construct distinct types of belonging, including structural belonging, relational belonging, school district belonging, and narrative belonging. Belonging is dependent on the Korean gireogi families’ ability to mobilize social and cultural capital, the development and quality of relationship in the
receiving communities, and their ability to rationalize the benefits of frequent movement and temporary settlement to reach their children’s educational goals. This dissertation also theorizes the educational transnational field.
INTRODUCTION : GIREOGI, A NEW TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY
At the Airport
The waiting room for international arrivals at the Dulles International Airport on January 21, 2011 was filled with an air of anticipation, warmth, colorful balloons and flowers. When the electronic sign announced the arrival of a Korean Airline’s flight, the atmosphere of the room was filled with excitement. After thirty minutes, one of my old friends from Korea appeared in the waiting area. Her first words to me were, “It was extremely difficult to buy a ticket because of gireogi fathers.” She went on to tell me, “I had to use my relative’s connection to get on this flight. The New
Year Day’s tickets were sold out a year in advance!” The first things my friend said to me as soon as we met was a complaint that men known as gireogi fathers’ make airline reservations in such great numbers that t hinders other travelers like her from buying tickets at certain times. I asked her, “Are there that many gireogi families living in here?” My friend stared at me, ready to criticize my ignorance of this widely known fact in South Korea. She told me that Virginia’s Fairfax County is so well- known in South Korea for its educational reputation and that there has even a book titled “America’s Best School District, Fairfax’s Passionate Parents” that one of the
Korean educational counselors published in 2009.1
1Kyungha Kim, Miguk Palhakgun Peopaekseui Yeolseong Bumodeul (America’s Best School District, Fairfax’s Passionate Parents), Seoul: Saram In, 2009. The author introduces eight passionate parents’ education methods who successfully raised their kids as elite professionals.
1
Fairfax County has indeed become a sought after place in the U.S. for families to send their children to American school. This new type of transnational family, whose main reason of family separation is for educating kids in a foreign country, has been widely practiced among middle class Korean families since the 1990s.2
Although most Korean dictionaries have added this new term, gireogi gajok (wild goose family) and Korean TV commercials and dramas depict this family pattern frequently, there is little academic discussion on the social and cultural implications of this phenomenon.
This dissertation explores emplaced transnational families’ dynamics through analyses of the categories of class, sense of place, sense of belonging, and parenting among these so-called “Korean gireogi families”. My analyses are specifically focused on gireogi mothers as a typical pattern of the gireogi life-style where the mother and children live in an English speaking country while the father remains in
South Korea to support the family financially. Studying gireogi mothers’ stories is more illuminating to the topic of constructing a sense of place and belonging in a new destination than gireogi fathers’ stories. However, gireogi fathers’ stories are also discussed as long as they are related to gireogi mothers’ constructing senses of belonging.
A Korean gireogi (wild goose) family is a distinct kind of transnational migrant family that splits their household to educate the children in an English- speaking country for a temporary period that can range from six months to more than
The ethnographic depictions applied in this book keep emphasizing the importance of a good school district and parental involvements.
2 According to Munhwa Daily, the number of early study abroad students including gireogi families’ students was1, 562 in 1998, over 15,000 in 2002, and over 20,000 in 2003. The cost of early study abroad was over 200 million dollors in 2003. (Munhwa Daily, February 19th)
2 ten years. The term, “gireogi” was coined by the South Korean media to describe transnational connections of this separated family pattern.3 The typical pattern of a gireogi family is a dual-continent household that consists of a mother and children, living in an English-speaking country while the father lives on his own in Korea and sends money to maintain their life style. Since the early 1990s, a growing number of
South Korean professionals have sought out the chance to educate their children in an
English-speaking environment4. The number of transnational families has grown rapidly under the Korean government’s pro-English educational and globalization policies so the current trend has spread down to middle class Korean families as well.5
The increasing number of Korean families seeking educational opportunities for their children abroad illustrates a distinctive pattern of migration practices as well as South
Korean responses to globalization and transnationalization.
Existing scholarship in the field of transnational migration studies focuses on the borderless movement of migrants and the formation of transnational fields among immigrant communities. Even when this scholarship contributes to enhancing the understanding of complex relationships between the sending and receiving societies,
3 A pair of wooden gireogi is set on the table to give a symbolic meaning of conjugal union and a newly married couple’s life-long relationship at a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. Ironically, this symbolic bird currently refers a separate family pattern. 4 According to the statistics of South Korea’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, the number of elementary, middle, and high school students who migrated overseas to study increased from 10498 in 2003 to 27349 in 2008 and of this number over 30 % select the U.S.A. as a destination country. (“2008 School Year’s Statistics of Elementary, Middle, and High School Students’ Migration for Studying Abroad, Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology) According to the statistics of Korean Bank of April, 2011, the expenditure of South Korean peoples for study abroad in 2010 was over 4,483.5 million dollars. 5 To reduce the costs of study abroad, many middle class Korean parents choose South Asian English speaking countries instead of the U.S.A. or Canada. According to the statistics of South Korea’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, the number of migrant students who chose South Asian countries as their destination countries was 7,973 in 2010 (19.5% of all study abroad elementary, middle, and high school students this school year).
3 there is little research investigating contextualized transnational social spaces and practices. While existing scholarship provides a significant data on transnational migration, there is little that places it in the context of bodily processes and experiences of place. The literature of transnational migration studies often discusses the bright future of new migrants by focusing on their enhanced movement, double life-styles, and flexible identities, but they do not pay much attention to the costs and effort that transnational migrants spent to maintain dual life-styles (O’Connor 2010;
Dunn 2010; Collins 2010). The premise of my study is to address the unbalanced academic developments between theoretical and empirical transnational migration studies by providing a more nuanced account of the lived experiences of Korean gireogi families in Fairfax County, Virginia. (Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt 1999;
Vertovec 1999; Kivisto 2001; Morawska 2003; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007).
Education Fever and English Mania
During the Korean congressional election in 2012, former Taekwondo
Olympic gold medalist, professor Moon, Dae-Sung caused anger and frustration throughout South Korea. Right after his election as a congressman, rumors that his doctoral thesis at Gungmin University was plagiarized spread in the media. The accusations that he cut-and-paste his dissertation ultimately proved to be true by the university’s investigating committee. Not only was his new political career as a congressman ruined, but also his honorable accomplishment was nullified. The
International Olympic Committee (IOC) considered asking him to resign his IOC membership. Social critics and the media commented on this situation and used it to criticize Korean as the lack of intellectual integrity and tolerance of plagiarism in
4 academic settings.
Professor Moon’s story reveals another aspect of South Korean society. A degree is mandatory for any kind of academic professorship in South Korea, so even though Moon is an accomplished professional Taekwondo athlete with the highest ranking, he is still required to obtain a Ph.D. to teach Taekwondo at any Korean college-level educational institution. A specialist’s capacity is not tested by their professional accomplishments but is proven by academic degrees. Even artists and athletes with outstanding achievements are required to pursue academic degrees to secure jobs.
South Korea is known as a hakbeol (academic clique) society. A person’s educational background is considered their most valuable asset. If a person graduates from a good high school and a top-tier university, they are able to cultivate an academic network and their ability to enter a respectable society is guaranteed. The internet social networking service, “I Love School,” which provides a platform for users to organize social gatherings among academic cliques of Korean public school graduates, was more popular in the nation than Facebook. Educational capital, the educational resources that an individual acquires and manages during a life-time, plays an important role in acquiring and maintaining a social position in Korean society. All kinds of alumni meetings and networking events are organized to support social mobility at almost every social institution. A person’s academic background is important even in many aspects of society including the private sector, among friends, in small businesses, at parents’ gatherings, for arranged marriages, and many other contexts. Alumni from the same educational institution may give one another an advantage of a shared social network, especially when beginning new relationships,
5 which can accelerate businesses. Thus, one’s hakbeol is a defining factor in determining one’s class (Kim 2004: 101).
South Korea is well known for its competitive college entrance examinations, much like Japan and China. South Korea is especially famous for its national obsession with education. In almost every social group, educational issues are priority.
The vast majority South Korean parents are highly skilled at gathering information about schooling and preparing their children for the best education possible. The day of the national university entrance examination day, known as D-Day, the entire country caters to the examination schedule (Seth 1). Public transportation systems are required to support commuting students who need to get their respective testing sites at the designated time. Businesses reschedule their regular work hours to follow the examination schedule. All temples and churches are expected to serve praying parents whose children are taking the test. Even airline travel is shut down for the day. The test, the equivalent of the Korean SAT, is considered the most important test of a person’s life and determines the future of high school students when they take it. The top level of grades and examination results are essential for entry into any professional social position (Ripley 2011).
The often excessive efforts parents take to educate their children in East Asian countries is famous in Asia and has become more visible to Western society as well.
Amy Chua’s memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011), focused on the relentless educating style of her Chinese family, which characterizes the parenting style of many South Korean parents’. The academic success stories of the children of many Asian immigrants resonate with Asian American ‘model minority’ discourses
(Louie 2004; Wong 1995; Hurh and Kim 1989). This excessive passion for educating
6 their children is not just found among educated Asian parents. Working class Asian parents also invest considerable amounts of their income into sending their children to institutions known as “cram schools,” hoping that these efforts will enable their children to enter top-tier colleges. In fact, South Korean families spend the most money among the Asian states on private education (Seth 5). Korean parents are generally not satisfied with the standardized curriculum offered by the public education system so they push their children to study further to ensure a high score on the national university entrance examination. This extremely competitive environment is present not only during D-day’s test but characterizes students’ everyday school lives. Students are graded numerically from the first to the last, creating an environment where classmates are not viewed as friends but rivals to surpass. Most students take advanced curriculum courses in private sector academies to prepare for the entrance examination and to exceed their classmates.6 According to Statistics
Korea, the monthly average household expenditure on private education in 2008 was
$ 240 USD7 and the total expenditure of all K-12 public students’ on the private education in the same year was $ 2.09 million USD.
Some scholars trace the origin of the obsessive focus on acquiring academic
6 According to the Korea Institute for the Advancement of Science and Creativity’s data and Korea Times, the average participating rate of seonhang hakseup (preliminary study) during the middle school age is 80.7%. This seonhang hakseup have made Korean private education market flourish and the new president, Park, Geun Hye’s campaign promise to prohibit seonhang hakseup encountered a social denunciation recently. (Korea Times, Feb. 11, 2013, C2) Even though the Korean new president opposed seonhang hakseup, the President Park’s efforts did not make any change because the Korean public including parents and private educational sectors disagreed strongly. 7 The average household of income in 2008 was about 3,000 US dollars, so the average household expenditure on private education, $240 occupied about 8% of a whole household income.(http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/3/index.board?bmode=read&aSeq=177360) However, this statistics does not reflect regional differences that Seoul households spend a lot more household incomes in private education than local city households.
7 skills and test scores, or education fever, to Korea’s Confucius roots which emphasize study and learning (Louie 2004; Kim 2004). Since the middle ages in both China and
Korea, there have been official national examinations that are required in order for scholars to become governmental employees. The modern version of this official test is called gosi (high level examination) in South Korea, and this extremely competitive governmental exam is used to select lawyers, judges, detectives, diplomats, and high ranking officials. For South Korean students, excelling academically and obtaining good test results are the direct avenues for upward mobility.
However, Confucianism only plays one part in the many dynamics that create education fever. South Korea is an important example of rapid industrialization and modernization, both economically and politically. The so called “the Miracle of the
Han River,” South Korea is often emulated as a model for developing countries.
Compared to Western modernization and Japanese industrialization, South Korea’s change had been astonishingly fast and dynamic. While the people of South Korea went through a rapid period of modernization and social turmoil, the trend to secure social positions using educational capital remained unchanged.
Samuel Kim discusses the contradictory efforts that have characterized the state’s attempts to propel globalization since former President, Kim, Yeong Sam regime’s “Segyehwa [globalization]” project (1993-1998). This state-initiated type of globalization is rooted in nationalistic agendas such as that of the third President,
Park, Jeong Hi and the New Village Movement (1970-1979). While there is usually a natural tension between nationalism and globalism, Kim concludes that, “despite the rising globalization and globalism chorus, deep down Korea remains mired in the cocoon of exclusive cultural nationalism” (2000, 263). This lamentation refers to
8 efforts of Presidents Kim, Yeong Sam (1993-1998) and Kim, Dae Jung (1998-2003) to create nationalistic internationalization movements intended to maximize the state’s economic profits. Yet the increasing numbers of transnational exchange of capital, human resources, products, and culture since the Ro, Mu Hyeon’s regime (2003-2008) has moved beyond the state-led efforts to direct Korea’s entry into the global market.
Today, Korean society is affected by globalization and is globalizing rapidly in ways that the government does not control.
During the1990s, when former President, Kim, Yeong Sam drove Korea to globalize with the motto, Segyehwa [globalization], English competency became an additional indicator of social class on top of academic performance and test results.
Public schools began English language courses earlier, beginning in the third year, and the Korean government’s English education curriculum policy was changed from writing intensive to a conversational focus. Performing “real” English soon became the prominent goal of Korea’s education policy (Moon 2011:143). Catching up with globalization trends meant acquiring communicative English skills like native English speakers. The Korean teachers who studied English or English education in Korean colleges were unable to achieve this native-like fluency due to their Korean-accented
English. As a result, the Korean government started hiring native English-speaking teachers to teach “accurate” English to Korean students. Programs like TALK (Teach and Learn in Korea) and EPIK (English Program in Korea) that recruit native English- speaking teaching aids and teachers were launched under this policy. According to the former coordinator of EPIK, a Korean government-run English teaching program, during the early stage of this program in the 2000s, they recruited a considerable number of Korean-American applicants but have recently begun to hire both Korean-
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American and non-Korean heritage native English-speaking applicants to diversify the teachers’ backgrounds.8
Along with this government-initiated English education policy, the private
English education industry mushroomed in Seoul and in major cities around the country. The English education business targeted not just school aged students but also kindergarteners, preschoolers, and adult businessmen. Some of these business corporations formed a conglomerate that established transnational branches in Asia.
Attending English kindergartens that offered native English-speaking class environments became so popular among upper class parents’ educational choices that
“real” English competency was transformed into an important class indicator in contemporary Korean society. Parents who had lived in English-speaking countries as a foreign student, a correspondent, a transnational corporations’ employee, or a diplomat, began thinking about sending their children abroad to learn “real” English.
Korean parents began thinking that educating their children in an English-speaking country would be a more effective way of acquiring “real” and “authentic” English than sending them to private kindergartens or hagwons (private educational institutions). This was the birth of gireogi families and jogi yuhak (pre-college study abroad). Korean public schools’ expanding and strengthening English education curricula along with the explosion of English hagwons became the social stimuli for
English mania. Gireogi families originated from this English mania as a Korean response to globalization.
8 The former coordinator of EPIK, Ms. Choi herself was an EPIK teacher in Korea. After teaching English for five years, she became a trainer for new EPIK teachers. As a Korean instructor of a U.S. college, I’ve also found the same change as Ms. Choi’s comment. Among the students who took my Korean language courses, more and more non-Korean heritage native English speaking students apply to both TALK and EPIK programs.
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Why Study Gireogi Mothers’ Transnational Practices and Sense of Belonging?
Gireogi is a new kind of transnational Korean family whose exclusive reason for migrating is to educate their children in an English-speaking country. Discovering that the city I live in, Fairfax, Virginia, is one of the most popular destinations for gireogi families, along with encountering gireogi families in my community, led me to consider the notion of transnational families. How do transnational families create their new sense of place and belonging when they are living apart from each other?
How do transnational parents rationalize their separation, moving, and single parenting? How have transnational family members adjusted to the receiving communities and schools? What kinds of issues arise regarding their transnational life-styles and how do they understand the relationship between the global and the local issues? These questions led me to study gireogi parents, particularly the stories of gireogi mothers.
Studying all the members of the gireogi family requires different approaches to each family member. Even though this study does not draw a complete picture of this kind of transnational family, studying gireogi mothers’ sense of belonging can be an essential part of understanding the family dynamics of gireogi families. Since a typical pattern of the gireogi life-style is the mother and children living in an English speaking country and the father staying in the home county to support the family financially, studying gireogi mothers’ stories is particularly illuminating to the topic of constructing a sense of place and belonging in a new destination. As I illustrate in this dissertation, gireogi mothers’ stories reveal how transnational families transform and negotiate a sense of belonging in a new place and home. Even though many gireogi
11 families prepare for their transnational lives through extensive research and planning, they often encounter an unexpected sense of disorientation or loss when the plan is realized. Gireogi mothers’ stories also reveal how they cope with disempowerment and disorientation in a relatively short period. Some gireogi mothers try to maintain their social class status by utilizing a tight social network among similar mothers living in a new destination and by taking advantage of family resources. Other gireogi mothers, however, experience downward class mobility and change their parenting styles. Even if most gireogi mothers set a limit on their stay in the U.S., they share crucial experiences with many immigrant women: they have to adjust to a new place, make a new home, and struggle to create a sense of belonging. Gireogi parents are different from other immigrants because their exclusive reason for practicing a transnational life-style is to offer their children a “good” education and they usually do this for a finite amount of time. Thus, gireogi families’ sense of home and belonging are contingent on their educational reasons.
This dissertation focuses on how gireogi families’ different transnational activities influence their sense of place and belonging. Until recently, there has been no academic investigation of the relationship between transnationalism and Korean transnational migrants. Moreover, while sociological literature explores immigrants’ assimilation, adjustment, and new identity formations, it overlooks intricate textures of immigrant belonging and sense of home. Considering the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation, researches on immigrants’ sense of belonging are surprisingly rare (Baumeister and Leary 1995). To answer the main research question,
“what happens to transnational families’ sense of belonging when they try to make a new home?” this study focuses on educational transnational migrants’ lived
12 experiences. Specifically, this study investigates transnational families’ experiences, their coping methods with dislocation, and their ability to regain or renegotiate a meaningful sense of belonging during the course of their gireogi experiences. By taking this kind of approach, I seek to fill the gap between theory-oriented literature on transnationalism and the lack of research on the transnational migrants’ emplaced livelihoods (Dunn 2010).
Research Design
To answer my main research question-How do the emplaced experiences of
Korean gireogi parents affect their sense of belonging, sense of place, and of parenting?-I will address the following questions:
What is the historical background for the emergence and increased
visibility of these Korean “gireogi” families and, more broadly, what is the
history of Korean education migration?
What are the social, economic, cultural, and historical implications of
these Korean transnational migrations that affect both Korean-American
migration history and intraethnic dynamics?
How are the sense of belonging and the sense of place of these Korean
gireogi parents constructed during their migration process?
How does the sense of place affect these Korean gireogi families’
adjustment and parenting styles?
Evidence and Method
At the time of my writing, there is no book-length examination on Korean
13 gireogi families. This project requires a mixed-method approach to document the many nuances of Korean gireogi families. The evidence that I consider is textual, ethnographic, and historiographic data, thus it is necessary to apply a flexible methodology to analyze a multifaceted phenomenon of how gireogi families’ emplacement in a new community shapes their sense of belonging. Textual material includes popular press (newspapers, television programs, magazine articles both in
Korea and U.S.) on Korean gireogi families, journalistic accounts of parenting styles and educational philosophies of gireogi parents, and some government documents on
Korean educational and migration policies. With the exception of the government documents, this textual data has not been used by other scholars to study either
Korean gireogi families or Korean education migration. Government documents have been used by previous scholars to present background information reference percentages of Korean families who choose to be transnational split families.
Government documents are rarely used, however, to analyze the relationship between a state-led pro-English globalization policy and the increasing number of transnational families. My historical data include books and articles on modern Korean and Korean immigrant histories, and these sources were used for historicizing Korean gireogi families within the broader context of Korean immigrants.
I emphasize ethnographic interviews and observations at many sites for my analysis. The ethnographic observations in two communities: Centreville and McLean, located in Fairfax County, Virginia. Research was conducted between October 2011 and February 2013. Since I have lived in Centreville for over ten years, it was more accessible than the Korean community in McLean. I have a colleague who served as the president of a Korean parents’ association at a middle school in McLean who
14 introduced me to a group of Korean transnational families living in the community.
During the summer of 2011, I had a chance to stay in my aunt’s apartment in Dachi- dong, Seoul while attending an overseas Korean educators’ training program at the
National Institute of the Korean Language. After finishing the training program, I also had an opportunity of interviewing two hagwon (private cramming academy) teachers with one of my gireogi friend’s daughter, Jeongmin’s introduction. Jeongmin was studying at the B hagwon in Dachi-dong, organized by her Seoul resident father.
Jeongmin’s father organized his daugther’s attending the B hagwon. Jeongmin introduced me to some other gireogi kids and fathers, and became an important informant on gireogi kids’ transnational life-styles and concerns. Multi-sited field work is necessary to develop a comprehensive picture of Korean gireogi families.
Field Sites
Centreville: A New Destination of Working Class Korean Immigrant Families
I first went to Centreville in 1999 to visit a relative who was then running a small convenience store in Manassas City, located at the border of Fairfax and Prince
William Counties. I quickly became fascinated with the bucolic landscape that is totally different from my home city, Seoul. There weren’t any tall buildings or crowded streets and the air I breathed was clean and fresh. When I moved to
Centreville in September 2002, there were very few Korean sign boards, including only a few dry cleaning shops and two Korean restaurants. At that time, most Korean immigrants ran their ethnic businesses in Annandale, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
According to History of the Korean-Americans in the Washington Metropolitan Area
(2009), in 2004 there were 65 wholesale groceries, 82 beauty shops, 447 real estates
15 agents, and 53 educational academies in the Washington metropolitan area, including the states of Virginia and Maryland (237-9). Since that time, I have observed an ongoing dramatic transformation of Centreville: Korean and Asian Indian immigrants have moved into this area quickly and in great numbers, and many business sign boards display various languages. The number of businesses in this area has increased dramatically during the last decade and the number of South Korean and Korean-
American owned businesses in Centreville alone is over 500, according to the local
Korean newspaper, the Korea Times. Marie Price and Audrey Singer characterized recent this transformation as “suburban immigrant residential patterns” (139), and examined the growth of the foreign-born population in suburban Washington, D.C.
According to their statistics, Centreville’s foreign-born population increased 323.5% between 1990 and 2000 (141) and Asians were 51.3 % of the total population in 2010
(Washington Post, Interactive: Mapping the Census). A symbolic site of the flourishing Korean business in Centreville is Grand Plaza, a shopping area of about ten Korean ethnic restaurants, two beauty shops, a spa, and a big grocery market. The other large Asian grocery market in the area is located right across from this shopping mall, so the visibility of the Asian population is quite prominent. The majority of these Korean ethnic businesses use only Korean signage so; many long-term non-
Korean residents in this area do not know what businesses are located there. This
Korean-only signage sometimes causes English-speaking long-time residents to feel alienated from new immigrants and, in rare cases, creates a sense of hostility and xenophobia. One of my neighbors who owns a small Korean restaurant said that he does not have to use bilingual signage because his clientele is almost exclusively
Korean.
16
McLean: A Center for Korean Professional Temporary Migrants
Although Fairfax County is a popular suburb for recent immigrants, 71% of the population is foreign-born, McLean has experienced the least change since the influx of immigrants (Price and Singer 140-142). McLean has a mostly middle and upper class white population and the foreign-born population increased only10% between 1990 and 2000. In the fall of 2003, a fellow Korea university alumna, Mrs.
Kim, invited me to an alumni meeting for our alma mater. Her house was located by the Potomac River and there was a small motor boat in her backyard. When I asked her who takes care of her huge garden, she said her gardener has maintained it for over ten years. I was somewhat overwhelmed by her large house and her extravagant life-style. I knew that she and her husband immigrated over thirty years ago and that he is a well-known physician in the local Korean community. McLean is home to famous international diplomats and many former federal U.S. government employees,
17 but since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Korean diplomats and media correspondents also began settling in this area. I had a chance to visit one of the visiting scholars of
George Mason University’s Korean Studies Center last summer. She invited Korean scholars who study at George Mason University to her house one evening and I found that her house is owned by Korean government. She and her husband, a diplomat working at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. were supposed to live in that house for three years during her husband working period in the U.S. She said that all the furniture set was already set in the house so they did not have to buy new items.
The Korean community continued to grow and it is now a center for Korean professional temporary migrants and successful Korean immigrants.
Daechi-dong: The Eighth School District for Competitive Parents
Daechi-dong is one of the most expensive residential communities in Seoul because of its prestigious school districts9. Many other Seoul and local city residents dream of moving into this area, one of the richest school districts, when their children enter middle school. Daechi-dong is a center of private education and educational capital in South Korea. The community is also well known for English cram schools where professional native-English educators teach competitive Korean school kids.
Cram schools are private after-school programs that usually focus on preparation for the university examination. South Korea is well known for its competitive college
9 According to one of the South Korean media reports, Daechi-dong is known as the most expensive residential area among the rich communities in the Southern Seoul. Particularly, the price level of the apartments near the private cramming schools is between 2 and 3 million dollars. (http://www.yonhapnews.co.kr/economy/2007/05/30/0309000000AKR20070530062600003. HTML)
18 entrance examinations like Japan and China. The top level of grades and examination results are essential to any entry to the professional social position (Ripley 2011). I found that many gireogi fathers organize these cram schools for their transnational children during their summer vacation. Upper class families who live in this area do not have to commute far to study in these cram schools, but many middle class families rent local apartments to be close to these prestigious cram schools.
Observations
Issues of transnational migrants’ belonging have rarely been studied in the field of migration studies. Constructing sense of belonging in new destinations
19 requires time, experiences, and social networking. For these reasons, I chose to do field work observing gireogi mothers’ social gatherings. As a Korean mother with access to the Korean community, I learned about the McLean gireogi mothers’ monthly gathering and the Centreville gireogi mothers’ frequent lunch meetings. I was also introduced to a group of gireogi mothers who support a local youth orchestra while conducting an interview with a gireogi mother in Centreville. I attended the
McLean gireogi mothers’ monthly gathering five times between March 2012 and
August 2012, participated in the Centreville gireogi mothers’ lunch meetings four times between May 2012 and December 2012, and volunteered with the gireogi mothers’ youth orchestra between April 2012 and February 2013. During the summer of 2011, I also conducted a field work at Dachi-dong, observing and listening to gireogi kids about their temporary lives in Korea. Additionally, I observed transnational hagwon teachers who temporarily work in Dachi-dong during the summer vacation.
Interviews
I observed two different locations in Fairfax County, Virginia where many gireogi families live and conducted formal tape-recorded interviews using an open- ended questionnaire. The questions elicited information about family history, migration, settlement, social networks, and transnational connections. I also asked specific questions about parenting, sense of belonging, family relations, and change that they have taken place in the United States and Korea. I asked all interviewees the same set of questions but the interviews varied depending on interests and cooperation.
The duration of each interview was between one hour and three hours.
20
I completed a total of 42 interviews during my field work period. Of that total, twenty were with Centreville gireogi families and the other twenty with McLean gireogi families. Two interviews with Dachi-dong hagwon teachers were conducted to draw a broad picture of educational transnational field. I became close with the mother of a preschooler who has been part of a gireogi family for over three years.
She and I are members of the same playdate group for our children, consisting of six
Korean heritage mothers and preschoolers. I was introduced to three more gireogi families in her circle of friends and her church. I was introduced to McLean residents through a visiting scholar who was part of a gireogi family and a mother of two teenage boys who moved to McLean seven years ago in search of a better school district. I utilized a snowball sampling procedure, and I changed my informant per every four interviews to reduce data variations and to avoid partiality of data contents.
All interviews were conducted in Korean and were transcribed. All informants and interviewees were identified with pseudonyms.
Organization of the Dissertation
Chapter one contributes to the theory of differential emplacement and belonging by focusing on each family’s ability to take advantage of social capital. To situate gireogi families in a broad context of transnational social fields, I have included an overview of transnationalism theories. I drew from studies on sense of place, sense of belonging, and social capital to produce an integrated theoretical framework of emplacement and belonging among transnational families. Critical sense of place studies is centered on place making while theorizing about social identities (Feld and Bassso1996). Research suggests that sense of belonging is
21 constructed through repeated experiences in a place and through creating common memories with culture and people in that place (Lattanzi Shutika 2011). As is the case with most long-term migrants who settle in a particular place, gireogi families’ processes of creating a sense of belonging is not a smooth process. Gireogi families form a more multifaceted sense of belonging due to their place making in multiple locales. As gireogi families experience diverse places as a mobile population, their perceptions encompass various dynamics of place making such as familiarizing, territorializing, and connecting. The most common factor in a Korean family making the decision to live separately in two different localities, is social capital. In other words, gireogi families make use of financial resources, social positions, and social networks to access better schools and richer neighborhoods. Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital are useful in understanding Korean gireogi families’ differentiated place making and sense of belonging as they reflect stratified social spaces. While Bourdieu usually discusses through cultural taste and preference, the concept of habitus is a more general term that can be applied to any differentiated disposition (Bourdieu, Distinction, 170, also see Lareau 2003, 275-8 and Robbins
1991, 117-31). Emotional and perceptional attachments with places and investment in educational capital can be differentiated depending on class habitus. I utilize the concept of habitus to give a background explanation for different place making.
Chapter two provides a history of South Korean education immigration as a distinctive immigration pattern in contemporary world migrations. I focus on what motivates Korean families to pursue the gireogi life-style and how this relates to the history of educational attainment in Korea. I draw on existing studies of Korean immigrations (Kim 1981; Hurh and Kim 1984; Min 1996, 1997), foreign students
22
[yuhaksaeng] (Chen and Hujing 2004), and modernization and globalization in Korea
(Kim 2000) to produce a more nuanced history of Korean immigration. I situate the emergence and development of Korean gireogi families within a broader socioeconomic, cultural, and historical context. A large part of this context is characterized by the rupture between South Korea’s rapid modernization and state-led globalization (Kim 2000).
Chapter three offers in-depth examinations of the lived experiences of Korean mothers in McLean and Centreville. I explore how Korean gireogi mothers in the two different localities create distinctive senses of belonging: bifocal belonging and adjusted belonging. Bifocal belonging is more common among upper class gireogi families as a strategic practice. It represents a double standard of life-styles and educational successes. McLean mothers’ sense of multiple competitions with Korean mothers, Korean American mothers, and American mothers leads to a tight circle that maintains exclusive information. This exclusive community is created out of the need to secure educational information and social networks. Adjusted belonging is the strategy used by middle class and working class gireogi families and is expressed as a selective adjustment to the receiving society. Because they are not able to travel to
Korea often, middle and working class gireogi families have to more fully adjust in the receiving society and maximize their limited social resources. Centreville mothers’ cooperate with other working mothers and Korean church communities to form a type of extended family that supports their settlement and emplacement.
Chapter four examines how gireogi mothers perceive various feedback from surrounding communities and how these perceptions shape their sense of belonging and redefine parenting. As identity is constructed by differentiating self from others,
23 so is belonging constructed by making “us” distinct from others. When gireogi mothers perceive a receiving community’s feedback in a positive way, they can build a sense of belonging more smoothly. However, the gireogi mothers receive this feedback information in many different ways due to their transnational life. They balance the feedback of both local media and Korean media, Korean immigrant communities, the people in South Korea, the local non-immigrant communities, and both local schools and Korean schools. Gireogi mothers’ senses of belonging can be diverse depending on how they perceive and respond to the various forms of feedback.
Differentiated perceptions about feedback can also trigger changes in parenting the ideology of gireogi mothers.
Chapter five examines gireogi families’ mobility and their school district belonging in Fairfax County by analyzing cases where families have moved to better school districts to escape problematic educational environments or to pursue more competitive school settings. School district belonging is shaped by a family’s strong desire to seek out good educational environments and through rationalizing relocation using well-known proverbs, sayings, and historical episodes. The emphasis on educational values has a long history in Korean society. Confucius’ emphasis on the educational environment and drive for upward mobility justify multiple relocations to better school districts. The latter part of this chapter analyzes gireogi families’ narrative belonging that gives them sufficient reasons for moving to a new place and how they came to live there. School district belonging is one of the most prominent belongings that gireogi families construct during the gireogi experience. School district belonging does not necessarily correspond to a family’s class background and it is based on functional adjustment with the narrative belonging in a school district.
24
By examining how social capital is contextualized in a specific place, this chapter explores a complex relationship between social capital and the sense of belonging.
Chapter six explores the possibility of theorizing the educational transnational field as one of the main transnational social fields. Drawing on theories from Peggy
Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, this study adopts a flexible approach to category of transnational social fields to grasp social dynamics and uneven power distribution
(2004). As many migration scholars suggest, transnational social fields are usually divided as economic, political, civil-societal, and cultural fields depending on transnationality activities (Itzigsohn et al. 2010; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Korean transnational parents’ education-driven behaviors and practices form a distinct educational field (Ball et al. 1995; Ball 2002, and Butler and Robson 2003) that distinguishes them from other immigrant groups. The exclusive reason why gireogi families practice transnational life-styles and frequent moving is to pursue better educational environments for their children and the numbers of families to make that decision is growing. While participation rate, frequency of movement, and educational institutionalization levels vary depending on the social capital and the sense of belonging of a family, educational transnational practices shape an independent social field.
The concluding chapter brings together findings from the previous chapters to make suggestions about the emplaced differences of transnational social fields. This conclusion discusses how Korean gireogi families mobilize their social and cultural capital to produce a different sense of place and belonging in order to maintain and change their class habitus. Finally, I lay out my main arguments and findings about transnational families’ sense of belonging.
25
American suburban communities located near metropolitan cities have become new destinations for transnational migrants, particularly those with good educational environments. Many immigrants from South America chose to settle down in communities where they can secure a job or temporary labor work. Asian immigrants, especially from newly developed countries such as South Korea, China, India,
Singapore, and Taiwan, tend to seek out places with reputations for excellent educational environments. Fairfax County, outside of Washington, D.C., is one of the popular places where recent Asian immigrants want to make their home because it is well-known for good school districts and safe environments. Transnational Korean parents’ place-making in Fairfax County reflects how these recent immigrants consider educational value, the ways transnationality is shaped by different senses of belonging, and how transnational social fields affects the social landscapes of local communities. By exploring recent transnational migrants’ place-making practices, this dissertation focuses on overlooked dynamics of migration : how migrants construct their senses of place and belonging at a new destination, how migrants’ former sociocultural capital is maintained or transformed in the processes of place-making, and finally how educational transnational social fields intersect with class, race, and nationality.
26
CHAPTER 1: EMPLACEMENT AND BELONGING OF KOREAN GIREOGI FAMIIES
This manuscript is an analysis of the emplaced experiences of belonging among transnational educational migrant families.10 I focus on the specific emergent population of Korean gireogi families who live separately for the purpose of educating their children in an English-speaking environment. Through ethnographic research with gireogi families in McLean and Centreville, Virginia, I examine the ways these families create a sense of belonging through differentiated place-making. I pay particular attention to the ways that place-making is influenced by different accessibility to, and usages of, social capital. This research project allows me to consider the ways gireogi families’ influence various types of migrant practices as well as the traditional Korean conceptions of nation, family, class, gender, belonging, and education. I analyze the influence of cross-border parenting practices on familial and class relationships, sense of belonging and educational ideology. Korean gireogi families are transforming the traditional boundaries of nationalism, gender roles, and family, and their life styles are dependent on their transnational connections
10 There are several variations among these transnational educational migrant families depending on factors such as visa statuses and staying periods. Sojourners with visiting visas, non-immigrant visa holders such as student visa holders or investment visa holders, temporary visa holders such as diplomat visa holders, and immigrant visa holders such as green card holders are among the many type of people who practice transnational life styles. When I use the term transnational educational migration families, I specifically refer to those who have a minimum of six months as gireogi families.
27 and experiences. Through exploring the limitations, costs, benefits and meanings of these transnational families’ experiences, I seek to balance the theory-oriented tendency of most transnational literatures. I expect that the empirical evidence I present about issues of emplacement in transnational families will help redefine and resituate scholarly work on transnationalism.
I use the term emplaced to refer to the ways in which gireogi family members are situated in specific transnational social spaces and transform their former conceptions of nation, family, class, gender, belonging, and education. Gireogi families’ parenting practices are continuously reshaped and reorganized depending on their social networks and settlements. Providing observations about these types of transformation may suggest a useful illustration of intraethnic differences of adjustment and belonging.
Through textual analysis, ethnographic observation, and in-depth interviews, I examine (i) the diversification and evolution of Korean gireogi family patterns, (ii) the social, economic, cultural, and historical implications of education migrations on both general migration history and intraethnic dynamics of Korean American immigrants, and (iii) the influences of sense of place and belonging on the differentiated adjustments and parenting styles among gireogi families. A comprehensive approach and contextualized examination of these developments will enhance our understanding of transnational migration theory and practice within the context of globalized migration. This chapter rehearses my theoretical concerns related to my research questions.
Literature Review
28
Transnational Social Field
The ongoing history of discourses on transnationalism can be roughly grouped into four phases: the period of hope for a transnational social field of study; the period of competing definitions, the period of systematization, and the period of embodied and emplaced transnationalism. These different versions of transnationalism are represented by cultural anthropologists Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Cristina
Blanc-Szanton, sociologist Alejandro Portes, political scientist Thomas Faist, and geographers Kevin Dunn and Francis Leo Collins.
Since the early 1990s, a scholarly effort to understand migrants’ cross-border movements and their accompanied social effects started forming through academic conferences. This effort resulted in the book by Schiller et al (1992), Towards a
Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
Reconsidered. The initial effort to create a theoretical framework of transnationalism was soon followed by another study by Basch et al (1994), Nations Unbound:
Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-
States. These two books created the grounding theories for transnational literatures and suggested some critical research perspectives for the next generation scholars.
First, these cultural anthropologists offered the most commonly used definition of transnationalism:
We define ‘transnationalism” as the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders. Immigrants who develop and maintain multiple relationships-familial,
29 economic, social, organizational, religious, and political-that span borders we call
“transmigrants.”11
Transnationalism theorists draw attention to migrants’ active involvement with the place and people of their homeland in the forms of remittances, political engagement, visits, gifts, and investing money in hometown facilities. Observing this continuous linkage between migrants with their hometowns, while also successfully adapting to receiving societies, prompted anthropologists to formulate new theories and conceptualizations to explain this seemingly contradictory phenomenon. For instance, Roger Rouse’s ethnographic research on Mexican migrants in the United
States revealed that there is not a clear trajectory of adaptation to a new society followed by a rupture from the home community.12 Rouse found that Mexican immigrants internalize many American values around space and leisure time while they undergo adaptation processes. At the same time, they are highly critical of capitalist exploitation in the workplace as well as their spouse and children’s exposure to US culture. Rouse concludes that the coexistence of seemingly contradictory attitudes-adaptation to the new culture and retention of old values-among migrants is the result of “a chronic, contradictory transnationalism.”13
Second, early theorists in 1990s saw hope for reconceptualizing discourses such as nationalism, race, ethnicity, and class in the social sciences through studying
11 Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1994), p.7. 12 Roger Rouse, “Making Sense of Settlement: Class Transformation, Cultural Struggle, and Transnationalism among Mexican Migrants in the United States” in Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, Cristina Blanc-Szanton, Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1992), pp.25-52. 13 Ibid, p.46.
30 transnationalism. This optimism view is related to the views of some cultural studies scholars and social scientists who argue that transnationalism is one possible expression of resistance against multinational capitalism. For instance, Luis Guarnizo and Michael Smith divide transnationalism into the “above” and the “below”:
Cultural hybridity, multi-positional identities, border-crossing by marginal
“others,” and transnational business practices by migrant entrepreneurs are
depicted as conscious and successful efforts by ordinary people to escape
control and domination “from above” by capital and the state. (------) Given the
declining political influence of working-class movements in the face of the
global reorganization of capitalism, all sorts of new social actors on the
transnational stage are now being invested with oppositional possibilities,
despite the fact that their practices are neither self-consciously resistant nor
even loosely political in character. (1998: 5)
While there is a danger of possibility of overemphasizing this kind of utopian perspective, these scholars introduced the idea that transnationalism “from below” had the potential to disturb conceptions of nation, identity, citizenship, and sovereignty. The emergence of transnationalism as a conceptual framework in migration studies initiated an academic awareness and reconsideration of cross-border lives of migrants.
Third, the early contributors of transnational studies during 1990s developed initial theoretical premises of transnationalism around what they regarded as something qualitatively different from previous international migration patterns.
Transnational connections looked like a new phenomenon because previous migrant
31 scholars did not focus on the dually anchored life style of migrants. The emotional attachment migrants continue to have toward their home was treated as a trivial side effect of assimilating to the host society. Transnational connections are not only emotional attachments maintained during often difficult settlement processes, but continuous investments of material and social resources in home communities. As early transnational theorists have showed, return migration, sending money periodically, and visits to home communities have always taken place among international migrants. Early transnational migration theorists were crucial in devising a new conceptual tool to describe this old practice. It is worth noting that transnational activities become more visible and frequent due to the advent of new transportation and telecommunication technologies which made it possible to communicate across long distances easier, faster, and cheaper than in the past. These changes have made contemporaneous transnational social fields more complex and meaningful than ever.
Efforts to grasp the concept of transnationalism resulted in competing definitions, repeating interpretations, and vague implications. For instance, Alejandro
Portes et al. limited the conceptual boundary of transnationalism to three narrow typologies: (1) economic transnationalism; (2) political transnationalism; and (3) socio-cultural transnationalism.14In contrast, Steven Vertovec broadened transnationalism to six distinct conceptual premises: (1) a social morphology of spanning borders and active networks; (2) a diasporic consciousness; (3) a mode of cultural reproduction usually described in terms of syncretism, creolization, bricolage, cultural translation and hybridity; (4) an avenue of capital for transnational
14 Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt, “The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promises of an emergent research field” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 (March 1999), pp. 217-37.
32 corporations; (5) a site of political engagement; and (6) a reconstruction of the conception of place and locality.15 Both Portes and Vertovec tried to systematize transnational studies by suggesting working definitions of the term but the wide range of uses of transnationalism has been criticized by sociologists and political scientists.16 While Portes et al. argues that the scope of analysis should include individual and their support networks, Kivisto claims that a transnational framework must include the transnational community and consider structural influences.17
Many empirical studies that have applied transnationalism as their theoretical framework followed Portes et al.’s suggestion to use individual interviews to trace
‘transnationalism from below’. While in-depth interviews can illuminate social dynamics that are often overlooked, any approach that fails to frame individual experiences within socio-economic contexts may easily fall in narrow and ahistorical interpretations of migrant transnationalism.
The early contributors to transnational theory, including Nina Glick Schiller and Linda Basch, and the second generation of scholars, including Portes and
Vertovec, tend to regard transnationalism as a distinctive framework differentiating it from earlier assertions in migration studies, particularly assimilation theory. As Peter
Kivisto notes, early efforts to distinguish transnationalism from former theory failed because they did not provide a comprehensive basis for “the dialectical interplay
15 Steven Vertovec, “Conceiving and researching transnationalism” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 (March 1999), pp. 447-62. 16 See Kivisto’s article that I mentioned earlier and Thomas Faist’s The Volume and Dynamics of international Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 17 See the different arguments in Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt, “The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promises of an emergent research field” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 (March 1999), pp. 220 and Peter Kivisto, “Theorizing transnational immigration: a critical review of current efforts” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 24 No. 4 (July 2001), p. 560-1.
33 between homeland concerns and receiving nation realities and the impact this interplay has on immigrants,”18 and tended toward economic reductionism by reapplying world systems perspectives. While Glick Schiller et al. proclaimed that social science needed to be ‘unbound’ in its analytical objects, they did not offer an applicable methodology. Early theorists and their theoretical descendants reinforced the established conceptual tool of transnationalism by expanding its perspective and revising earlier arguments.19
The debates about whether to view transnationalism as an alternative to assimilation or as one variation of assimilation are critical to contextualizing transnational theory in previous migration theories. While the early theorists viewed transnational theory as something qualitatively new from the previous assimilation theory, recent migration scholars tend to view transnational activities as one of many possible assimilation patterns. For instance, Portes et al. purports that transnational activities can transform “the normative assimilation theory”20 by suggesting four unexplored adaptation possibilities for migrants: returning to the home country as transnational entrepreneurs; giving up transnational activities to fully assimilate to the host society; maintaining transnational social fields, but their children seeking full assimilation to the host society; and maintaining a transnational social field across
18 Peter Kivisto, “Theorizing transnational immigration: a critical review of current efforts” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 24 No. 4 (July 2001), p. 553. 19 Steven Vertovec applies the term, “transnational lens” for expanding the conceptual boundary of transnationalism to the various social fields (See Steven Vertovec’s “Migrant Transnationalism and Modes of Transformation” in International Migration Review Vol 38 No 3 (Fall 2004), pp.970-1001) and Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller revises their earlier perspective by arguing that assimilation and transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites. (See Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society” in International Migration Review Vol. 38 No.3 (Fall 2004), pp.1002-39). 20 Alejandro Portes et al., Ibid, p.229.
34 generations by passing parents’ transnational skills to their children.21 Attention to whether first generation migrants’ transnational life-styles continue across generations is vital to the effectiveness and future directions of transnational theory. If transnational activities are found among only the first generation of immigrants, then transnationalism is limited to migratory phenomena. Robert Courtney Smith’s long period of research in, Mexican New York gives a useful example of how transnational life is maintained across generations and illuminates the complex relationship between assimilation and transnationalization.
(---) the biggest danger to positive assimilation is not transnationalization but
negative assimilation pressures in the United States. Transnational life in fact
has great potential to facilitate positive assimilation in the United States.22
In his ethnographic research on first and second-generation’s transnational activities, Smith found that transnational connections can affect assimilation positively. While Smith’s perspective on transnational life and assimilation maintains a dichotomy between upward mobility and downward mobility, or positive assimilation and negative assimilation, he reveals that transnational life-styles and assimilation can be compatible.
Thomas Faist approached migration from this same place with the question
“how can we start to understand the seemingly simultaneous existence of trends towards both adaptation and the maintenance of social, religious, national, and ethnic
21 Ibid, p.229. 22 Robert Courtney Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2006), p.8.
35 attachment?”23 Faist sought to answer this question through analyzing social ties and social capital. In his work, social ties are structures consisting of various network patterns and social positions, and social capital is the content communicated through these ties.24 Faist’s conceptualization of ‘transnational social spaces’ consists of network structures and transnational migrants’ social capital. Differentiating between network structures and social capital is useful in analyzing the forms and content of transnational social spaces. Faist analyzed three forms of transnational social spaces: transnational kinship groups, transnational circuits, and transnational communities.25
These three spaces are maintained through both structural networks and social capital.
Through embracing a concept of modern social spaces that are free from geographical propinquity, Faist developed a relational perspective that encompasses social and symbolic; a divergence from early transnational social field theory.
Transnational social field theory was devised by Basch, Glick Schiller and
Szanton Blanc (1994), and developed by Peggy Levitt. Basch et al. characterized transnational social fields as the family relationship, economic relations, and transnational communities.26 These subcategories of transnational social fields are similar to Faist’s transnational social spaces. However, Faist’s conception of social spaces takes a more to understanding both how these spaces are maintained and who is acting in these spaces.
Addressing the early theorists’ underdeveloped conceptualization of
23 Thomas Faist, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p.10. 24 Ewa Morawska also proposes similar conceptualization that structuralizes transnational social networks using structure and agency. See Ewa Morawska, “Disciplinary Agendas and Analytic Strategies of Research on Immigration and Transnationalism: Challenges of Interdisciplinary Knowledge,” International Migration Review, 37(3): 611-40. Fall 2003. 25 Thomas Faist, Ibid., pp.202-10. 26 Basch et al., pp.164-76.
36 transnational social fields, Levitt refined social field perspective by differentiating ways of being and ways of belonging of migrants.27 According to Levitt, ways of being are migrants’ “actual social relations and practices,” while ways of belonging refer to practices and acts related to their conscious connection to specific identities.
Levitt’s refined conceptualization of transnational social fields helps explain seemingly contradictory aspects of migrants’ dual life-styles. A successful transnational life-style is formed through a combination of assimilation to the receiving society in everyday reality and a strong conscious connection to the sending society. Yet, this kind of differentiation only explains transnational social fields on an individual level. To consider the case of transnational communities, an additional analytical tool is necessary.
The fourth phase of transnational theory is comprised of an emerging academic trend of embodied and emplaced transnationalism in migration studies.
Embodied and emplaced transnationalism theories are being developed in the field of geography by scholars who are concerned with spatial perspectives of peoples’ movement. Whereas early transnational theories are interested in social spaces and agency in social fields, this recent trend of migration scholarship draws attention to the physical movement of bodies and bodily aspects of emplaced transnational social fields. The embodied and emplaced transnational perspective does not embrace the hope that transnational movements can create a borderless social field. Rather, this approach is concern with the material conditions of specific contexts and contingencies of transnational connections. Transnational social spaces can be sites of
27 Peggy Levitt, “Conceptualizing Simultaniety: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review, 38(3): 1002-39. (Fall 2004)
37 conflict and tension depending on embodied processes and bodily relationships.
According to Patricia M. O’Connor, material conditions for transnational social spaces include the “relational and emotional dimensions” (2010: 75) of bodily movements. By focusing on the embodied experiences of transnational migrants, general accounts of transnational social spaces and practices can be concretely contextualized. Moreover, a focus on embodied transnational perspectives illuminates migrants’ relational network, including power relations among family members or community members. Bodily attributes including skin color, gender and sex differences, life courses, accents, and family relations play crucial roles in migratory processes. As Francis Leo Collins asserts, “we cannot understand the different ways that migrants’ journeys are facilitated or hindered, or their abilities to be incorporated into settlement or origin spaces” (2010: 52) without considering the embodied aspects of migration.
According to Kevin Dunn, migration research applying embodied perspective contributed to finding five important corrections:
That migration is not so free and easy; that access to mobility is uneven; that
exposure to imposed mobility is unfairly distributed (religious and racial
persecution, etc); that there are costs (and not just benefits and agency)
associated with mobility; and that bodies are simultaneously mobile and
emplaced. (2010: 5)
Embodied and emplaced transnational perspective can correct abstract theories and vague conceptions of borderless movements of transnational migrants. By focusing on embodied subjects, an embodied transnational approach can balance between the free
38 and limited movements of corporeal beings.
I would like to offer additional critiques and suggestions for the future of transnationalism studies. First, the study of transnationalism needs more empirical case studies to narrow the gaps between theoretical assumptions and various transnational phenomena. Second, there is a dearth of gender and class transformation analyses in the field of transnationalism compared to research findings in other fields.
Third, when a researcher delimits their research unit to transnational individuals or transnational communities, they need to consider macro and micro levels of interaction to avoid reifying research findings. Fourth, considerations of geography and embodiment are needed to reconfigure current transnational migrants’ embodied and emplaced connections. Fifth, the field needs to extend its research questions to the cultural effects of migrant transnationalism. Sixth, transnational research needs to extend its research period to second and third-generation immigrants to fully examine how transnational life-styles and social fields are maintained generationally.28
Sense of Place
Emplacement is not a popular term among scholars of transnational migration.
The field of transnational migration studies has overlooked the material and social resources in favor of seeing boundless freedom and benefits of dually anchored lives.
It is certain that transnational activities have become more visible and frequent with the advent of new technologies in transportation and telecommunication, making it
28 Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut suggest a good instance of children of immigrants longitudinal study. They applied the theory of ‘segmented assimilation’ by focusing on diverse adaptation process of second generation youth with analyses of longitudinal questionnaire data. See Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001).
39 possible to communicate across long distances easier, faster, and cheaper than the past.
However, as Geoff Mulgan importantly notes, there is still “a role for connections based on place” (1997: 98) even in a highly advanced world. Transnational migrants do not live on an abstract border but rather make meanings and values in places where they perform activities and connect with others.
Even if critical geographers have contributed foundational theories for emplaced transnationalism, there is still little empirical research that illustrates emplaced experiences of migrants. Debra Lattanzi Shutika’s Beyond the Borderlands sheds light on the importance of maintaining balance between theories and empirical findings in the field of emplaced transnationalism. Lattanzi Shutika’s examination of
Mexican migration and belonging is based on multi-sited ethnography. As a folklorist, she incorporates sense of place studies with migration studies telling ways that reveals more about everyday experiences of transnational migrants29 than approaches from the social sciences. Emplaced transnationalism needs more ethnographic approaches examining local and translocal place dynamics and emplacements.
Sense of place studies is shaped by various disciplinary approaches such as philosophy, anthropology, geography, and folklore, and these fields share a common interest in the relationship between humans and place. Among these scholars, the contributions of anthropologists’ and cultural geographers’ provide a humanistic framework by focusing on the relationship between place and human experiences
29 Lattanzi Shutika intentionally does not use the term, “transnational” or “transmigrant” because these terms usually refer immigrant populations identifying themselves as one community living in two distinct places (Shutika 18). I also agree the term “translocal” can represent “a local-to-local dynamic” (19) more concretely than the term, “transnational” in the case of multilocal migrants. In my dissertation, however, I use the term “transnational” to reveal a reflective perspective which transnational studies do not pay much attention to.
40
(Buttimer and Seamon 1980; Cosgrove 1984; Lowenthal 1985; Relph 1976; Tuan
1977, Cresswell 2004). Many humanistic geographers are indebted to Martin
Heidegger’s phenomenology of “dwelling” (1971) for their philosophical ground and have investigated “being-in-the-world,” (Tuan, 1971) human experience and subjectivities. Common to many of these humanistic geographers’ research questions are how spaces become places in the context of human experiences and how people make a sense of place and sense of home.
Another important trend in cultural geography is concerned with the politics of place and placelessness based on global change of place. Many of its proponents tend to investigate places of contestation, resistance, and struggle. For instance, Akhil
Gupta and James Ferguson, editors of Culture, Power, Place: Exploration in Critical
Anthropology, criticize homogeneous and static conceptions of place and culture, and suggest that conceptions of the processes of place making need to consider changing global conditions (1997: 39) They are particularly interested in movement and place in the forms of exile, diaspora, displacement, frequent movement, and conflicting borders. Under this rubric, “dwelling” is less important than “travelling” and place becomes a site of power relations and struggles. In this light, it is not surprising that sense of place studies are also focusing on the creation of a sense of belonging and social identities.
Sense of Belonging
Belonging is a fundamental human motivation and need (Baumeister and
Leary 1995, Mulgan 2007, 2009) even, and especially, during turbulent, mobile and uprooting times. As David Seamon uses the metaphor of place-ballets to suggest that
41 people’s repeated experiences of place, like dancing in everyday life, produce sense of belonging (1980: 148-65). This sense of belonging is a socially constructed process.
Sheila L. Croucher views the terminology of belonging through the case of identity formation (2004: 36-40). Croucher characterizes the literatures of belonging and identity as either primordial or constructivist approaches, suggests a perspective of
“constructed primordiality” (40). On the one hand, constructivists criticize the primordialist approach by arguing that any identity or belonging is not fixed but had the potential to be transformed. On the other hand, the constructivist approach encounters a dilemma in asserting that everything is invented, constructed, and imagined. Croucher suggests that, “a careful constructivist approach” neither falls into the trap of essentialist normativity, nor commits “unspeakable violence and hatreds in the name of inventions” (39). As Croucher admits, the terminology of belonging can grasp the affective dimensions of identity and attachment so long as it preserves the fluid complexity of their construction processes. Thus, this study adopts a careful constructivist approach rooted in the terminology of belonging instead of identity to capture emotional dimensions and complex features of constructedness at the levels of both individual and community. The terminology of belonging is more effective than identity when studying transnational migrants’ attachments because their belonging is more complex than their non-migrating peers.
Sense of belonging scholarship is not widely applied to studies of immigration, despite the importance of its contributions, but some immigration theorists discuss belonging with relation to migrants. Peggy Levitt refined the transnational social field
42 perspective by differentiating ways of being and ways of belonging.30 Ways of being are the “actual social relations and practices” of migrants while ways of belonging refer to the practices and acts related to conscious connections to specific identities.
Thus, sense of belonging is a more flexible and contextualized term than identities because it refers to power relations and people’s attachments to a certain place.
Levitt’s conceptualization of transnational social fields can explain seemingly contradictory aspects of migrants’ dual life-styles.
Andrew Geddes and Adrian Favell’s volume deals with the “politics of belonging” (1999: 10). According to Favell and Geddes, the two methods of assimilation and racism tend to pose a polemic dichotomy and a normative framework where every immigrant should adapt to a host country’s cultural norm. Immigrants need to adapt to a host society’s rules in many ways. However, new immigrants and minority groups also maintain residual informal practices for cultural preservation in negotiating their identity. Migration scholars using the politics of belonging need to analyze the variations and relationships between migration and minority groups.
Unlike formal identities of nationality or citizenship, the politics of belonging deals with somewhat vague yet dynamic processes of adaptation or segregation. In many cases, sense of belonging cannot be easily grasped visually, but is combined with other cultural forms or invisible tendencies. For these reasons, sense of belonging studies needs a more contextualized and comprehensive approach than identity studies.
Nira Yuval-Davis also suggests an analytical framework for the research field of belonging and the politics of belonging. As Yuval-Davis asserts, belonging and the
30 Peggy Levitt, “Conceptualizing Simultaniety: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review, 38(3): 1002-39. (Fall, 2004)
43 different ways people belong to any community or nation-state become “articulated and politicized only (when they are) threatened in some way.” (2006: 197) Further, she claims that belonging and the politics of belonging need to be differentiated for any critical discourse practice, particularly on nationalism and racism (197). Yuval-
Davis defines belonging as “an act of self-identification or identification by others, in a stable, contested or transient way” (199). Much of the contemporary work on identity and belonging treat identification as not a fixed position but a dynamic process related to the politics of location.31 For migration studies research, the term,
‘belonging’ can be more effective than ‘identity’ in that it expresses the identification process and changes in community membership in a more dynamic way. The three frameworks for the study of belonging that Yuval-Davis suggests, “social locations,”
“identifications and emotional attachments,” and “ethical and political values” (199-
204) provide tools that encompass international migrants’ spatial fluidity.
Some scholars use the term, ‘transnational identity’ or ‘transnational identity politics’ to describe the social field where migrants strategically transgress the boundaries of states or gender. For instance, Michael Kearney refers to the new sociocultural and political space made by Oaxacan migrants as “Oaxacalifornia”
(2000: 182). Kearney uses the term to encompass tensions between Mexican states and pan-Oaxacan identities. In many cases, the third space created by transnational migrants at a local place contends with conventional conceptions of belonging and
31 Stuart Hall admits the conceptual difficulties of ‘identity’ while he differentiates naturalistic definition of identification and the discursive approach. The former identification is “a recognition of some common origin or shared characters with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation” and the latter one is “a process never completed.” Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity?” Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, eds. Questions of Cultural Identity (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996). p.2.
44 identity.
Even though many transnational split families select their residential communities following their class position, their emotional attachments and investment to school districts do not always correspond to class backgrounds.
Transformation and fragmentation occur during the migration processes, decision making, adapting parenting roles, separation, adjustments, and reorganization of life goals. Sense of belonging is essential to human social life (Mulgan 2007, 2009), but rarely has scholarship examined the relation between sense of place and sense of belonging. A few critical geographers have conceptualized the social relations between place and identity politics (Keith and Pile, 1993), and migrants’ contested home making practices (Rapport and Dawson, 1998), but these studies are predominantly concerned with identity and identity politics. Sense of belonging is more a contextualized, mediated perception and feeling constructed within a specific place. It is a process created through various in-place and out-of-place experiences.
Transnational migrants often try to adjust to a new local context while also reconnecting with home communities for emotional support and there is often a degree of tension between these two different belongings.
By acknowledging that sense of place and sense of belonging are not geographically bounded experiences, critical anthropologists and geographers have highlighted the place-identity people construct through negotiating their own cultural values and meanings (Harvey 1993; Keith and Pile 1993; Massey 1994; Morley and
Robins 1995; Ferguson 1997). In the Centreville and McLean areas of Fairfax County,
Korean gireogi families create different senses of place and belonging, expressed through adjustments and parenting styles. Even though both are educational migrant
45 communities, there are visible differences of everyday life patterns around parenting styles and school districts.32 Additionally, the two communities display different ways of interacting with other migrant Korean families depending on their senses of place and social networking characteristics.
Sense of place and sense of belonging studies were central in shaping the assumptions about transnational families’ emplacement and belonging presented in this work. The humanistic geographers who shaped basic philosophical backgrounds of sense of place studies were influenced by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies to understand place and places or placelessness through meaningful experiences (1971, 1968). This is related to the perspective that treats places not just things but a way of understanding world (Cresswell 2004). This emphasis on value and experiences of places makes me think of the choice to move to a place known as a good school district by transnational split families and their attachments. Many gireogi families have experienced moving into better school districts within Korea before they decide to practice transnational lives. However, moving from one local area to another does not require the same amounts of financial and emotional support as transnational movement. Various factors affect their decision making, movements, and settlements. Among these factors, social capital including social networks may influence the decision to go from translocal movements to transnational movements.
32 Fairfax County, Virginia is a well- known county among South Korean parents as a top academic public school environment. As mentioned in the Introduction, a Korean educational counselor published an ethnographic account entitled “America’s Best School District, Fairfax’s Passionate Parents” in 2009. Moreover, there are more than ten Korean online communities and blogs covering Fairfax County’s educational environment including school districts information, private academies, and home stay information for short-term English study (eg. http://cafe.naver.com/ghvm33/155326).
46
Social Capital
Different patterns of transnational life-styles and parenting in the McLean and
Centreville communities are the results of different financial and informational resources. Class differentiation is the most commonly identified factor to account for variation among educational migrants in the literature. Many ethnographers theorize different styles of parenting, educational ideologies, and family life patterns (Kwong
1987; Wong 1995; Lareau 2003, Lew 2006). Education has been regarded as one of the main reasons many recent Asian migrants decide to move abroad. Thus, Asian
Americans have been typified as a “model minority” of immigrants who work hard for social mobility and adjustment. Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Asian Indians are among the most frequently discussed ethnic groups in these model minority representations. As Vivian S. Louie claims, the story of Asian Americans and education needs to be considered more contextualized theories rather than just ethnic culture models or economic forces models (2004: xv). Confucian family values as well as a combination of race and class factors are all working the formation of Asian
Americans and education stories.
I formed my perspective on educational capital and its advantageous transmission through the work of Pierre Bourdieu. However, I did not approach the two localities from a perspective of class deterministic. As Bourdieu uncovered life trajectories to show class indeterminacy, I also sought to discover class variations and mobility that were not reproduced by conserving social capital. Educational capital has been analyzed mainly through school accomplishments, grades, rate of dropouts, and parenting styles in many sociological empirical studies (Kwong 1987; Wong
1995; Lareau 2003; Louie 2004; Lew 2006). These studies are overwhelmingly
47 concerned with examining deterministic social agents and generational linages. My approach is a contextualized analysis of social mobility and gradual class differentiations through considering emplacement, belonging, and parenting. In this sense, critical geographers’ investment in place making enabled me to see
“sociospatial configurations of capitalism” (Lefebvre, 185). Place making is not necessarily bounded within a locale but can be connected to transnational localities through cognitive perceptions of belonging and imaginative home making. However, these transnational localities are not static places for nostalgic imaginations but sites of changing social and spatial relations (Gupta and Ferguson, 6-7).
When a Korean gireogi family makes the decision to live in two separate localities, the most frequently cited reason in selecting places is social capital, which is interpreted as good schools and upper middle class neighberhood among them.
Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital are useful for understanding Korean gireogi families’ differentiated place making and sense of belonging in that they suggest stratified social space and class habitus. Although habitus is most commonly associated with cultural taste and preference, the concept of habitus is more general term that can be applied to any differentiated disposition (Bourdieu, Distinction, 170, also see Lareau 2003, 275-8 and Robbins 1991, 117-31). Investment in educational capital, and the emotional and perceptional attachment people form around spaces related to that investment, can be differentiated depending on class habitus.
Korean Gireogi Families
The typical gireogi family arrangement, a migrant mother with her children in an English-speaking county and a father in the home country, differs from other forms
48 of transnational family arrangements in terms of class, motivation to migrate, and remittances. Many transnational families may also be living in two places, but have largely working class backgrounds, and are motivated to migrate by potential economic opportunities. In contrast, “gireogi families” are usually middle or upper class, and their primary motivation is to seek better educational opportunities for their children (Chee 2003; Huang and Yeoh 2005). While many transnational migrants send money back to their families in the home country, most gireogi families are financially dependent on fathers who work in Korea, so the direction of remittances is the opposite of working class transnational families. There has been little research on the specific dynamics of Korean gireogi families (Cho 2004; Choi 2005, 2006; Kang
2009; Kim 2009; Lee 2008; Lee 2010; Lee and Koo 2006). These few studies discuss the relationship between the specific motivation to move for education and the ways this affects adaptation. These works highlight family separation and adjustments, there is too little attention to family dynamics and parenting. These studies also fail to situate gireogi families into a broader immigration history.
While the ethnographic, historical, and social science scholarship reviewed above in many respects fills my inquiry about the relationship between Asian
Americans and educational migrations, it does not provide a comprehensive understanding of how different senses of place of Asian migrant parents form different senses of belonging, parenting styles, and adaptations. The general tendency in existing studies of Asian migrants’ educational experiences and parenting is to focus on differentiated accomplishments that reflect differences in social capital. This has resulted in an oversimplification of migrant adjustments or displacements, and the results that are slanted toward socioeconomic determinism.
49
Emplaced transnational family studies has a unique potential to illuminate how adaptations and belongings are affected not only by social class but also by sense of place. Through an emphasis on emplaced parenting, this field opens questions that can lead to more contextualized and individualized explanations for the distinctive forms of “transnational migration of gireogi families”.
Interactive Constructions of Belonging
Belonging is socially constructed through a continuous process of negotiation.
Just as identity is partially constructed by differentiating oneself from others, belonging is often shaped through experiences of not-belonging. The split nature of gireogi families produces myriad social belongings. This study leans on three theoretical terrains to conceptualize the multidimensional aspects of place and belonging among these migrants: social capital study, feedback theory, and the folkloric approach.
First, I use the concept of social capital to consider transnational migrants’ differentiated place making practices. Pierre Bourdieu devised about the concepts of social and cultural capital to account for the unequal distribution of educational qualifications in societies (1997). Many sociologists used this framework to investigate the relationships between social and cultural capital and educational outcomes in families (Bankston and Zhou 2002; Zhou and Bankson 1998, Coleman
1988; 1990, Portes 1998). Many studies on education of immigrant children have focused on educational inequality through Bourdieu’s framework employ different strategies for investing resources investment to realize academic goals (Ogbu and
Simmons 1998; Owen, Green, Pitcher, and Maguire 2000; Lareau2003; Coleman
50
1987). I am not interested in theorizing immigrant youth’s academic achievement through a deterministic lens that reifies the social positions of ethnic minorities.
Rather, this study draws attention to the choices transnational parents make around residential community and a school district. I am particularly interested in the reasons some transnational families move into better school districts despite of restrictions around their social and cultural capital. As Bourdieu suggests, individuals and families can use different kinds of capital in different settings. Therefore, a family with limited financial resources may have access to other types of resources that help them pursue a specific goal.
Second, I use feedback theory( Mulgan 2009; Baumeister and Leary 1995) to understand the dynamics that affect decision making among transnational parents.
Importantly, emplacement and belonging are not entirely determined by social and cultural capital. Place making is an accumulation of interactive experiences between an individual, or a family, and a community. Transnational families can receive a diverse range of feedback when they settle in a new destination. Baumeister proposes that the need to belong has two features: frequent personal interactions and a perception of interpersonal bonds or relationships (500). The process of social attachment building produces the necessary conditions for “feelings of belongings.”
(Hedetoft 2004: 25) People constitute a sense of belonging by gaining local knowledge and familiarity through individual human contacts or group gatherings.
The ability to build a sense of belonging, or not-belonging, is highly dependent of the type of feedback they perceive from others. Even if a transnational family has enough financial resources to pursue specific familial norms and values, their realization of these goals can be hindered if they get negative feedbacks from their communities.
51
Place making and belonging construction can be smooth or rough depending on how transnational families perceive feedback and respond.
Emplacement and belonging of the transnational migrants might sound like contradictory themes. Do transnational migrants really make homes in a receiving society? Is it possible to make homes transnationally? People who think emplacement and belonging are only possible for people who have resided in a stable place for a long period of time may consider these notions incompatible. Yet, transnational migrants do employ strategies to make homes and places like other migrants. They often have to adjust to a new destination in a relatively short time, so access to transnational connections is crucial. These connections include social networks, financial transferences, and information. Sometimes transnational migrants apply domestic norms and values to justify their new place making or multiple home making.
It is of utmost importance for transnational migrants to feel at home in order for them to create a sense of belonging in a new society. Unlike global travelers and cosmopolitans, transnational migrants, even if their stay is temporary, try to settle down and make a home in the new community. Educating children in a foreign country requires investing tremendous amounts of money, time and energy. Through creating a new home with a lone mother, gireogi families seek to make their children feel at home in a new place. Migrant children with supportive mothers usually adjust well to foreign educational institutions. However, the stories of gireogi parents are different. Gireogi mothers do not have established social networks or mandatory academic obligations upon arrival. This study is primarily focused on gireogi mothers’ place making and their senses of belonging to conceptualize new forms of
52 emplacement and belonging in a global society. Gireogi mothers have complex and diverse place making experiences that are dependent on their resources and the feedback they receive from various communities.
Lastly, this study uses a folkloric approach to understand the gireogi mothers’ narratives among many other their cultural resources. Identities and belongings are constructed through the narratives and life histories as people tell themselves and related events to make sense of who they are and where they belong (Yuval-Davis
202). As mentioned previously, I dispute the reckless constructivist approach that regards everything related to identities and belongings as invented. When I refer to belongings as narratives, I do not mean the anecdotal discourses or artificial performances that are frequently deployed in poststructuralist or deconstructionist narratology (Kraus 2006). Rather, I use belongings as narratives in this study following the concept of “verbal art as performance” in folklore (Bauman 1974).
Verbal art as performance emphasizes patterns in genres, acts, roles, and events in a communicative way. “A performance-centered conception of verbal art” (292) pays attention to “a mode of language use” and “a way of speaking.” (293) I refer to the ways in which people construct and reconstruct their belongings through verbal art as
“narrative belonging”. The folkloric approach provides a way to analyze diverse genres of verbal arts and performances of speaking as distinctive cultural forms.
I apply folkloric approach through analyzing everyday chat, suda, life histories, and quoting Korean proverbs as verbal arts among gireogi mothers. These verbal performances are mostly practiced at social gatherings with accountable audiences and communication. I examine not only what is spoken in verbal communication but also how it is delivered in the form of performances. Verbal arts are repeated during
53 social and religious gatherings, each with its own specific contents and patterns.
These kinds of “reflexive processes” (Savage, Bagnall, and Longhutst 2005: 29) provide spaces for migrants to tell their stories and make sense of their migration histories.
Studies employing folkloric approach to analyze migrants’ emplacement and belonging is rare as it requires long periods of field work, intensive observation, and comprehensive interviews. Debra Lattanzi Shutika’s Beyond the Borderlands applies this type of folkloric approach to examine the migratory processes, settlement histories, and transformation of their belongings among Mexican migrants through life stories, in-depth interviews, and festive events (2011). Lattanzi Shutika’s work focused on interethnic interactions to examine mutual belonging transformations of the receiving community and the new immigrant community. This method is especially effective in analyzing emplacement and belonging among invisible migrant groups. Gireogi families are not frequently seen in public spaces and there is no official data about how many gireogi families migrate to specific places. Moreover,
Korean media depictions of gireogi families tend to stigmatize them as an abnormal by-product of an excessive education fever. Through verbal arts as performances, I seek to reveal the everyday realities and the processes of home making among gireogi families, particularly mothers, through their distinctive voices.
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CHAPTER 2: A HISTORY OF KOREAN EDUCATION IMMIGRATION
This chapter outlines the history of Korean education immigration as a distinctive form of world migration histories. I focus on the origins and historical background of the gireogi phenomenon. I draw on existing studies of Korean histories,
Korean immigrations, foreign students [Yuhaksaeng] , and modernization and globalization of Korea. By providing a broad history of Korean education immigration, this chapter situates the emergence and development of Korean gireogi families in a broader socioeconomic, cultural, and historical context.
A Deep-rooted History of Yuhak until the Late Joseon Dynasty
Studying abroad, known as yuhak (留學) has a long history in Korea dating back to ancient times. Short and long term study abroad has typically been practiced by upper class scholars and religious leaders and new thoughts and civilizations were introduced to Korea by educational missionaries who studied abroad. Buddhism and
Confucianism were both introduced to Korea by monks or scholars who studied in
China and India. Buddhism played a vital role in Unified Silla society (676-935) because many monks brought back with them “the doctrines of the various Buddhist sects” (Lee 1984: 81) from Dang dynasty China. Uisang is the most famous among these monks because he introduced Hwaeom thought, which he learned from the great
Chinese master Chih-yen. Uisang founded a temple, Buseok-sa (Buseok temple) after
55 his return and spread Hwaeom thought nationally. Hwaeom thought, which emphasizes harmony in all things, fit well with the Unified Silla society monarchy.
Confucianism was introduced by a number of students who travelled to Dang
China during the late Unified Silla period. Among these students, Choe, Chi-won was an outstanding scholar who wrote essays and a historical chronology based on his
Confucius learning. Confucius thoughts and institutional systems continued to be brought back to Korea through prominent scholars who studied in China up until the
Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). During the Korean Joseon Dynasty, the Yi Kings dispatched “three regular embassies” (Lee 1984: 189) to Ming China both to express courtesy for “serving the great” and to import cultural artifacts such as books and porcelain ware. Scholars, translators, and merchants accompanied these envoys to learn new thoughts, culture, and civilizations.
While the Joseon Dynasty was known as a “hermit kingdom” with relation to
Western society, travel to China to learn Confucianism was frequent. Particularly, the late Joseon period (18th and 19th centuries) was characterized by dynamic change and reform resulting from in the introduction of foreign religions and thoughts by progressive scholars. For instance, Bak, Je-ga (1750-?) and Yi, Deong-mu (1741-
1793) tried to move Korea form traditional agricultural into commercial manufacturing by introducing their experiences in Peking, China. Their idea was expressed in the works, Discourses on Northern Learning (Bukhag ui) and Peking
Diary (Yeonui) (Lee 1984: 235). They returned from Peking less with an admiration for Chinese society than a strong willingness to reform Joseon Confucianism.
Catholicism, known then as “Western learning” (seohak), was introduced by scholars who embraced this new thought and religion they learned about Ming China.
56
European missionaries resided in Ming China at that time and Joseon scholars developed Korean Catholicism by studying the Chinese books on Catholicism. Matteo
Ricci’s True Principles of Catholicism was introduced by Yi, Su-gwang’s reference book, Jibong yuseol. Scholars who studied abroad introduced these foreign thoughts and religions, which then shaped Korean national ideologies and culture. In this sense, yuhak played an important role in facilitating international exchange and intercultural communication in pre-modern Korean society.
Early Contacts with Western Imperialism and the Korean-American Treaty
Joseon was the last country in East Asia to open the door to countries outside the region. Japan signed a treaty of friendship during the Meiji era with the United
States in 1854, and China followed suit soon after. Joseon Korea kept her “Closed-
Door Policy (Swaeguk Jeongchaek)” toward foreign nations until the end of the 19th century, when the Western imperial countries tried to initiate contact. This policy of national seclusion continued until the Korean-Japanese Treaty, Ganghwado Joyak was concluded in 1876. The Closed-Door Policy was devised by the King Gojong’s father,
Heungseon Daewongun, who had a ruling power during the King Gojong’s youth. In
1866, Heungseon Daewongun persecuted French Catholic pastors and attacked a
French ship to secure his political power. According to Homer B. Hulbert’s The
Passing of Korea33, over 20,000 people lost their lives between 1866 and 1870 due to
33 Homer B. Hulbert was sent to Korea as an educator following the King Kojong and the American minister in Korea, Lucius H. Foote’s intention in 1886. He taught math, natural science, history, and politics at the educational institution named as Yukyeong Gongwon (Public Academy for Educating Youth) till 1891. When he returned to the Korea in 1893, he started running a publishing company, ‘Trilingual Press’ to introduce political situations and culture. He had been working as the chief editor of The Korea Review until 1906. (Homer B. Hulbert, The Passing of Korea, London: William Heinemann Co, 1906, translated by Shin,
57 the Catholic persecution (153). Five years later, an American merchant ship, the
General Sherman approached the Daedong River located below Pyeongyang to negotiate trade but was forced to withdraw back to China. Heungseon Daewongun strengthened his Closed-Door Policy toward the West by setting up the Cheokhwa
[Against Barbarians] monument on the main street of Seoul with the inscription
“Western barbarians invade our land. If we do not fight we must then appease them.
To urge appeasement is to betray the nation.” (Lee 1984: 266)
During the reign of King Gojong, the last of the Joseon dynasty, the Korean peninsula for the first time began to have contact with the non-Chinese world. Russia,
France, Germany, the U.S., England, China, and Japan competed to get economic concessions from Korea. After Queen Min was assassinated by the Japanese in 1895,
King Gojong fled to the Russian legation, causing deep political turmoil. Pro-
Japanese factions were killed or fled to Japan and pro-Russian cabinet was formed.
The Korean people criticized the king’s flight and their expressed outrage through launching the ‘Independence Club’ in 1897. King Gojong eventually returned to the palace and changed the name of the country from Joseon to “Great Han Empire,” and conceded the industrial infrastructure of Korea to Western and neighboring imperial countries.
The Korean-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, also known as the
Treaty of Jemulpo (Incheon), was signed May 22, 1882. Due to the closed-door policy,
Joseon had been influenced exclusively by China by keeping the policy of serving the great (Sadaejui). All other foreign civilizations were treated as barbarian cultures that posted harmful threats to Korean. Operating from this attitude toward foreign nations,
Bokryong as Daehanjeguk Meolmangsa, Seoul: Jipmundang, 1973)
58 the very first treaty between Korea and the West was initiated by a Chinese representative, Li Hung-chang, who was in charge of Korea’s foreign policy between
1881 and 1894 (Choy 1979: 43). According to Choy’s analysis, this Chinese representative led formal negotiations with the U.S. representative, Commodore
Robert W. Shufeldt without any Korean representation (45). In 1871, U.S. Navy
Representative Robert Shufeldt sailed to Korea aboard the U.S.S. Ticonderoga to initiate negotiation for a commercial treaty between the two countries. This
American envoy returned to Washington with a signed and translated letter that read:
The Cho Hsien country (Korea) is a dependency of China, but the management of her government affairs, home and foreign, has always been vested in the sovereign.
Now, as the Government of the United States and Korea are about to enter into treaty relations, the intercourse between the two nations shall be carried on in every respect on terms of equality and courtesy, and the King of Korea clearly asserts that all the articles of the treaty shall be acknowledged and carried into effect according to the laws of independent states.
In the matter of Korea being a dependency of China (in) any question that may arise between them in consequence of such dependency the United States shall in no way interfere.
The King has accordingly appointed commissioners for the purpose of negotiating the treaty, and now, as in duty bound, addresses this communication for the information of the President of the
United States.34
The contents of this treaty letter seem contradictory. Joseon had clearly been dependent on a Chinese representative during previous negotiations. Shufeldt had several meetings with Li Hung-chang and the most compelling issue was Joseon’s sovereignty. Li Hung-chang was firm in his assertion that Joseon was a dependent country of China while Shufeldt believed that Joseon should be regarded as an
34 Frederick M. Nelson, Korea and the Old Order in East Asia (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1946), p. 145.
59 independent, sovereign nation (Drake, 1975: 289-90). Kim analyzed this political confrontation as “clash of different civilizations” (Kim, 2002: 360). A treaty must be made between two states, each with its own sovereign. If Joseon were a dependent of
China, then a treaty relationship between Joseon and the United States would not be possible. The government of the United States initiated a treaty with Joseon even though they acknowledged Joseon had been dependent on China. Choy analyzed this contradiction as a conceptual difference between the West and the East. While the
Western nation would not allow a treaty relationship without an independent sovereignty, it was possible under within the Confucian conception of a brother-like
Sino-Korea relationship. (Choy 1979: 48)
While Choy’s argument supports Korea’s position with Eastern Confucian specificity, the question of how the U.S. government agreed to enter this contradictory relationship remains unanswered. International changes that happened in Korea outside the treaty provide more realistic reasons as to why the U.S. entered into this agreement. Between 1883 and 1898, the Western imperialist powers acquired various concessions from Korea. Permission to establish infrastructural industries such as railroads, roads, and ports, as well as access to natural resources, was given to
Western powers and westernized Japan.35 The United States had a commercial interest in pre-modern Korea at the time the treaty was signed. Article VI of the treaty stated that “Subjects of Chosen (Korea) who may visit the United States shall be
35 According to Lee’s summary, Japan, China, U.S., Russia, France, Germany, and England during this time got permissions to establish coaling station, construction right of undersea cable, telegraph line, railway line, etc. The U.S. got gold mining rights and construction right of Seoul-Incheon railway line and electricity and water mains in Seoul among these concessions. See the table at p. 301. (Lee, Ki-baik, A New History of Korea, trans. by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Shultz, 1984, Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers)
60 permitted to reside and to rent premises, purchase land, or to construct residences or warehouses in all parts of the country….,” (Kim and Patterson, 1974: 1). With this, each state agreed to allow the people of the other nation to carry out economic activities in their territory. U.S. investment and industrial involvement in Korea was strong while Joseon had little modern infrastructure to initiate commercial investments in the U.S. While the effects of the treaty seemed unequal on the surface,
Joseon would have to learn about modern Western civilization in order to effectively engage. Although the treaty led Joseon to allow her land and resources to be used by the U.S. in an unequal relationship, it also brought about opportunities for Korean politicians and scholars to travel to the United States and learn about Western civilization.
The First Korean Students in America
The year after the Korean-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed, King, Gojong sent envoys to the United States. So called “Bobingsa” delegation consisted of ten missions, a military mission, secretaries, a Chinese translator, a Japanese translator, and an American, who served as a diplomatic secretary in Japan on the way to the America. They left Jemulpo (currently Inchon city) in July of 1883 and returned the following May. After arriving in San Francisco in September, they took a train to Washington, D.C. When they arrived on September
15th, it was the first time Korean people had set foot in the capital city of the U.S.A.
During the trip, they saw the cultural and industrial developments of America. One member, Yu, Gil-jun decided to stay to study western civilization and institutional establishments in the fields of politics, economy, and science. He enrolled at the
61
Dammer Academy in Massachusetts (Choy, 71) and published Observations on a
Journey to the West [Seoyu kyeonmun] upon his return to Joseon. This text had a great influence on many Joseon intellectuals and scholars who began planning future study.
At the time of this population, during the late Joseon period, the country was experiencing a shift known as the “Enlightenment Movement [Gyemong Undong].”
This movement brought about a new spirit toward foreign nations, one that was more accepting of western civilization, especially among intellectuals and scholars.
Therefore, Yu, Gil-jun is the first Korean student who studied abroad in America.
Strictly speaking, however, Yu, Gil-jun had just enrolled at an educational institution for a temporary study and he came back to Korea. Yu neither graduated any American college nor got a job using his study in the U.S.
During the late Joseon dynasty, students began studying abroad in America and many decided to stay. This was qualitatively different from previous forms of study abroad because the scholars who traveled abroad in previous generations went to China to bring back new ideas to Korea. Study abroad in America became a way to important modern cultural forms to Korea as well as a way of introducing Korea to
Western society. While pre-modern scholars thought of themselves as intellectual pioneers, modern students who studied abroad began thinking about immigrating to out their newly acquired foreign knowledge and skills to use.
There have been debates about who was the first Korean to graduate from an
American college. Until recently Seo, Jae-pil, most famous for his involvement in the
Korean independence movement, was considered to be the first to have earned a degree from an American university. However, Byeon, Su preceeded him when he studied at an American college and got a federal government job in the U.S. He was
62 involved in the Gapsin political revolution in 1884, which took political power for three days. After this failed revolution, Byeon defected to Japan, where he met two
Koreans and traveled to Washington, D. C. with them. He entered Maryland
Agriculture College, now the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1887 and earned a Bachelor of Science in 1891.
In part due to the fact that he dies in his thirties in an accident, Byeon was not known as a pioneering Korean student in America until recently. According to Cho
(1987), Byeon lived in Northwest Washington, D.C. and was of one of the two foreign students, among 46 total, studying at the Maryland Agriculture College at the time. The other foreign student, Min, Juho, was also Korean but returned to Korea without finishing his degree. Byeon worked a part-time job at the Department of
Agriculture, and worked on papers about Japanese and Chinese agriculture. He was killed in a train accident near the college while doing research just a few months after his graduation.
When I visited Byeon’s tomb on a late fall day in 2010 after researching several places based on historical documents, it was raining. There was a deserted
Catholic church right next to a deserted statue of Christ. Dark green grass and ivy climbed the wall on the church building. Even if there was a newly developed residential community in less than five miles, that church location looked so isolated and deserted. There was a wide cemetery right behind the church and I could easily find Byeon’s tomb. Because his name was carved in Korean, his tomb looked outstanding. “벤수”, his Korean name was engraved following the American style pronunciation probably by one of his American friends during his stay in the
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college and the Department of Agriculture.36 Since Byeon’s pioneering accomplishments had started being public by the Korean government and his descendants, there was another monument on top of a stone shaped like a turtle to
36 The original tombstone says, “In Memory of Penn Su, A Corean attached to the first embassy of this country graduated at the MD agriculture college June 1891, killed by locomotive at college station. Oct 22, 1891” with all capital letters following the Korean Byeon’s name as “벤수.”
64 memorize his biography37. However, this newly established monument did not much illuminate Byeon’s life than the old stone with American style Korean name on it.
Byeon Su’s life and his influence on the early history of Korean educational immigration to the America need to be studied further.
Another Korean, Seo, Gwang-beom also studied in Washington, D.C. during the time Byeon was pursuing this degree. Seo had made a short trip to Washington as a delegate in 1883 and returned to the States in 1888 after the Gapsin revolution.
According to Cho (1987), both Seo and Byeon supported their studies by working at the Bureau of Vital Statistics as part-time translators. Seo moved to the Education
Bureau and wrote a research paper titled as “Joseon Dynasty’s Education System” that was translated into French and used by several governmental agencies. He returned to Korea in 1895 to serve as a Minister under a national reform agenda initiated by King Gojong. He made a third and final trip to Washington, D.C. as part of the Korean Envoy Extraordinary but died three months after his arrival. During this short time, he helped six Korean students come to Washington to pursue education.
According to the History of The Korean-Americans in the Washington Metropolitan
Area (2009), these six Korean students were studying in Japan but longed to study in
America. They traveled to Vancouver, Canada and had a difficulty in communicating in English. The students were put in touch with through the Japanese consulate and he helped them to move to Washington, D.C. and enroll at Howard University.
37 This new tombstone says, “Penn Su Memorial Monument (1861-1891) Herein lies a pioneer, politician, and scholar, who was the first recorded Korean graduate of a U.S. college and contributed to the opening of the kingdom of the Korean Yi Dynasty to the world. Dedicated by the Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States-Greater Washington May 2003” in the front side and “Wonju branch Mr. Byeon’s tomb who was appointed as Gaseondaebu, the second great scholar of Gyujanggak” in both Korean and Chinese in the rear side.
65
Unlike Byeon and Seo, Gwang-beom, Seo, Jae-pil is well known as a pioneering Korean student and as a political figure deeply involved in Korean independence movement. As a member of the elite class in Korea, yangban, he could easily have become a government employee but he was not satisfied with only taking advantage of his privilege. Also known as Philip Jaisohn, Seo, Jae-pil was also involved the Gapsin coup and moved to America to study western civilization in 1884.
He graduated from Hillman Academy in Pennsylvania, with the aid of an American named John Wells Hollen Beck, and then moved to Washington, D.C. to find a job.
He became a translator at the Army Medical Corp and enrolled at the Corcoran School of Science and the Arts of Columbian University (now George Washington
University). He went on to study medicine and at Columbian became the first Korean
66 to become a medical doctor in the United States. Seo, Jae-pil’s involvement with
Korean independence movement will be discussed further at the next section.
These first Korean students observed the ways that modernization was taking shape in America just as Korea was beginning to take steps in that direction. The
United States was building railroads and creating political institutions based on democratic values. Early efforts toward modernization and enlightenment in Korea at that time were not effective due to the old social order and political conflicts of feudal society. While King Gojong was willing to make some changes to political structures, his ontological limitation as a king of the Joseon dynasty prevented him from fully pursuing modern society. As one foreign noted at the time, the last king of Joseon dynasty, the King Gojong was “de facto the Korean Government” (Bishop 1970: 257) despite his open attitude toward the western society and willingness to reform the country. Under his rule, and Japanese invasions, there was no possibility for the introduction of a constitution or democratic values.
The three pioneers discussed in this chapter might have had hope for reviving
Korea when they chose to study in America. Though they were initially educated through Confucian Chinese literature, they were eager to learn about Western civilization through the fields of agriculture, education, and medical science. All of them chose to stay America after finishing their studies to learn more about modern societies in preparation to become leaders in what they saw as a politically insecure country in Korea.
Independence Movement and ‘Refugee Students’
The first waves of Korean immigrants to the United States occurred around the
67 time Japan annexed Korea in 1910. Many of these first Korean immigrants settled in the then territory of Hawaii and along the west coast in American cities such as San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Hose.38 Large numbers of sugar plantation workers moved to America found work in Hawaii. The history of this early movement has been well documented by Korean-American migration scholars and American historians (Patterson 1988, 2000; Cha 2010; Choe 2006). These histories primarily focus on the labor migration to Hawaii sugar plantations, which set the standard for rules around Korean migration, and later to west coast cities. While early labor immigration history is important, these accounts often occlude other circumstances that led to Korean immigration to America. As I have demonstrated, there was a history of educational migration during the late Joseon dynasty dating back twenty years before the first labor immigrants arrived in Hawaii in 1905.
Any history of early Korean immigration to America cannot exist without documenting the Korean independence movement in the U.S.A. during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). Most activists involved in Korean independence movement in America attended American colleges. While pursuing professional fields of study, they also mobilized Korean immigrants to collect funds, join military institutions, or reform their daily lives. The Korean independence movement in
America can be divided into the three strands: a militaristic line, led by Bak, Yong- man; a reformist line, led by An, Chang-ho; and a diplomatic line, led by Yi, Seung- man.
The first strand of the movement was led by Bak, Yong-man, who believed
38 For the history of the early labor immigration to Hawaii from 1896-1910, see Wayne Patterson’s The Korean Frontier in America (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1988).
68 that the best way to secure Korean national independence was to organize a military unit to oppose Japanese colonial rule. After studying political science and military science at the University of Nebraska, Bak established a Korean Youth Military
Academy in Hastings, Nebraska in 1909. He was able to establish this academy through support from the University after persuading the University president with his ardent patriotism. According to Choy, young men at the academy worked on the farm during the day and participated military training in the evening with wooden guns because American law did not allow foreigners to own real guns (1979: 85). Bak’s military academy had a great influence on the Korean immigrant community in the
States and four more military centers were created in Claremont and Lompoc,
California, Kansas City, Kansas, and Superior, Wyoming. Bak was eventually assassinated and the militaristic efforts he galvanized were ultimately unsuccessful due to lack of financial support. However, there were ardent military movements in both America and in colonial Korea. In the book Korea’s Fight for Freedom (1920), author F.A. McKenzie published a manifesto that circulated in America during the early colonial period. Entitled Explosive Thunder, the manifesto expressed the rage of many Korean patriots against Japanese colonialism and pro-Japanese Koreans
(McKenzie 1908: 160). In The Tragedy of Korea, McKenzie documented the presence of militaristic units that were being organized all over Korea before annexation and in the early phase of the Japanese colonial period (1908: 156-170). Bak’s efforts carried the oppositional efforts in Korea abroad through the military academy. Notably, Bak also helped organize Dongmi Yuhaksaenghoe, the Eastern America Korean Students’
Association, in Hastings, Nebraska on June 4, 1913 (Jo 2004: 75). Similar organizations soon followed in Honolulu, Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, and New York.
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Other efforts in the Korean independence movement in America focused on reform. An, Chang-ho, a leader of this strand of the movement argued against any sort of military action, asserting that readiness and national reform would accelerate independence. An came to San Francisco in 1899, when he was twenty-two years old, to learn the Western civilization after taking part in non-violent civil movement in
Korea. He quickly noticed that Korean immigrants were living in miserable conditions and decided to educate the Bay Area Korean community to improve their standards. An declared that “We do not deserve independent nation people. Because we are uncivilized, American people think us primitive.” (Yi 1998: 16) An formed a reformist movement to persuade Korean in America to keep their homes and streets cleans, and by modeling this more ‘civilized’ way of living. An then advocated for fair commercial contracts among merchants, organized community social groups, and spearheaded the first Korean political organization, Gongnip Hyeopoe (Mutual
Assistance Association) in 1906. In 1911, the political association expanded to include not only Korean immigrants in America but also Korean diaspora in Mexico and
Russia under the name Gungminhoe (Korean National Association) in 1911 that included not only Korean immigrants in America but also Korean diasporas living in
Mexico and Russia. One of the earliest modern novelists, Yi, Gwang-su appreciated this Gungminhoe (Korean National Association). One of the earliest modern Korean novelists, Yi, Gwang-su recognized Gungminhoe as an important force of Korean independence movement (Yi 1998: 69). Gungminhoe opposed Japanese annexation and sent a manifesto declaring this stance to the leaders of other nations. During the
Japanese colonial period, the American government often sent official documents related to Koreans directly to Gungminhoe rather than the Japanese embassy.
70
Gungminhoe has been credited with helping to shift the perception of Korean from enemy aliens to legal foreigners during the Pacific War.
An, Chang-ho’s efforts were focused on gradual preparation, strengthening national power, and self-reform through grassroots mobilization. This reformist agenda resulted in the founding of the Heungsadan (Young Korean Academy), an organization that trained young people leadership skills in 1913. Although An’s theory of gradual preparation met a temporary resistance by the military line, his
Heungsadan (Young Korean Academy) is still active in both Korea and America.39
The third strand of the Korean independence movement in America was focused on diplomacy. Yi, Seung-man (Syngman Rhee) was the leader of diplomatic efforts and went on to become the first president of South Korea. Yi was a descendant of the founder of Joseon dynasty, and there were great expectations set for him at a young age (Choe 2006: 3). After several failed attempts to pass the traditional government exams, he shifted his interest toward modern thought and Christianity. Yi was jailed for involvement in the Korean modernization movement, and came to
America upon his release to make a plea to Western nations to intervene against
Japanese colonialism. He failed to gain support bur decided to stay in the United
States to pursue an education. He studied English, French, Philosophy, Sociology,
American history and Western history at George Washington University for two years.
Yi went on to obtain a master’s degree at Harvard University and a doctorate from
Princeton University, both in Political Science. He graduated with from the Ph.D.
39 On May 13th, 2013, the centennial Heungsadan celebration was held at the Mason Hall, George Mason University. I came to have a chance to watch this celebration and found that the Heungsadan members are still actively involved with youth educational movement while they are studying An, Chang-ho’s nationalist sprits.
71 program in 1910, the same year his home country was annexed by Japan.
Upon completion of his studies, he returned to Korea as the chief secretary of
YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association). Since Yi could not exercise any power under the Japanese colonial authority, he defected to America with the aid of
American Methodist church in 1912. When he returned, Yi connected with Bak,
Yong-man, the leader of the military academy in Hatings, Nebraska. The two had met while they were students and now united make plans for Korean independence efforts in (Choe 2006: 54). When Yi travelled to Hawaii to start the movement there, he received a huge welcome from Korean community who were eager to get involved under his leadership. Additionally, the large community in Hawaii welcomed his efforts when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported on his activities in Korea, and academic accomplishment (Choe 2006: 56).
Yi was appointed the president of the Korean provisional government after the
March Frist Movement of 191940 and opened the office of American Committee of the Korean provisional government in Washington, DC. When President Woodrow
Wilson refused officially to recognize the Korean provisional government, he changed his strategy from persuading U.S. political leaders to informing American citizens about the Korean situation. Through public lectures and media exposure, he generated
American public interest. Many historical accounts of Korea paint Yi as a dictator, but
40 The March First Movement formed a watershed of the Korean independence movement as well as Japanese colonial policy. On March 1, 1919, there was a countrywide uprising in Korea calling for Korean independence. Korean people shouted “Korean Independence, Hurray!” in the street and thousands of Korean people and students were jailed or executed to death by Japanese police. Because of this movement, a provisional government was formed in Sanghai on April 17, 1919 and the Japanese colonial policy was changed from military one into cultural one.
72 his efforts to educate the West about Korean colonial situation must be recognized.
The link that binds the three political leaders of Korean independence movement, Bak, Yong-man, An, Chang-ho, and Yi, Seung-man is that they were all
“refugee students” who studied in America. Each one left the country to escape political persecution due to their efforts to modernize feudal Korean society. China had long influenced Joseon dynasty policies, making it impossible for them to travel there as so many had before them. While many intellectuals were influenced by Japan, as the source of colonial power, it was unavailable as an option. America presented opportunities to pursue education that would prepare them to become political leaders and mobilize Korean people. In addition to institutions of higher education, many
American Christian churches provided material support for their efforts. The
American Korean independence movement was primarily organized, institutionalized, and developed by these three leaders who pursued education abroad. America became the best place for Koreans to study abroad. While labor immigration to Hawaii became a model for economic realization of American dream, these refugee students modeled a pathway to leadership through study in America.
Elite Yuhaksaeng under the Strict Yuhaksaeng Policy
According to the Korean National Association of Hawaii, 891 Koreans came to America as students between 1882 and 1940 (Kim 1971: 23). Those who came between 1884 and 1909 were primarily motivated involvement in the Korean independence movement. The majority of the students who came to America between
1925 and 1940 eventually returned to Korea and either came from a pro-Japanese family and traveled with a Japanese-issued visa, or came from upper-class
73 background and was somehow able to get an American student visa (Choy 1979: 78).
One Korean historian reports that about 65% of these students graduated from college and 15% obtained a doctoral degree (Jo 2004: 74). When Korea gained independence from Japan in 1945, many students and former refugees returned to Korea and a great number were appointed as political leaders. The majority of people who came to the
United States around the Korean War (1950-1953) were students. Between 1945 and
1960, there was little immigration from Korea, so the majority of the Korean population in the United States was students. In 1955, the New York Korean Students’
Association organized Korean holiday celebrations and this organization was developed into the New York Korean Association in 1960 (Jo 2004:78).
Prior to the 1965 “Immigration and Nationality Act” was realized, it was difficult for Asian people to enter the United States as either an immigrant or student
(Lowe 1996: 20-21). However, many Korean people found ways to make the journey both during and after the Korean War in attempts to escape the miserable post-war situation in Korea. Although there is no official documentation of how many Korean students came to America during the 1950s, informal histories relate that most were either from elite families who had some degree of influence or were brought over with the help of missionaries (Jo 2004; Jeong 2005). While many of these students came from wealthy backgrounds, this did not translate into financial security once they traveled to the States because the Korean government policy toward yuhaksaeng, or visa students, was very strict during the Yi, Seung-man regime (1948-1960).
Yuhaksaeng were not allowed to bring enough money to extend their trip and receiving money from Korea was very difficult due to lack of banking infrastructure
(Jo, 2012: 550). The Korean Students Association was formed in response to these
74 restrictions. Korean yuhaksaeng often supported themselves by doing part-time work during vacations and helping one another. In 1961, under the control of a new military regime, these policies were loosened so that young men postponed their mandatory year of military service if they were yuhaksaeng, but it was still difficult for Korean students to study abroad. In order to obtain a U.S. student visa, students had to pass government exams and complete a certain level of education in Korea. According to a
Korean-American professor who came to the U.S. in 1969, this difficult examination tested Korean history, English, and Ethics, and he had to take soyang (knowledge) classes before he was allowed to leave Korea. He was only allowed to bring 200 U.S. dollars. All yuhaksaeng students, whether they were selected for a scholarship or got missionary support, had to pass governmental exams and coursework. There were some exceptions for students awarded full scholarships through the American-Korean
Foundation41 yuhaksaeng examination (Jeong 2005: 152). The government yuhaksaeng policy also recommended that yuhaksaeng should return to Korea after finishing their studies, in response to a brain drain phenomena occurring at the time.
According to the Department of Culture and Education, there were 6,845 U.S. yuhaksaeng between 1953 and 1967 and only 11% of them returned to Korea (1968:
3). Assuming 89% of yuhaksaeng stayed for continuous living, we can say that study abroad in America became a way of effective way of immigration. Immigration to
America had become a plausible and attractive option for some.
Diversified Oversea Yuhaksaeng Groups and a Path to Immigration
41 The American-Korean Foundation was a non-governmental institution that established during and after the Korean War to help Korea’s rehabilitation and rebuilding.
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During the early 1970s, much greater numbers of Korean students began traveling to the United States and other countries. The United States remained the primary destination for students because U.S. colleges and universities were the most sought-after, especially for upper class families. America remained the most popular destination for Korean students abroad primarily because it was seen as an avenue to eventually immigrant to the United States permanently (Jo 2004).
Many Korean scholars had now received a Western education and were eager to escape the social atmosphere that resulted from a long period of dictatorship in their home nation. Democratic Western ideals of freedom of speech and scholarship stood in sharp contrast to the oppressive social atmosphere in Korea at that time.
Under dictatorship, freedom of speech was unimaginable so scholars began looking for other places to live. At just that moment, several governmental policies change, which made immigration more possible than the past. In the 1970s, the South Korean government began promoting birth control and emigration to address overpopulation issues. Additionally, it lifted restrictive yuhaksaeng policies requiring an examination to obtain student visas in 1979. This policy was revived temporarily in 1985, but permanently removed in 1988. Alongside the factors that pushed Korean to move abroad, the United States passed the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, which removed quotas on the number of people from foreign nations. For all these reasons, immigration and yuhaksaeng increased dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s and
Korea became the third largest sending country to the United States during the
1980s.42
42 Min and Song estimated a total Koreans immigrated to the United States between 1965 and 1989 as about 600,000 (Min and Song 1988: 47).
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The increased number of yuhaksaeng during this period contributed to brain drain in Korea. Over 30 percent of Korean immigrants to the Unites States in the
1970s were college or university graduates and many of them worked as professionals in the medical, science, and educational fields (Choy 1979: 242). Korean intellectuals who entered the mainstream American society were often criticized as a “do-nothing class” among the Korean community because they sometimes lived in rich, white communities and did not socialize with other Koreans (Choy 1979: 223). This negative image was amplified by that fact that some wealthy Korean immigrants established dual residency in South Korean and the United States to avoid taxation
(Choy 1979: 243). Nonetheless, Korean intellectuals who settled down in the United
States after advanced studies contributed to the development of American academia and changed the image of Asians among Americans.
The growth of the yuhaksaeng population contributed to an increase in immigration as students began to pursue a greater range of fields. The preference of yuhaksang’s study field became more and more diversified as the Korean government abolished the qualified examination and allowed a high school graduate’s foreign study in 1988. Studying from undergraduate at an American college or university meant the field of study abroad did not have to be professional field targeting either master or doctoral degree. Young Koreans who could not easily acquire an immigrant visa due to their financial statuses or lack of work experiences would obtain student visas to pursue undergraduate studies or English as a Second Language. Studying abroad became a legitimate entry to living in the Unites States. Many Koreans who came to the United States as non-immigrant student visa holders were able to change their visa status to permanent residents through employment or marrying a U.S.
77 citizen (Fawcett & Carino 1987).
Early Study Abroad Students (Jogi Yuhaksaeng) and Gireogi Families
When the 1988 Olympics took place in Seoul, South Korea drew attention from around the globe for the first time since the end of Korean War. The South
Korean government was eager and hurried to present a positive image of postwar development and hurried many changes. Most restrictive policies were either loosen or abolished in order to show that the East Asian Tigers were moving toward globalization. That year, the yuhaksaeng policy was liberalized, allowing high school students to study abroad. Even elementary school children could try study abroad if they or their parents’ want to by quitting mandatory public education and applying for entering foreign educational institutions. This was the beginning of the gireogi family and early study abroad students (jogi yuhaksaeng) phenomenon. This trend took place primarily among affluent Gangnam families, and later spread to the middle class.
In the 1990s, Korea began state-led globalization efforts that had influenced all areas of Korean society. In 1995, a presidential Segyehwa (globalization) committee was established to focus on six areas: education, legal and economic systems, politics and mass media, national and local administration, the environment, and culture and consciousness.43 The educational field was the top priority with a focus on English education. While government’s motto, “Segyehwa” (globalization) resonated in schools through dramatic changes in English language curriculum, shifting from a grammar-centered program to one that focused on conversational
43 The Presidential Segyehwa Promotion Committee, Segyehwa ui bijeon gwa jeollyak (Globalization Vision and Strategy) (Seoul: Presidential Segyehwa Promotion Committee, August 1995).
78 skills. The Korean government recruited Americans and Korean-Americans to teach
“real” or “authentic” English in an effort to prepare students to become “a global citizen.” This spawned private education market that began teaching the language at
English hagwons as early as kindergarten.
As English mania swept the country, many parents from the elite Gangnam district of Seoul, many of whom had traveled to America for study abroad or transnational job opportunities, began thinking that it would be more effective to send their children to the States to learn the language. They chose easily accessible places where either Korean communities were well developed or one of their overseas relatives used to live. They quickly realized that it was necessary for one parent to live in the United States with their children in order to send them to American public schools. Following established gender and family roles, mothers usually migrated with their children while fathers stayed in Korea to work and provide financial support to the transnational family. Educating children in an effective environment took priority over the family members living together. When gireogi families began making these transnational arrangements during the 1990s, they were very rare cases.
As these families began to return reporting success stories of “real” English competency and acceptance to prestigious colleges, middle class families began considering the gireogi life style as well. Some of these families chose Australia, New
Zealand, England or the Philippines rather than the United States due to financial and visa restrictions but the United States has always been considered the best places to live a gireogi life. In addition to the excellent educational opportunities, the country is seen as more accessible because there are established Korean communities.
In some cases, affluent families sent their children to relatives in America who
79 then became their legal guardians in order to enroll them in public schools or summer camps. Other Korean families who could not find a suitable guardian, chose to send their children to boarding schools where dormitory residency is available. It is not surprising that well-known American boarding schools or private schools have young
Korean students without living-together parents.
While Korean public schools do not usually allow students to return after a temporary absence, they are now admitting students who return from spending time abroad to study in English environments. Under the current Korean education policy, any Korean student who wants to do gireogi families or jogi yuhak for more than one year should leave Korean public schools voluntarily. In fact, when these study abroad students return to Korea, they are regarded as particularly qualified for entrance to colleges and universities with a beneficial qualification. Gireogi and jogi yuhak students who spent several years abroad have an especially advantageous position when applying colleges and universities in Korea. Many top universities in
Seoul have adopted “Special Case Screening,” “Global Screening,” or “International
Screening” to recruit students who can speak English like a native English speaker.
There are specific qualifications for each of these prestigious screening tests. For instance, only students who spent more than three years abroad can apply for “Special
Case Screening” and students must have graduate from an English-speaking country’s high school to apply for “International Screening.” While the children of people working at transnational companies or diplomats can apply for these special examinations, the majority of the students who pass are either gireogi or jogi yuhak students. Many gireogi parents strategically plan their period abroad around these university screening.
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These changes in attitude about education have had detrimental effects on
South Korea. The public education system has become fatally ineffective as the private education market has gradually taken its place. Many teenagers are suffering mental and physical effects of the competitive educational environment and parental pressures, some resorting to suicide (Yi, Shin, and Kim 2012). Studying abroad to become a more competitive candidate for college entrance and employment opportunities has become a social norm, not only among professional upper class families but also middle class families. Some well-known American school districts have visible numbers of Korean students every year as families attempt to provide the best education through transnational travel and study. Transnational educational families have become common, and most students study in more than one place before they enter college. In addition to the significant numbers of Korean students who pursue advanced graduate studies44, the increasing numbers of early study abroad students and gireogi students45 are transforming Korean and American educational institutions and migration policies, transnational social fields, and traditional concepts of family and nation. Gireogi families have contributed to naturalizing study abroad and choosing to practice transnational life styles among South Koreans.
44 According to National Science Foundation’s statistics, South Korea has been an Asian country who sent the third largest number of foreign doctoral students to the Unites States graduate schools following China and India. (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2h.htm) 45 According to the Statistics Korea’s 2010 report on education, 58.9% of over 30 years old school parents expressed their intention that they want to send their kids overseas to study abroad if conditions are allowed and this percentage has grown about 10.6% from the year of 2008, 48.3%. (http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/2/6/1/index.board?bmodc=read&aSeq=198972)
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CHAPTER 3: EVERYDAY PRACTICE OF PLACE MAKING: ORGANIZATIONS OF GIREOGI MOTHER’S LIVES
Typical media depictions of gireogi families depict families split between two nations because they have a unnatural desire to educate their children and unlimited access to financial resources. In contrast, my research revealed tremendous diversity of life styles, daily activities, social networks, and interactions with other migrants among gireogi families in both Centreville and McLean. This chapter will discuss gireogi families’criteria for “a good education,” a concept that varies greatly. The gireogi families live in specific social contexts that reflect their social capital and its management. The differences in social class among these families are visible in the details of their everyday lives, including time management and social networks. Even when information about educational opportunities is open to the public, selecting from and making use of this information usually requires human and financial resources.
The women who live as single mothers struggle to make homes for themselves and their children in these new destinations and face challenging obstacles to obtain this information. The differences in access to valuable educational information lead to disparate senses of belonging among these mothers. In this way, social capital plays an important fact in constructing a sense of place and a sense of belonging among gireogi families.
Drawing on ethnographic findings, this chapter illustrates patterns of time management, social networks, and parenting styles of McLean and Centreville gireogi
82 families. I use these elements to discuss the way differences in social capital enables distinct place-making strategies and senses of belonging. I will begin with two case studies of the Kwon and Choi families to illustrate the day-to-day lives of gireogi families. The Kwon and the Choi families of McLean, and the Chang and the Park families of Centreville are not representatives their respective community. However, their stories do illustrate each community’s distinctive features and many other gireogi families in these places show similar patterns.
3-1. A Week in the life of McLean Mothers: Bifocal Belonging and Multiple Competitions
The Kwon home is a ten-year-old, white, two-story single-family house with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. The house is located in a quiet gated community near a small shopping mall. To gain entry to the community, visitors must input a security number and get permission of the house owner. Most of the houses have two car garages, a wide and well-trimmed back yards, and security systems. There are tall trees and fountains in the middle of the community and it is rare to see people walking around the community during the day. The typical home in this community sells for more than a million dollars.
Inside the Kwon home, the living room has hardwood floors with a full-size grand piano, a violin in the corner, and decorated with antique furniture. A big aquarium full of colorful tropical fish stands on the side wall next to a big wall clock.
A Korean housecleaner visits once a week, a gardener once a month, and Mrs. Kwon has an established relationship with a Korean catering service for times when Mrs.
Kwon hosts formal gathering.
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Mr. Kwon is an executive for a multinational investment corporation in Korea; he spends every other month in McLean, alternating with his parents’ house in Seoul,
South Korea. Although Mr. Kwon visits the family six times a year, there are always two luxury cars parked in the garage. Mr. Kwon finished his Ph.D. at a graduate school in Washington, D.C. in 2001 and got a job after graduation. The Kwons have been married for twelve years; Mrs. Kwon and their children moved to McLean two years ago. They have two children, eleven-year-old, Young-Jin is tall and pale boy with round glasses. He was very shy during our first meeting but eventually opened up and showed me the pictures of his piano performances at several youth recitals.
Their seven-year-old daughter Young-Mi is sociable and energetic and she likes listening K-pop songs.
McLean CEO Mom
Mrs. Kwon runs her home with the efficiency and commitment of a typical
CEO. She gets up every morning at six thirty to prepare breakfast and lunch boxes, wake up the two kids to pack their backpacks, and drive them to their schools. Even though the school offers bus transportation and various lunch menus, Mrs. Kwon prefers to take her children to school and make lunch boxes herself:
Every day, I feel very tired physically, but my mind is satisfied. When I was in
Korea, I didn’t have many chances to talk with my children. The children
would ride to school with the transportation offered by the cram schools and
private academies, and maids did our house cleaning and cooking. After
sending the kids to school, I would play golf, go to health clubs, get massages,
and gather with my friends. The maid would welcome my children home
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when they returned from school. Things are totally different here. It is hard to
find a trustworthy maid who speaks Korean, and the language barrier makes
me hesitant to hire English-speaking maids. Now my kids want me to give
them rides and to eat homemade lunches. Perhaps, I am doing all of this by
myself due to my lack of English competency. But I feel like I am doing my
best as a mother and fulfilling duty to take care of my kids. As a matter of fact,
the only time to speak with them peacefully is on our rides to school. (Mrs.
Kwon, 36, McLean)
Table 1 shows Mrs. Kwon’s schedule during a week in January 2012, which is full of parenting activities. As soon as hectic “off to school” morning routine ends, she heads for ESL (English as a Second Language) classes held at a private academy near her house. When she comes back home from class, she makes afternoon snacks for her children. The children pick up their snacks around 3PM when they come home from school before they then to go hagwon (private tutoring school), chauffered Mrs.
Kwon. Her eleven-year-old son is currently attending two different hagwons and takes lessons in four subjects: every Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning he takes
English classes, every Wednesday and Friday is math, every Tuesday is piano lessons, and every Saturday afternoon he takes violin lessons. Mrs. Kwon’s seven-year-old daughter attends the same English and math hagwons as her brother, takes piano lessons from the same instructor at a different time, and attends a ballet school every
Saturday afternoon.
TABLE 1. Mrs. Kwon’s Weekly Schedule
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wed. Thurs. Friday Saturday
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AM - Getting Up 6:30 Getting Preparing Children’s Breakfast and Lunch Boxes Getting -7:00 Up Up Breakfast Driving Kids to School Breakfast -8:30 with Kids with Kids Driving Driving to the ESL Academy Driving - to the Kids to 9:00 Korean the Church English hagwon PM - Lunch Studying English Volunteering Driving 1:30 with at the Kids’ Young-Mi Church School to the Private People Piano Lesson Driving Home Driving -2:00 kids home Taking a Lunch Lunch -2:30 Nap or with Kids Watching Resting -3:00 Korean TV Making Snack for Returning Kids Grocery -3:30 Drama Shopping Shopping Driving Driving Driving Driving Driving Kids Driving Young-Jin Young-Gin -4:00 or Young- Kids to Kids to to the Math Gathering to the Jin to the to the Orchestra the the hagwon Private with other Private Rehearsal/ Math English Violin gireogi Piano Young-Mi to hagwon hagwon Lesson/ Mothers the Gym Lesson Young-Mi Ballet Class Driving Kids Home -6:30 Dinner with Kids Preparing Dinner -7:00 Skype Dinner -8:00 with
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Husband Resting/ TV watching -8:30 Helping Watching Young-Jin’s Practicing Piano Kids’ Study -9:30 - Going to Helping Young-Mi’s Homework Skype with Husband 10:00 Bed AM - Helping Young-Jin’s Homework Going to 1:00 Bed Washing the dishes/ Laundry -2:00
Mrs. Kwon’s keeps a big family calendar on desk in the corner of the living room to organize her time. On the right side of the desk, a thick English-Korean dictionary sits on a stack of files of application forms for various hagwons, after school activites, and competitions, newspaper clippings, and copies of book chapters.
On the left side of the desk, there is an eighteen-inch computer monitor and a photo of
Young-Jin and Young-Mi’s piano recital. The family calendar includes the various hagwon schedules, rescheduled class times, music lesson fee dues, school volunteering times, and family events. When Mrs. Kwon showed me this calendar, her face was full of pride and satisfaction. As Table 1 indicates, Mrs. Kwon’s daily life is organized around her children’s education and extracurricular hagwon study and music lessons. Mrs. Kwon’s primary responsibility is organizing Young-Jin and
Young-Mi’s lives. The children’s various activities sometimes causes scheduling conflicts, which leads to determining the priorities of each activity. For example, when Saturday English hagwon classes were rescheduled into 4PM due to the open house schedule for another opportunity, Mrs. Kwon had to decide which activity was more important: English study or the violin lesson. She rescheduled Young-Jin’s
87 violin lesson with additional payment and called Young-Mi’s ballet school to let them know her daughter could not attend practice that day. The Kwon family’s everyday time management, like many other gireogi families, follows the oldest child’s (Young-
Jin’s) schedule. When Young-Mi and I were waiting for Mrs. Kwon and Young-Jin in the car, Young-Mi expressed her frustration about negotiating the family schedule.
I actually wanted to learn hip-hop dance rather than ballet. But, my
mom wanted me to take ballet lessons. I know that ballet school is near the
violin teacher’s house. I can’t wait until next year because my mom promised
I can take hip-hop dance then. (Young-Mi, 8)
She interprets Mrs. Kwon’s time management as the result of her mother’s scheduling priorities, which are different from her own. Interestingly, Young-Mi’s
English competency is much better than Young-Jin’s and her best friend is white
American girl while Young-Jin’s is a Vietnamese boy. Young-Jin responds to his mother mostly in Korean but Young-Mi replies in English despite her full comprehension of Korean. When Young-Mi has to wait with Mrs. Kwon until Young-
Jin’s activities end, she usually expresses boredom and indifference about her brother’s activities by listening to hip-hop music with ear-phones. Among twenty
McLean gireogi families, only three families have one child. The other seventeen families have two or three children, and their time management prioritizes the first or elder child.
Educational Consultant, Hagwon
Hagwon is Korean for a private tutoring school. Some families spend as much as $2,000 per month sending their children to these institutions. As the Table 1
88 illustrates, one of the top priorities among McLean gireogi mothers is to schedule around hagwon study. Hagwon is a frequent topic of discussion among McLean gireogi mothers at their social gatherings and school-related events. There are many flourishing hagwon businesses in Fairfax County, particularly in McLean. The Korea
Times, a newspaper for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, features a 12-page
“Education” section every Tuesday, and about ten of those pages consist of various hagwon advertisements. Like many gireogi mothers, Mrs. Kwon collected information about hagwon from the “Education” section of ethnic newspapers before choosing where to send her children. Hagwon advertisements target Korean and Korean-American parents with specific claims about the effectiveness of their school. Examples of text used in these ads include: “These classes guarantee readiness for the March SAT;” “Our classes are based on the development through close relationships with famous private schools;” “The only way to assure the best possible results is attending the Hagwon L;” “Hagwon C is a professional institution preparing students for college entrance examinations and 85% of our graduates enter the top 50
U.S. universities every year;” or “We offer a special program to prepare students to enter Thomas Jefferson High School.” Despite the grand promises of these advertisements, McLean gireogi mothers are not naïve enough to take them literally.
For instance, Mrs. Kwon interviewed the director of Hagwon L before she decided where she would send her children.
Mrs. Choi lives in McLean with her two young children, Sohyun, sixteen years old, and Sojeong, thirteen years old. Their McLean home is a fifteen-year-old, frame, single-family house with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a wide living room, and a half-acre backyard. They live in a quiet residential community with few kids
89 playing on the streets. Her husband, Professor Choi currently lives with their eldest daughter, who attends a top-tier college in South Korea. Professor Choi acquired his doctoral degree in the U.S. fifteen years ago. Their eldest daughter, Soyoung, attended a U.S. public kindergarten and elementary school while her father completed his doctorate study. The Choi family stayed together in McLean house four years while
Dr. Choi conducted research as a visiting scholar at George Mason University. When
Professor Choi and Soyoung left for Korea after he completed his research, Mrs. Choi and the younger two children stayed in Virginia. The eldest son, Sohyun, is now in eleventh grade at McLean High School, and the youngest son, Sojeong, is in eighth grade at Cooper Middle School. The elder son has U.S. citizenship but, is still struggling in school. Sohyun spent most of his childhood and early teens living in
Korea and, has more Korean friends than American ones. The younger son, Sojeong, who has spent much of his life in the States has mostly American friends. Both
Sohyun and Sojeong attend Hagwon A, which is located in McLean and run by a former math teacher from Gangnam, South Korea. Mrs. Choi also interviewed the directors of several hagwons before she decided where to send her sons. Since Mrs.
Choi was an English teacher in a public middle school in South Korea, she has a keen knowledge of Korean private education systems. In an interview she said,
Most secondary school students in Seoul regularly attend two to three
hagwon after class. Korean parents and students are generally more trusting of
the private education sector than the public education system. Aren’t the
results of college entrance examinations telling? The students who study in
good hagwons receive better scores. Even when I was working at a public
school, I knew that hagwon English teachers had superior teaching abilities,
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information about the college entrance examination, and class management
skills. In a way, all I did was reviewing the hagwon lessons. As you may know,
most McLean hagwons offer ‘seonhang hakseup’ (preliminary study) for
students. If your child is in third grades, then the hagwon offers the fourth and
fifth year contents. By preparing kids this way, you make room for them to
focus on the college entrance examination later. All of my kids attended
several hagwons in Dachi-dong and my two sons are studying here in McLean
at hagwon A. (Mrs. Choi, 50, McLean)
Before migrating to the United States, Mrs. Choi had a career as a public middle school teacher for over ten years. Ironically, she does not trust the Korean public educational systems which led her to seek private educational opportunities and, eventually, to practice girogi life in the U.S.A. The director of hagwon A, Mr.
Lee, runs several small study groups depending on the academic abilities and preferences of the students enrolled at a given time. Each study group has a room mother who organizes carpools and parents meetings. The room mother of one of these study groups, Mrs. Choi has access to valuable information on preparation for the SAT, ensuring a high GPA, and even selecting a competitive college and academic major. In interview with Mrs. Choi and her eldest son, both emphasized the hagwon’s organized study plan and trustworthy academic information. Hagwons in McLean community both provide accelerated study for gireogi children and educational consultation for gireogi parents. For this reason, McLean gireogi families pay over
$2,000 per month for their hagwon tuition.
When I heard about Hagwon A in McLean, I had an overwhelming suspicion it is equally competitive as hagwons in Dachi-dong, Seoul. Many Korean private
91 educational institutions offer preliminary studies known as seonhang hakseup, which is basically an advanced curriculum learning and these types of training courses are deeply embedded in Korean society. Since it is such a widespread practice to attend a hagwon, many students feel bored at public schools because they have already learned the curriculum. Most hagwons in McLean also offer seonhang hakseup courses to appeal to Korean parents, particularly gireogi families. When the new president of
South Korea, Park, Geun-hye announced that her education reform plan included getting rid of seonhang hakseup, she encountered resistance from across the nation
(The Korea Times, Feb. 11, 2013). The plan was bound for failure even if it had been passed because seonhang hakseup is a response to the competitive college entrance examination, so the root of the problem begin with the ways academic institutions test and admit students. There have been several examples of new regimes attempting to reform education by adding new institutions, which has actually reinforced incentives for parents to invest in private education for their children.
Multiple Forms of Competitions
I hope my kids are able to get decent jobs in the future, either in the
U.S. or in Asia. I know that they may face some difficulties in adjusting to
Korean society since they have been educated here in the United States. I
expect them to be accepted to the top-tier colleges in South Korea because of
their English competencies and educational experiences. I hear that the top
colleges in Korea seek out foreign-educated students using different
assessment methods. If they are not accepted to Ivy League school in the
United States, I think that going to elite Korean schools will help them create
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social networks and maintain their social position. (Mrs. Kwon, 36, McLean)
We are planning to send Sohyun to KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute
of Science and Technology) instead of an American college. Sohyun is not
superb academically, and has mostly Korean friends. If he is accepted to MIT,
then we may think that is the best option. But I think that sending him to
KAIST is better than any college here in a way. Perhaps he could continue his
graduate study in the U.S., but creating a strong social network of people with
similar backgrounds is crucial during college in Korea. I want him to enjoy
our current status when he goes out into Korean society. (Mrs. Choi, 50,
McLean)
Notably, thirteen McLean gireogi mothers which are more than half of
McLean mothers, expect their children to enter Korean colleges rather than schools in the United States. The reason is that these gireogi parents want their children to maintain the upper class privileges they have established for them. Considering the fact that South Korea is a society focused on academic achievement and networks, known as hakbeol (academic cliques), “domestication” of foreign study can be interpreted as a strategic accumulation of educational capital for upper class Koreans
(Kang and Abelmann 2011). The special screening systems of top-tier colleges, which are open to foreign nationals and students who spend certain period of time in
English-speaking countries, reflect the ways Korean society is focused on educational opportunities only available to the upper class.
Both Mrs. Kwon and Mrs. Choi imagine their children’s future as open to numerous possibilities. While being educated at public schools in the United States,
93 they are also being disciplined at Korean private educational institutions. At the same time, McLean gireogi mothers vigilantly collect educational information about institutions of higher education in both the United States and South Korean. Their investment in private education is an important avenue to navigate college admissions and job opportunities.
While students are free to travel or take time off during their breaks from school, most gireogi families in McLean use vacation time for even more private educational endeavors. Before mothers and children visit South Korea during summer breaks, usually the father will register the students as a hagwon in the Dachi-dong in the district of Gangnam, Seoul. This part of the city is always full of students taking classes to strengthen their academic performances and get the newest information on the college entrance exams. During the time when a gireogi father is researching summer hagwon options, the parents have a great amount of contact than any other time. For instance, Mrs. Choi reported that she and her husband spent one hour on
Skype every night during the winter when Professor Choi was doing research on these private institutions. Professor Choi spent every weekend in December looking for good teachers and programs for Sohyun and Sojeong. They finally decided to enroll them at a hagwon in Dachi-dong that was started by graduates of Ivy League institutions and targets gireogi families. The school focuses on high school age students to prepare them for the SAT exam, particularly the essays. Mrs. Choi expressed hope that Sohyun will excel academically when they visit Seoul this summer. Similarly, Mrs. Kwon also plans to use their summer vacation to put her children in preliminary learning programs at Dachi-dong hagwons, and to visit their grandparents.
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Student Mother, Role Model Mother, Professional Mother
Both Mrs. Kwon and Mrs. Choi are studying English as a Second Language
(ESL). Mrs. Kwon attends a private academy from Monday to Thursday and Mrs.
Choi attends a community college program twice a week. Since Mrs. Kwon’s ESL classes take place from 9:30 am until 1:30 pm, her mornings are often hectic. Right after driving her kids to school, Mrs. Kwon drives directly to her own school. Mrs.
Choi does the same thing to get to her classes, which begin at 9 am. She explains,
I think English competency is crucial for gireogi mothers. I am not a
native-English speaker and I am not a Korean-American mother who has lived
here for a long time. Everything is new to me. I have to get a certain level of
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English competency both to adjust myself and to support my kids. I had an
incident that motivated me to learn when I first arrived here. I was swimming
at a sports center and a white woman swimming in the next lane said
something to me. I couldn’t understand what she said, so I probably made an
awkward facial expression. While I was thinking about how to respond, she
waved her head with a snobbish attitude and went away. That short moment
hurt my self-confidence and that accident shaped me in a very complex way.
Since that incident, I decided to brush up my English. Whenever I attend the
PTA meeting, I just sit listening what other mothers say. I know that taking
language classes makes my schedule crazy, but I like to show to my children
that I am studying like them. (Mrs. Kwon, 36, McLean)
I used to teach English in Korea but I have difficulty speaking English.
I mean, my conversational English competency is not good as my children,
and that is a shame. What I taught in Korea was English for taking
examinations, so I didn’t have to be fluent in spoken English. That’s why I am
learning conversational English at a community college. When I go back to
Korea, I’d like to use my conversational English skills at a school or hagwon.
Once I finish this program, I also want to do TESOL (Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Language) certificate program at a near college. (Mrs. Choi,
50, McLean)
All the gireogi mothers I interviewed are college graduates, so they have a high level of English competency. However, they do not see their colloquial English competency as sufficient for living in an English speaking country and supporting
96 their children there. Most of them have no difficulty understanding written English when they receive a school document. Yet, they feel uncomfortable communicating with the school staffs and teachers in English. English education in South Korea used to begin in middle school but now starts in the second year of Elementary school.
Since the pedagogy of English language education in South Korea has been focused on written style to prepare students for examinations, most educated Korean people have good reading comprehension ability. They are weaker, however, in oral communication.
Mrs. Kwon perceives English competency as essential to being an effective girogi mothers in the English speaking environment as a lone parent. Organizing daily activities, selecting a cram school, and communicating with school administrators and educators all require a certain level of English competency. As Mrs. Kwon’s statement illustrates, many mothers also believe that studying in the receiving society models the need to study hard for their children. Mrs. Kwon added that taking classes makes it easier to persuade her kids to focus on studying and that she has never watched television in front of them. McLean girogi mothers try to discipline themselves to be good role models for their children.
Effective communication with educational professionals like school teachers, counselors, hagwon teachers, and music lesson instructors is an especially important reason for acquiring conversational English skills. According to Mrs. Kwon, most
McLean gireogi mothers attend PTA meetings. Even if they do not express their opinions freely due to the language barrier, these mothers try to understand what is going on and help where they can.
Some McLean gireogi mothers continue to develop job-related skills while
97 supporting their children abroad. They are not satisfied with only developing colloquial English skills but are eager to acquire professional certificates or an academic degree. One of McLean woman I interviewed, Mrs. Hwang is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland while also taking care of her two sons as a gireogi mother. Another woman, Mrs. Jeon, conducted research project as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University while she also took care of her three children in
McLean. Through continuing to study in professional areas, McLean gireogi mothers demonstrate the importance of life-long learning to maintain elite class qualifications.
Exclusive Sharing of Educational Information under the Guise of Religious
Meetings
One Catholic Church parish in McLean has a monthly meeting that is exclusively attended by McLean gireogi mothers. A colleague of mine is a friend with the leader of this group, so I had the chance to attend this meeting on a Friday in the spring of 2012. This meeting was held in the leader’s house at 10AM. Although I do not have a strong interest in Catholicism, I brought a Catholic bible with me. As the members gathered, they had informal conversations about SATs, summer camps, and college entrance procedures in both the U.S. and South Korea. When the leader introduced me as a person who wanted to learn about Catholicism, the members were welcoming. I introduced myself as a Korean instructor at both George Mason
University and the Korean Cultural Center of the Korean Embassy to gain their trust and this strategy worked. Some of the members asked me how to secure a summer internship for their children at the Korean Embassy, for instance.
The leader announced the beginning of the meeting and everybody sang a
98 sacred song and prayed. They then shared the special intentions they were praying about and closed the meeting with another sacred song and prayer. Right after the official meeting, they stood up and started setting the table for lunch. Over an informal lunch of Korean bibimbap, they again began speaking about educational and parenting topics such as cram schools, SATs preparation, and academic summer camps to raise GPAs. Their final topic of conversation was the Easter Day Youth
Orchestra performance to be held at the church.
I attended the Youth Orchestra’s Easter performance at the Epiphany Catholic church in Washington, D.C. on a warm Saturday morning. All of the women from the meeting had children playing instruments at the performance and the mothers sat watching proudly. The performance was polished and the audience gave them a big round of applause. I gave bouquets of flowers to the daughter of the meeting leader and the two sons of Mrs. Lee who wanted to do internships at the Korean Cultural
Center. The mother of two elementary students, Mrs. Hong, asked me to help set the table in the church backyard. There were already many gireogi mothers busy preparing a barbeque party for the children, music teachers, and the conductor. The atmosphere of the picnic was like a festival. Church attendees and a Korean pastor praised the performance and support the mothers gave to make it happen. Gireogi families seemed to be acknowledged as important church members because they make up a large part of the youth orchestra, play regular performances, and create a festive event. McLean gireogi mothers shared information about private music lessons while they were working together on the Korean bulgogi barbeque. These mothers worked together to share information, put together a barbecue party after performances, and organizing rides to and from rehearsals. While sharing the same
99 ethnic food, they are also sharing values that prioritize private education and systematic organization of children’s life.
3-2. A Week of Centreville Mothers: Adjusted Belonging and Expanded Families
The Chang home is an old, two-bedroom apartment in Centreville located near a big shopping mall where many Korean ethnic businesses are clustered. There is an asphalt driveway through the center of the apartment complex where you will see lots of children, deliverymen, visitors, and residents. Even though there is a small playground next to the apartment office, children play on the driveway while passing cars honk their horns. The Chang’s apartment is located on the first floor’s six houses of one house number. The two lines of three houses see each other’s counterpart.
Grand plaza is the mall with a Korean grocery market, seven Korean restaurants, and a Korean spa. The Plaza attracts Korean immigrants as well as non-Koreans who are interested in ethnic culture. One of the restaurants, a Korean barbeque, is open until midnight and draws various customers from Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia.
In the middle of this shopping mall, there is a public spa, a jjimjilbang (hot steam sauna room), which is a place for public bathing, sauna, and leisure that is widespread in Korea. To the left of the sauna, there is a branch of a Korean bank whose main businesses is sending remittances on the Korean holidays. Any newly arrived Korean immigrant can access these ethnic businesses without using English at all.
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Mrs. Chang’s apartment has two bedrooms, a living room, one bathroom, and a small kitchen connected to the living room. Initially Mrs. Chang stayed in a bedroom by herself but started sharing with her young daughter, Jeong-in several months ago because her older daughter, Jeong-seo insisted on having her own room.
To accommodate, Mrs. Chang converted the living room into Jeong-in’s study room by moving her desk and bookshelf next to window.
Mrs. Chang’s two daughters, Jeong-in and Jeong-seo are attending fourth and the six grades at a nearby elementary school. The Chang family lived in Gangnam,
Seoul before moving to Centerville. Mr. Chang was an executive director of a small electronic company located in Seoul when the family started living gireogi life four years ago. Both Jeong-in and Jeong-seo adjusted well to the American school system.
Mr. Chang lost his job due to restructuring at his company at the winter of the same year as his young daughter, Jeong-in was selected to the gifted talented program.
Although the Chang family’s financial status no longer stable, the Chang couple
101 decided to continue their gireogi life. They sold the Gangnam apartment and Mr.
Chang moved in with his parents and found a lower position job at a similar company using his college networks. For Chang couple, the Gangnam apartment was intended to be used to finance their retirement; selling it means they do not have any financial resources for their retirement. Mrs. Chang got a part-time job at a Korean owned coin
Laundromat a year ago to help manage the Chang family’s continuing gireogi life style. She described her family’s decesions like this:
I am very concerned about my family’s future, particularly my
husband’s. We only saw each other one time when he visited here three years
ago. While he is able to eat and do laundry at his parents’ house, I know that
he feels uncomfortable there. He is also getting old and needs to prepare for
retirement. That’s why I started working here. I was a happy full-time
housewife, but I wanted to release his burden. If my daughters did not do well
at school, we might have already gone back to our Gangnam apartment. I
don’t know if this is fortunate or unfortunate, but my daughters are doing such
a good job at school. I can tell their future will be bright as long as we can
support them. I don’t think this kind of lifestyle is a sacrifice for our children’s
education. I also found that I am very good at working outside the home. I
know that Korean people feel shameful working as a cleaner but I feel all right.
I’d rather feel proud of supporting my kids with my own made money. The
only concern that I have now is my husband. His income was almost cut in
half. I know how humiliated he feels. (Mrs. Chang, 42, Centreville)
While the Chang’s family sold their main property to continue their gireogi lifestyle, the Park family had already sold their Seoul apartment when they moved to
102 the U.S. four years ago. Mr. Park is a camera editor at a private media production company in Seoul and has been living in a small studio since his family started transnational life. I met Mrs. Park at the playdate group three years ago and she and I became close, doing weekend activities and casually sharing educational information.
When the Park couple decided to live gireogi life, Mr. Park came to Centreville to help his wife and children settle by buying a small town house and an old minivan. Mr.
Park’s aunt has lived in Centreville running a laundry for more than fifteen years and she told them that Centreville is a comfortable place for a newly-migrated Korean family to live. The Park’s home is located in a residential community consisting over old fifty town houses and three two-story apartment buildings. They are also located near the Korean shopping mall and a big Korean church. This church was built four years ago and now draws more than three hundred Korean Christians every Sunday morning.
Mrs. Park (40, Centreville), is a busy mother taking care of three children alone in the U.S., and she does so with ease. She has been working as a Saturday school teacher at a Korean church for more than two years. She also started taking care of Korean early study abroad children as a homestay caregiver a year ago. She remodeled the basement of their home into two bedrooms and a study room for these visiting children. Last summer, she housed four elementary kids who wanted to attend academic summer camp in Fairfax County. She drove every day and reported to their parents via email every night. The kids are all her Korean friends’ children, so there was a certain level of trust between the sending parents and Mrs. Park. She plans to expand this part time job this summer. She also wants to develop a blog to advertise her homestay caregiving and post information about American educational resources
103 for Korean parents.
Mrs. Park’s oldest son, Jun is in third grade in the gifted program, and her four-and-half year daughter, Yuri is my daughter’s best friend. She also has a two-year old son who she carries piggyback most of the time. Below are the conversations between Mrs. Park and I about their conjugal relationship and gireogi life. When I asked her how she feels about raising three children without her husband’s help, she said:
Well, I think most of Korean women raise their children by themselves.
Fathers are always outside just earning family incomes. When did we have
fathers? They are just out there working and check in about how much their
kids have grown up or making sure they are doing well at school. I don’t know
about the young generation, but at least my generation, you know, we don’t
have fathering. Maybe that’s the reason why I don’t feel any emptiness or
loneliness while I am here without Jun’s dad.
When I asked abou the feeling when her husband visited the U.S., she answered:
Frankly speaking, I felt very uncomfortable. Taking care of kids is my
job, but taking care of him was very stressful. When he was about to return to
Korea, I felt so sorry. But, we adjusted back to our daily lives so quickly.
When I asked her whether she is concerned about her marriage life at all, she responded:
Well, if I were concerned about that, I wouldn’t have decided to live
this lifestyle. I am not sure how long I can manage this kind of lifestyle when
my husband feels so lonely in Seoul. Jun is only in third grade and fortunately,
my husband is pleased with Jun’s academic accomplishments. If it is possible,
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I’d like to stay at least up until when Jun enters college.
Whether Centreville gireogi families started split family life with enough financial resources or not, most struggle to manage this transnational life style. Of twenty Centreville gireogi mothers I interviewed, only five have visited Korea recently and thirteen have never visited since they migrated with their children. It is also rare for Centreville gireogi fathers to visit the U.S. due to their tight budgets.
Moreover, more than half of the Centreville interviewees (12) have sold or rented out their domestic real estate properties to maintain dual life styles. Centerville gireogi fathers either live with a relative or parents, or move into a tiny apartment to reduce living expenses. Centreville gireogi mothers tend to adjust to the local Korean immigrant community both due to limited financial resources and geographical location. While they are not able to enjoy transnational social connections, Centreville gireogi mothers still try to maximize their social networks to get beneficial educational information and help from local community.
Daily Lives in Centreville: Authoritative Mother and Hovering Interests
Both Mrs. Chang and Mrs. Park work part-time and their children attend at least one hagwon or other after-school activity. Mrs. Chang works every day from
6PM to 9PM and Mrs. Park works Saturday mornings. Additionally, they attend an
ESL classes to maintain their legal visa statuses. Mrs. Chang gets up at 5:30AM every morning to prepare breakfast and lunch boxes. When her two daughters go to school,
Mrs. Chang packs her own school bag for ESL class. She comes back home right after class to prepare the dinner while eating a late lunch. When the two daughters return home around 4:30PM, Mrs. Chang gives them light snacks and checks their
105 homework. Her church sister visits every evening to take care of the two daughters and give them dinner while she goes to work. She reminds her daughters to obey the woman who takes care of them, a widow in her sixties who she met at the Korean church. Instead of paying money for this help, Mrs. Chang gives the woman Korean dishes and gimchi. On the two nights when the young girls attend hagwon each week,
Mrs. Chang drops them off and the church sister picks them up. Mrs. Chang’s two daughters, Jeong-in and Jeong-seo present their homework to her when she comes back home around 9:30PM. They also attend Korean church every Sunday morning.
Jeong-in and Jeong-seo are cheerful and independent kids who love to study and play together.
Mrs. Park has a similar busy schedule. After dropping of the eldest child, Jun, at school, she takes Yuri to a local church preschool. She heads straight from there to drop off her youngest son, Jin at her friend Yunji’s house. Yunji is another girogi mother who has two young kids but does not attend classes. After Mrs. Park finishes class, she picks up Jin from Yunji’s and then Yuri at preschool. After feeding them lunch, she again drives with her two young children to Jun’s school to pick him up.
She sometimes also stops by my place on Friday evenings when Jun attends a neighboring Taekwondo hagwon. She also teaches Korean at a church school every
Saturday morning, where Jun and Yuri attend classes at the same time and Jin is looked after by the school babysitter.
Like McLean gireogi mothers, Centreville mothers also maintain intensive schedule with time consuming rides, hagwon and after-school activities. In contrast, none of the Centreville gireogi mothers hire nannies or maids. Rather than relying on a commercial service agency, they get support from friends in their neighborhood or
106 in the Korean church. Instead of paying for these services, Centreville gireogi mothers treat them as extended family members, share material and informative resources.
When Centreville gireogi mothers communicate with their children, they act as authoritative figures. Mrs. Chang explains that she feels the need to compensate for the children’s absent father, filling both roles. Working Centreville gireogi mothers do not have enough time to spend with their children, often leaving them in the care of close friends and neighbors. These alternative caregivers are entrusted with full parental power to supervise homework and play time. While these working
Centreville gireogi mothers spend considerable hours outside the home, their lives are always focused on the children. They frequently call or send text messages to their children to check in on them. While I was watching Jeong-in and Jeong-seo one evening in late spring 2012, Mrs. Chang called three times to confirm that they were eating dinner and doing homework. I volunteered to supervise Mrs. Chang’s daughters that night, so the church widow did not come. After a having a short phone conversation with Jeong-seo, Mrs. Chang spoke with me to say thank you for caring her kids and providing teacher-like supervision. I tried to assuage her concern by responding that Jeong-in and Jeong-seo had almost finished their homework.
Invisible Neighbors, Working and Studying Mothers to Maintain Visa Statuses
Around 8:30AM on a hot summer day in July 2012, I was waiting in the hallway of the Hope Church (pseudonym) for the first day of the summer camp. The camp was run by the church education department and was taught by sixteen Korean
American college students. Every day from 8:30AM to 3PM, the summer camp classes offered English, Math, Bible study, Gymnastics, and weekly field trips. I was
107 there with Mrs. Park, her three children, four visiting Korean students, and my daughter. The four visiting students are children of Mrs. Park’s friends in Korea who wanted their children to attend an academic camp in America during their summer vacation. We had so many children with us, it felt like we were a small private school.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, I looked around and, surprisingly, there were many other Korean women with more than three kids. Many of these groups did not look like parent and child relationships. Many of the children chatted with each other in
Korean. One preschooler girl waved to the woman escorting her and said “Bye, auntie! See you later,” in Korean as she entered the classroom. Mrs. Park’s daughter,
Yuri, and my daughter were escorted into their classroom by an instructor, Mrs. Park took her oldest son, along with the four visiting students to the elementary camp class.
I came with Mrs. Park because her friend who usually helps take care of her children, was out of town for a family trip. I babysat her youngest son, while she attended her ESL classes. Rather than taking him home right after the other children went to class, I decided to stay and chat with some women who I often see for play dates with my daughter and were bringing their eldest children to the camp. All of them had a second child in a stroller or baby carrier. One of them made a joke saying I made my second one since I carried Mrs. Park’s youngest son. Another one asked me about the four kids. When I explained to them that Mrs. Park was housing them as her part-time job, all of them were surprised. Although we all met at the Fairfax County
Early Literacy program two years ago, none of the six young mothers knew Mrs.
Park’s everyday schedule and efforts to make money. Mrs. Park did not have much time to share play dates with other mothers and they did not realize she had been living as a gireogi mother until she confessed at the party at the end of the summer
108 camp. While they were surprised, they immediately showed their support by offering baby-sit. Mrs. Park did not hesitate to accept their friendly offers.
My daughter began attending Saturday Korean school at C church in the fall of 2012. Mrs. Park introduced me to the teacher and her social network in the school seemed trustworthy and strong. She counts on a number of people in church, teachers in the school, play date mothers, and other gireogi mothers when she needs someone to babysit. She does not appear to be a lone mother who has to take care of her three children by herself because of this support. She is expressive her friendship and sisterhood when she interacts with other women and is always willing to share her knowledge and information.
Mrs. Chang’s workplace, a Korean-owned coin laundry mat is located at the border of Centreville and Manassas city. Before the laundry mat closes at 9:30 PM every night, Mrs. Chang cleans up the floors, bathroom, over thirty machines and takes all the trash cans outside. The number of customers doubles on weekend days, so Mrs. Chang has to work very quickly. While she wears comfortable pants to go to work every night, she always makes sure to dresses up in a nice suit when she goes to church on Sunday morning. She volunteers as a lunch server with her church sister after the second morning worship.
Both Mrs. Park and Mrs. Chang are sociable at their work places and with other Korean immigrant community members. Unless they disclose their gireogi identities, nobody can tell that these women are living alone and raising their children.
Centreville gireogi mothers are largely invisible among other Korean immigrant women since they are well assimilated into the community. Centreville gireogi mothers use suda when they socialize at various social fields as a mean of
109 familiarizing people and place within a short time. Suda is the everyday type of chatting that typically takes place between middle age women in Korea, and can include a range of topics. Centreville gireogi mothers use suda as a strategic method of socializing to release relational tensions and create empathetic conversation among women.
Of twenty Centreville gireogi mothers, twelve have to attend a local ESL academy to maintain their visa status. This mandatory schooling makes their everyday time management hectic and tight. When I asked about the women at the Centreville gireogi mothers’ lunch meeting about taking the ESL courses, they did not emphasize the study of English itself. Rather, they spoke about their schooling as a way of maintaining their legal visa statuses. One mother explained,
Of course, learning English is good and we need to learn English. But
we don’t have enough time to focus on studying itself. Some of us also have to
work in the evening, and taking care of children is our main job. Our brain is
aging but our children are learning real English at school. (Mrs. Chung, 36,
Centreville)
Some of these women have been attending this ESL school more than five years to maintain their visa statuses. This ESL school in Centreville has various vocational programs and issues an F-1 student visa to anyone who enrolls as a full time international student. Many Centreville gireogi mothers come to the U.S.A. as non- immigrant visa holders and then later change their statuses to a legal visa such as the
F-1 student visa. Thus, attending schools and studying English is instrumental to make sure their children are able to attend school in the United States. In contrast to mothers in McLean who take English courses primarily to work on English
110 competency, Centreville mothers take these courses as a way to maintain their legal status.
Informative Networks and Intensified Sisterhood
Mobile transnational families form networks using the internet, smart phone, and on-site Korean churches. While many of these networks are mobile and transnational, girogi parents tend to create information sharing communities among people in their own school districts. The primary online activities include sharing information about good school districts, schools, extracurricular activities, cram schools, and information about the places where these educational institutions are situated.
One online community, “Mencius Mothers’ Education,” is a Facebook group formed by Centreville, Fairfax, and Manassas gireogi mothers to share information in secret. A “Mencius Mother”46 is held up as an exemplary female figure for relocating to create a good environment to raise her children. This online community is a place where women share information about extracurricular activities, cram schools, tutors, school districts and news, school volunteering opportunities, teacher biographies, gifted and talented programs, and their own work opportunities. There are sub-groups for the different school districts. This information helps the women in their journey to
46 Mencius mother’s story of three times of moving is a well-known Chinese ancient episode regarding parental choice of educational place. As Mencius father died when he was very young, Mencius mother took care of Mencius by herself. The very first place where they lived was near a tomb, so the young Mencius used to play mimicking funeral ceremony. The second place they moved was near a market, so he played pretending selling and buying. When Mencius mother watched these, she decided to move to a more educational place. The final place she chose was a village near a school and Mencius finally started reading and writing. This historical episode illustrates how important mothers’ role to offer an educational environment to succeed in educating children academically.
111 live up to the ideal mother role. Many of these mothers have very busy schedules but still dedicate time to providing thorough information. The reason the group is kept a secret is because some have to work illegally, violating their visas.47 Many members are attending C academy to maintain their visa status. The C academy issues F-1 visa to the international full-time students who enroll any program. Many Centreville gireogi mothers are enrolling ESL (English as a Second Language) program to develop their English competencies and to maintain legal visa statuses in the U.S.A.
They have to attend this ESL class every morning from 9AM to 1PM and hurried to go back home to prepare to either pick up their kids or to ride them to the extracurricular activity places. Even though some of these members are working illegally violating visa restrictions, this online community is full of their pride as an ideal mother like ‘Mencius Mother.’ As indicated in the title of this community, they idealized their mothering role by identifying their group with the Mencius mother and by sharing educational information among group members. Surprisingly, the online contents look very thorough and informative comparing the members’ hectic everyday lives. Centreville gireogi mothers have less leisure time than McLean mothers due to their own school and work schedules, they work to maximize their time and effort through social networks formed through exclusive sisterhood.
Centreville mothers tend to use online communities for information sharing to save time while McLean mothers use in-person religious meetings to maintain their social networks. Gireogi families in both locations usually attend on-site Korean churches to gather information and create community in new places. Attending church
47 The leader of this Facebook group did not allow to publish their online community contents to protect members’ privacy and legal statuses but just permitted to rephrase their online activities.
112 for instrumental reasons is an accepted practice that does not usually bring about any community level hostility because it is a settlement method for many newcoming
Korean migrants.
Making and Imagining Home among Gireogi Families
This house is ours but this county is not mine. For instance, I do not
have any interest in the presidential election. The culture is so different that I
can’t think of this country as my country. However, I can feel connected to the
school my kids are attending even if sometimes compare it to their former
school in Korea. I think of my home as both here and in Seoul. (Mrs. Kwon,
36, McLean)
I feel at home here in Centreville. I raise my kids here and I work here.
But there have always been concerns about the future. I have neither a green
card nor health insurance, so it would be dangerous if something happened to
me. But as long as I can support my kids with help from my friends, then I
believe my children’s future will be bright. (Mrs. Park, 40, Centreville)
Both Mrs. Kwon and Mrs. Park have lived as gireogi mothers in Fairfax
County for less than five years. The paths these two women took from Seoul, Korea to Fairfax County, Virginia were quite different. The stories of Mrs. Kwon and Mrs.
Park diverge from the moment they made the decision to live gireogi lives. Mrs.
Kwon had already lived in McLean when her husband studied as a graduate student.
When she lived there, she was able to acquire information about the place and schools
113 that made easier once she decided to migrate. Mrs. Kwon sent her young kids to
English hagwon when her kids were three years old to prepare them for later
American life when they still lived in Korea. For this reason, her children did not have to take ESL (English as a Second Language) classes when they first enrolled a
McLean public elementary school. In contrast, Mrs. Park had never lived in
Centreville and although she lived in Gangnam, she could not prepare her kids by sending English hagwon due to the lack of financial resources and information. Her children had to take ESL classes for over a year at a Centreville public elementary school.
Even though Mrs. Kwon was able to prepare for gireogi life long before her move, creating a sense of home and sense of belonging has not been a smooth journey for her. While she feels like her mansion in McLean is her house, she does not feel like she belongs to a broader community. Her sense of belonging is limited to her house and the school her children attend. She often compares her current life in the
United States to her former life in Korea. For instance, she stated that “If I were in
Korea now, I could handle things much more easily than here.” Whenever Mrs. Kwon mentioned any inconvenience that she encounters in the middle of adjustment, she keeps comparing her lone parenting life style with the former luxurious one. In contrast, Mrs. Park expresses that she feels at home in her community. While she feels concerned about the insecurity of her living conditions, she has had little difficulty adjusting to the United States in general.
There is a sharp class difference between the families who live in McLean and those in Centreville. Out of twenty McLean gireogi families, only four households sold their Korean home. Most McLean gireogi families still have considerable
114 amounts of property invested in Korea including houses, stocks, lands, and bank accounts. Most Centreville gireogi families no longer have property in Korea other than what is minimally required to house for gireogi fathers.
In the early phases of adjustment, Centreville gireogi families tend to feel much more disoriented than those who move to McLean. Since many Centreville gireogi families were less prepared on several levels, both mothers and kids have tough processes of settlement.
I was totally clueless when I arrived in Centreville. All I heard about
this area was that it is a good school district. I had no idea how to enroll my
kids to the school. I didn’t even know how to buy my cell phone. After a long
period of frustration, I became aware that attending Korean church is a good
way to help with adjustment. Ever since I met other gireogi mothers at C
academy, my quality of life has changed. Now, I feel I am not the only mother
who takes care of her kids by herself. (Mrs. Chang, 42, Centreville)
As time went on, Mrs. Chang was able to create sense of belonging through home making, place making, and finding meaningful groups. This helped her rationalize the long journey of rebuilding her sense of belonging and sense of place through accumulating experience, getting positive feedback from others, and justifying her choices. I found that most Centreville gireogi mothers experienced a similar sense of disorientation at first, followed by experiences that helped them feel like they are part of a community. Like other Korean immigrants, many Centreville gireogi mothers experience downward class mobility in the middle of adjustment and settlement. Yet, they tend to selectively assimilate into the Korean immigrant community, making a new home in the U.S. Centreville gireogi mothers’ sense of
115 belonging is influenced by this selective adjustment to the Korean community. This adjusted belonging leads them to make place and home without an alternative imagined home.
McLean gireogi mothers usually come from upper class background and maintain their social status when they migrate as a privileged minority. Ironically, these women express more ambivalent feelings about living in the U.S. even though they are familiar with America and adjusted quickly to their new places.
I try to adopt the educational beliefs and strategies of the white
mothers at the school even though I always feel uncomfortable among them
because of the language barrier. But I feel at home among other gireogi
mothers and other Korean wives of correspondents here in McLean. I also feel
I have to catch up the Gangnam mothers whenever I visit Korea or talk with
them through Skype. (Mrs. Kwon, 36, McLean)
Mrs. Kwon has a bifocal sense of belonging. She perceives white Americans as her social peer in the United States even if she is not always comfortable around them. At the same time, she compares her social status to the upper class in Korea.
Mrs. Kwon visits Seoul with her kids during summer vacations and meets her former social groups while there. This dual sense of belongings stems from her efforts to maintain her social status and class background. Continued comparison with domestic
Korean counterparts influences the way McLean gireogi mothers create a sense of belonging. They still feel they belong in Korea from afar and in the U.S. within the school community and their exclusive social groups.
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CHAPTER 4: FEEDBACK OF LOCAL COMMUNITY AND RENEGOTIATING PARENTING
Mrs. Koo (50, Centreville) was an instructor at a dance academy in Korea for over five years. When she married Mr. Koo, an executive at a small company, she thought she would be able to continue her work. She continued teaching dance for about a year, but her husband dissuaded her from working as soon as she gave a birth her son, Sang-jun. Mrs. Koo was frustrated by this change at first but felt good about the decision once Sang-jun began to show talent in math and science. Mrs. Koo’s father-in-law took great interest in Sang-jung’s academic potential. As, a retired professor, the father-in-law had been disappointed that his son was not gifted in academics as he had expected. When Sang-jun won an award at the national math competition, Professor Koo threw a celebration party. At the party, Mrs. Koo’s mother-in-law gave her money and told her that it was her responsibility to be a supportive mother. “You are responsible for raising Sang-jun as a brilliant scholar, so he will become a scientist or a professor like your father-in-law. Don’t worry about anything else. Our family has had lots of scientists and professors, you know. Even if we failed with your husband, there is still hope for Sang-jun. You must focus on educating Sang-jun to continue our family’s legacy.” Since then, Mrs. Koo has supported Sang-jun’s education as an ardent full-time mother. She was proud to be the mother of such a brilliant son until Sang-jun entered a middle school and tested below grade level, lower than he had tested in elementary school, on his entrance exam.
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Mrs. Koo hurriedly enrolled Sang-jun at a local hagwon, but he did not catch up or accelerate even with this extra tutoring. Sang-jun gradually went from a sociable young man to a speechless boy. Mrs. Koo’s mother-in-law nagged her every day about supporting Sang-jun and when he began receiving below average grades, Professor
Koo called the younger Koo couple to his house. He told them: “I will not give up hope for Sang-jun. Perhaps his learning style isn’t compatible with the Korean education system. Why don’t you do a gireogi arrangement for a few years to see if
Sang-jun regains his interest in academics?”
This was impetus for Mrs. Koo to move to Fairfax County with her son three years ago. Professor Koo suggested Fairfax and paid rent on an apartment for her and
Sang-jun until recently. Mrs. Koo hoped that the move would release her from some of the pressure she felt from her in-laws, but both of them contacted her weekly to hear about Sang-jun’s progress. While both his parents and grandparents expected and hoped that he would regain interests in math and science in the American school system, Sang-jun has remained at or below grade level. Mrs. Koo has come to think of her son as just a normal kid.
Over time, when it became clear that Sang-jun was not accelerating academically, Professor Koo’s financial support became irregular. As a result, Mrs.
Koo decided to resume her career and found a part-time job as a dance instructor at a
Korean church. She now teaches traditional Korean dance and ballet to Korean-
American children on the weekend and line dance to Korean-American adults every
Wednesday. These teaching opportunities have brought about a new lifestyle for both her and her son. Sang-jun began accompanying Mrs. Koo to help translate her instructions into English and, sometimes assisted in demonstrating poses and certain
118 body positions. During these sessions, Mrs. Koo unexpectedly realized that her son has a great talent for dance. She has hesitated to help him develop this talent, however, out of fear of her in-law’s expectations. After much encouragement from the church pastor and her dance students to teach Sang-jun professional dancing, she finally began giving her son ballet instructions after her regular lessons. Her speechless teenager son has blossomed into an expressive artist who is now dancing better than her. While Mrs. Koo is not yet prepared to tell her in-laws about Sang-jun’s decision to pursue dance in college, teaching him this art form has provided a way for her to reconnect with him and reinvigorated her excitement for his educational endeavors and talents.
As I listened to Mrs. Koo tell her story at her apartment, it was clear that she is comfortable with her current situation and her son’s new career path. Although she will eventually have to face the disappointment of her in-law’s and her husband’s frustration, she is inspired by the satisfaction and pride she sees in her son now and looks forward to where his passion will take him in the future. Mrs. Koo is also eager to teach her classes and does not want to return to Korea now that she resumed her career in the United States. Teaching dance has allowed Mrs. Koo to regain her sense of self and develop sense of belonging. The positive responses she has received about her son’s new talent have shifted her perspective on education from one focused on academic proficiency to a more holistic view.
Not all the gireogi mothers experience this kind of self-transformation but, I encountered a handful of similar stories in my field research. Some of the women who had a transformative experience reconstructed their goals and parenting style while others found a new sense of commitment to their original emphasis on education. I
119 found that one of the important factors in re-assembling self-perceptions and constructing senses of belonging among gireogi mothers was the ways they received and interpreted feedback from different communities. Korean gireogi mothers need to adjust to new places in a relatively short time, so they are keenly aware of the responses they receive from the people around them.
This chapter examines how gireogi mothers perceive feedback from surrounding communities and how this shapes their sense of belonging and redefines their parenting choices. Just as a sense of identity is constructed by differentiating one’s self from others, belonging is constructed by creating an “us” among others.
When gireogi mothers perceive the feedback they receive in a new community in a positive way, they are able to build a sense of belonging more smoothly. However, the transnational nature of their lifestyles means that the feedback systems from which gireogi mothers are drawing are not monolithic. They receive messages from local
U.S. media, Korean media, Korean immigrant communities, Korean communities, the local American community, local schools, and Korean schools. Gireogi mothers develop a diverse range of senses of belonging depending on how they perceive and respond to feedback from many different sources. Their differentiated perceptions can trigger changes in the parenting ideologies of gireogi mothers. Through collecting and analyzing narratives of gireogi mothers, I document the ways perceptions and interpretations of various types of feedback transform their parenting styles and educational ideologies.
Feedback and Reconstructing a Sense of Belonging in a New Environment
When people lived in one place their entire lives, they have a strong sense of
120 belonging that is interwoven with their sense of community. In the current “age of migration” (Castles and Miller 2003) when international migration is pertinent and pervasive, construction of a sense of belonging is more complicated. When people migrate, their original senses of home are typically disoriented and they have to reconstruct new senses of belonging by making new homes and new place identities.
The feedback they receive from their surrounding environment plays a decisive role in adjusting to a new environment. I have found that people are alert to the ways receiving communities respond to their presence, yet there is little research analyzing the relations between feedback and social integration. Community studies scholar,
Geoff Mulgan theorizes feedback systems to explain social belonging and asserts that
“people are keenly attuned to reading feedback from social environments on whether they belong” (2009). I argue that transnational migrants are more sensitive to feedback than people who have lived in a community for a long time because these responses are in integral part of the ways people reconstruct senses of belonging.
People who have lived most of their lives in a community are usually aware of environmental changes that come with an influx of immigrants and new developments.
However, anxiety around community feedback experiences by newcomers can be extremely high due stress related to adjustment as they eagerly try to survive in the new environment.
Mulgan suggests that there are several feedback systems that are essential to building a sense of belonging: family and friends, ties by association, the economy, power and politics, culture, safety, physical environment, everyday public services, homes, and the law and its enforcement (2009). I concur with this list and add media representations as an instrumental source of feedback because media depictions of
121 certain groups can reflect and influence perceptions of that group in large society. The analyses of perception and interpretation of gireogi mothers in this chapter are focused on the specific feedback systems that influence gireogi mothers’ senses of belonging, senses of home, and parenting styles.
Images of Gireogi Families: Feedback from Media Sources in the U.S. and Korea
Among various forms of feedback received by Korean migrants in the States, media representations are among the most influential images of gireogi families.
Typically, U.S. media outlets depict gireogi families as “fractured” because they have chosen an abnormal family arrangement in the quest to educate their children in an
English-speaking country.48 Most gireogi mothers are well aware of these media depictions. Both Washington Post and New York Times had described gireogi families as abnormal family arrangement with an introduction of East Asian parents’ obsession with education.
Yes, we struggle to maintain this life style. But the media descriptions
do not capture everything we experience here. They only show our
arrangements as “children without father, wife without a husband.” How many
families really live together in the U.S.? I bet more than half of them live
separately due to the high rate of divorce or familial conflicts. Even though we
live separately, I think we care about each other more than many families who
48A Washington Post’s article about Korean gireogi families introduces Korean society’s emphasis on English education. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59355- 2005Jan8?language) The New York Times’ article about Korean gireogi families in New Zealand also describes them as abnormal family pattern. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/world/asia/08geese.html?_r=1&pagewanted)
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live together. My husband does not live miserably the way the media describes.
(Mrs. Yi, 39, Centreville)
Mrs. Yi did not tell her friends and community that she is a gireogi mother until recently due to the stigmatized images of gireogi families depicted in the media.
As she began to adjust to her new community, she came to realize that her family life is not worse than other U.S. and Korean-American family lives. She developed a selective perception of the negative descriptions of gireogi families she saw in the media.
Gireogi mothers frequently watch Korean TV dramas and films despite of their typically busy schedules. Their reasons for making time for these TV shows and movies are many: some watch them while their kids are at school or hagwons to mitigate their loneliness, while others want to keep up with contemporary Korean styles in fashion, food, and language. All of these women are aware that Korean TV dramas and films often include depictions of gireogi families.
I recently watched the show,“The Queen of Reversal of a Situation”
and one of the main characters is a gireogi father. He is characterized as a
sympathetic, hard-working man who sacrificed everything for his family. The
mother and children only appear at the end of the story, when they come to see
the father before he dies of cancer. I don’t understand why Korean TV dramas
only describe gireogi fathers and their sacrifice. According to the Korean TV
dramas and films, all gireogi fathers are pathetic scapegoats and we are selfish
women who want to escape. These depictions are one of the reasons why
Korean people have negative perceptions of gireogi mothers. (Mrs. Suh, 43,
Centreville)
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Mrs. Suh is a mother of two teenage sons and watches Korean TV online every evening while her sons are at their hagwons. The TV drama “The Queen of
Reversal of a Situation” was a big hit in Korea among middle-aged women. The main character overcomes workplace conflicts and antagonism with the help of a department chair, the gireogi father character. The gireogi father is portrayed as selflessly devoting himself to the company for the sake of his family. He even hides the fact he has cancer to extend his work period so that he can continue sending money to his family in the United States. Mrs. Suh believes that sympathetic televisual representations of gireogi fathers simultaneously create negative images of gireogi mothers. According to representations in Korean television dramas, gireogi mothers and children take advantage of the sacrifices of gireogi fathers to enjoy a selfish overseas life. Many gireogi mothers like Mrs. Suh feel that these representations of gireogi famil dynamics are skewed. From their perspective, gireogi mothers take on just as much responsibility as gireogi fathers. Some feel they have an ever greater responsibility than their husbands because they take on part-time work to contribute to the family finances in addition to raising the children alone. Mrs. Suh believes that, contrary to the image of the selfish wife living a lavish life abroad, few gireogi mothers have the time or space to really enjoy gireogi life.
In addition to television shows, the archetype of the lonely gireogi fathers who has to sacrifice for his family is used in Korean TV commercials. Mrs. Suh showed me a TV advertisement for one of the biggest insurance companies in Korea, which used a gireogi father protagonist to convey that company can connect transnational
124 families who long for one another.49 In this thirty-second commercial, the gireogi father receives a phone call from his kids in New York City to wish him a happy birthday. The father answers the phone while he was cooking a cheap dinner of instant noodles. When his daughter asks, “Did you get to eat yummy food?” he answers “I ate lots of delicious food. Anyway, please speak to me in English.” After listening to his kid speak proper English, the commercial ends with him wearing a big, proud smile. The message this commercial conveys is that gireogi fathers endure loneliness and a poor quality of life because they will do anything to make sure their children have the opportunity to go to school in the United States. As Mrs. Suh pointed, gireogi mothers are absent in this commercial other than in the postcard sent from across the ocean and at the end when the family is shown all together. Many gireogi mothers feel that the media depictions of gireogi families unfairly represented fathers as sacrificing and sympathetic.
Who are We? Straddling National Boundaries
Mrs. Park (45, Centreville) takes care of her two sons, Yong-hyun and Yong-su, and two homestay children. One of the homestay kids is living in her house temporarily while studying English at a private academy in Washington, D.C. The other homestay kid, Hyun, is the son of her husband’s best friend and is attending a private school. Mrs. Park drives all four children to school every morning and afternoon. Mrs. Park’s two sons and Hyun volunteer as teachers’ aids at her Korean church’s Saturday Korean school, for which they will receive a volunteering activity
49 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF4EH5m3ECo
125 certificate. Mrs. Park takes pride in the fact that her sons and Hyun are perfect bilingual speakers volunteering their skills and hopes that this will eventually help them develop their careers.
One Sunday afternoon during the summer of 2012, Mrs. Park had lunch with her church folks at a Korean restaurant in the Centreville Korean shopping center. As they watched people outside through the window, one of the people complained that too many Korean teenagers were hanging out at the shopping mall without parents.
The person said, “Centreville is becoming like the streets of Seoul with all these teenagers wandering. I don’t like this change at all. Newcomers are bringing bad
Korean things with them. I am afraid that our American children may be influenced by these Korean kids who have come more recently.” This comment made Mrs. Park feel intimidated and she wondered whether the person intended to criticize gireogi families specifically. Though her church folks send their children to Saturday Korean school, they view their own children as “Americans” and different from newly arrived
“Korean kids.” Mrs. Park responded to the comment by saying, “Not all bad things are from the newcomers. Some of them bring good Korean things, too.” Other church folk replied to her comment, “That’s true, but our kids do not usually hang out without permission. Look at those girls. They are all wearing short pants and thick makeup. When Korean kids get together, those are the first things they learn to do. We may have to move out of Centreville soon.”
Mrs. Park dropped the conversation after that out of fear that if she revealed her gireogi identity, it would negatively affect their image of her. In this conversation,
Mrs. Park learnded that many Korean immigrants who have lived in the United States for longer periods of time hold contradictory attitudes toward Koreanness. When
126 these people send their second generation children to Korean church and Korean language schools, they want their kids to learn traditional values such as filial piety, respect for adults, and diligence. But when their children take interests in contemporary Korean cultural trends such as K-pop, fashion, slang, they try to curb their exposure to this cultural flow. Mrs. Park was confused by her church folks’ selective recognition of Korean values. They criticize the children of new immigrants as the bearers of bad trends while also appreciating her sons’ volunteer efforts at the
Korean language school.
As a gireogi mother, Mrs. Park does not intend to raise “American kids.”
While she plans to return to Korea, even if her children eventually get jobs in the U.S. or other foreign countries, she wants them to identify as Korean-Americans who live as global citizens. After this encounter with her friends from church, Mrs. Park became sensitive about talking about Korean issues or even consuming Korean products in front of Korean immigrants who have been the States for a long time.
When Mrs. Park told her sons and homestay kids not to hang out with other Korean kids in these public spaces, they asked, “Why not?” Mrs. Park’s answer was “Well, sometimes we can act Korean and sometimes we cannot here in the U.S. You are not the same as Korean-Korean kids who study in Korea, but you are not the same as
Korean-American kids who were born and grew up here, either.” Mrs. Park’s son,
Yong-su bluntly asked, “Then, who are we?” Mrs. Park struggled to answer the question but said, “Well, I do not know exactly where we belong. Maybe we are just gireogi family.” She then quickly added that they can live as global citizens maneuvering transnational life styles but her kids looked dissatisfied with this answer.
Now neither Mrs. Park nor her kids feel comfortable embracing their Korean
127 identity in front of Korean-Americans. While gireogi families hope their kids will grow up to enjoy cosmopolitan life styles, their children face anti-Korean sentiment from some Korean immigrants abroad. This dynamic makes it difficult for gireogi families to feel comfortable when they migrate to a new place where they meet incongruent national boundaries. The negative feedback that is sometimes espoused by Korean immigrant communities toward new Korean migrants complicates the ability of gireogi families to develop a sense of place and national belonging.
Playing with Images, Struggling against Misrecognition
Alongside typified imaged of gireogi families in the Korean and U.S. media, the Korean-American community has prejudice toward transnational families. Mrs.
Shin (53, Centreville) is a gireogi mother who works at a Korean bakery that is the subject of a rumor circulating in the Korean-American community. It is rumored that gireogi mothers who are cheating on their husbands go to this particular bakery. As a server, Mrs. Shin can tell whether a customer came to the U.S. a long time ago or more recently by their choice of language. For instance, when they order an iced coffee, a customer who left Korea long ago will say, “Give to me Neng (cold) coffee, please.” A customer came to the U.S. very recently uses the phrase, “Ice coffee, please.” While she has noticed many middle age women who are new to the United
States coming to the bakery recently, some of whom could be gireogi mothers, she has seen no indication that these women are cheating on their spouses with men in the bakery. After hearing this rumor, Mrs. Shin feels that she cannot freely socialize in the
Korean-American community except at the Korean church because she feels people have a suspicious eye on her.
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Mrs. Lee (52, Centreville) works at a nail shop in Centreville and her husband is a pharmacist in Korea. She worked at a Laundromat before this but has to quit due to the heavy work load. When she decided to change jobs, people in the Korean-
American community asked her a private question: “What does your husband do?”
When she answers that he is in Korea working as a pharmacist, the typical response is
“You are gireogi, aren’t you? Why don’t you just spend your husband’s money? Why do you want to work?” Despite the fact that her husband is a professional, their family budget is tight because of the many expenses that come with maintaining a transnational life. Most of Mrs. Lee’s gireogi friends living in Centerville are also working part-time workers to contribute to the family budget but the Korean-
American community generally sees them as affluent families who just spend Korean money in the U.S.
Mrs. Sohn (40, McLean) is fully aware of the negative image of gireogi mothers in Korean-American community and sought to challenge that stereotype when she began volunteering at her son’s Korean Saturday school. Since the class is not divided between heritage learners and non-heritage learners, gireogi kids like her son who are in the course because their parents want to make sure they retain their
Korean knowledge excel. The teacher of the course explained to Mrs. Sohn when she first enrolled her son that most Korean-American families are dual income with mothers who do not have time to volunteer due to their work schedules. At the teacher’s suggestion, Mrs. Sohn started volunteering as a room mother of her son’s
Korean class. Her eleven-year-old son has won several class contests because of his excellent Korean proficiency. While there is sometimes resentment and jealousy among mothers when gireogi children perform at the top of Korean language classes,
129 there were no complaints about her son’s achievements because Mrs. Sohn actively supports the Korean class and school.
Mrs. Shin, Mrs. Lee, and Mrs. Sohn’s narratives illustrate the ways negative images of gireogi mothers in the Korean-American community affect the lives of individuals and their ability to form a sense of place and belonging. The stereotype that gireogi mothers are unfaithful to their partners, selfish, affluent, overly assertive, and only concerned with the education of their children is an image that circulates both in the media and in communities. While gireogi mothers struggle against most of these images, but often embrace the perception that they are only concerned with education. When they receive negative feedback from their receiving community, gireogi mothers often refrain from revealing their transnational lifestyle. However, when they do disclose their gireogi identity, they often play with the image of the aggressive mother concerned with education to explain their involvement with extracurricular activities and schools.
Imagined and Real Families
The gireogi phenomenon is transforming traditional concepts of family and family dynamics among Koreans around the world. Temporary separation of family members in pursuit of a better education for children has become an acceptable living condition for many South Koreas. Gireogi families are one of the representative family patterns that can reveal this kind of family transformation. The physical absence of family members creates emotional and material needs that require new routines and forms of communication in order to maintain familial bonds. Mothers and children living in foreign countries adapt to the absence of fathers when the
130 mothers finds ways to deal with difficult situations without her husband’s immediate support. For husbands and fathers, the absence of their family causes emotional stress.
If family members are able to visit one another during vacations and holidays, these kinds of stresses are temporarily released and they can reconfirm their familial belonging. When families are unable to reunite with one another on a frequent basis, their sense of familial belonging can be transformed. I found that McLean gireogi families often make trips to Korea during school vacations and fathers visit their U.S. home more than once a year. In contrast, many mothers and children of Centreville live for over two years without seeing the father due financial constraints. In contrast to my assumption that Centreville families communicate online more often than
McLean families to make up for their infrequent visits, I found that McLean gireogi families tend to use online communication methods more frequently. When asked the question, “Does your family often use online communication methods such as Skype or MSN messenger?” 65% of the McLean interviewees (13 out of 20) responded that they did while only 30% of Centreville interviewees (6 out of 20) said that they did.
Since many Centreville gireogi mothers work part-time jobs, they have less spare time for communication. Additionally, these mothers expressed that they feel their family bonds loosen due to rare physical contact. While it manifests in different ways for different people, all families are transformed by living gireogi lives. The feedback family members receive from one another is a large factor in the ways family dynamics and perceptions change.
Mrs. Ju came to Centreville with her two daughters nine years ago. Her oldest daughter, Shinae, is in college and the younger one, Shin-hee, is in eleventh grade.
Both Shinae and Shin-hee have American boyfriends and only speak Korean when
131 speaking with their mother. Mr. Ju is a technician at a computer company in Seoul and has visited them in Centreville three times. In an interview with her, Mrs. Ju said that she can’t imagine how her husband is living in a tiny studio apartment in Seoul. Over the years, the amount of money Mr. Ju sends to the family has decreased, so Shinae began working part-time job in order to pay her tuition. Mrs. Ju has also recently took up part-time work at a Korean restaurant as a waitress to pay Shin-hee’s hagwon tuition. While Shinae does not complain, Mrs. Ju feels like she has lost the support of her husband and is not sure how much longer she can handle living with such strained finances.
I understand he needs to take care of himself as well but when we
decided to pursue this life style for our daughters, he promised to support us
financially. My mother-in-law said he was promoted two years ago but the
money he sends us has been cut in half since then. How am I supposed to
interpret this change? I suspect something is happening, and I have heard
things from my sister in Seoul. I never imagined this kind of happening
because we had such a tight relationship. But, things have changed. Out of
Sight, out of mind. (Mrs. Ju, 50, Centreville)
Although Mr. Ju is a computer technician, he does not use Skype to communicate with his wife and daughters but either calls or sends text messages instead. When Mrs. Ju realized that her gireogi friends use Skype to communicate, she suggested to her husband that they try it as well. Although Mr. Ju created a Skype username, he was usually offline whenever Mrs. Ju wanted to speak with him. When
Mrs. Ju complained that he was never online when she wanted to speak, she suggested that they schedule a regular Skype date on weekends. He responded that this is not
132 possible because he participated in a night climbing club on weekend night. Mrs. and
Mr. Ju met on the mountain when they were members of different climbing club members so she knows that this is something that has been important to him. However, when Mr. Ju visited two years ago as Shinae entered college, he never spoke about the mountain climbing or tried to go on a family climbing trip. The couple quit climbing long ago when they were in Korea. During his visit, the couple pretended to be in love while around their daughters, but when left alone, they had nothing to say to each other. Since his last visit, they no longer talk about their everyday lives. Mr. Ju calls once in a while now, and when he does, he only asks about how their daughters are doing at school. It is clear that they feel not the same couple they once were.
Mrs. Ju originally planned to return to Korea when Shin-hee entered college.
After the awkward visit with her husband and the continued lack of communication between them, she has changed her mind. Even more than the decrease in financial support, Mrs. Ju is concerned about her husband’s making emotional distance.
Additionally, Mrs. Ju has grown accustomed to living in the United States and cannot imagine making a life in Korea again. She has strong social support from other gireogi mothers and church folks and feels like Centreville is her home.
As Mrs. Ju’s story illustrates, the conjugal relationships of gireogi families transform due to long-distance. Many people I interviewed reveal that gireogi marriages sometimes become more imagined than real over time. Since they do not live together and rarely see one another, gireogi couples depend on memories and long-distance communication. Oftentimes, the longer the period separation, the more the conjugal relationship becomes distant. While only one of the forty women I interviews said she got divorced, many gireogi wives expressed a sense of change in
133 the relationship between them and their husbands in Korea. When families live apart for extended periods of time, like five years or more, and they do not actively maintain their connections through frequent contacts, spouses tend to become estranged from one another.
Clara is a high school student who has been living with her mother, Mrs. Kim, as gireogi family for over six years in McLean. Clara’s father, Mr. Kim moved the family to the United States when Clara was very young because he was appointed a visiting scholar at a college in Washington, D.C. Mr. and Mrs. Kim had two sons while living together in the U.S. When Mr. Kim’s research position ended seven years ago, he returned to Korea but the rest of the family stayed. Although the two youngest children were born in the U.S., neither of them spoke English when Mr. Kim returned to Korea and it was a difficult adjustment for the family at first. Now, Clara is in eleventh grade and her younger brother is in ninth grade and, although they struggled at first, these gireogi children quickly assimilated to American school culture.
Professor Kim visits the family in Virginia during most summer and winter vacations.
The Kim family’s original plan was to return to Korea when Clara entered middle school. Because Prof. Kim is the eldest son in his Kim family, Mrs. Kim has a great responsibility to the Kim family. As the wife of the eldest son, she is expected to organize family events, gatherings, and jesa, a Confucius ritual for memorizing family ancestors on holidays and the anniversaries of funerals. When Mrs. Kim lived in
Korea, she took care of all of these family events of her children’s uncles, aunts, and her mother-in-law. When Mr. and Mrs. Kim announced their decision to leave Seoul and pursue a gireogi life, Mr. Kim’s mother was strongly against this decision. Mrs.
Kim persuaded her husband’s sibling to condone their decision by promising to invite
134 their kids to the U.S. every summer. As Clara and Chris adjusted to life in the U.S.,
Mrs. Kim also adjusted to the freedom like the life she’d left in Korea had been wasteful. Mr. Kim’s mother and sister are now in charge of the family gatherings and
Mrs. Kim sends gifts to the family for those events. Whenever Mrs. Kim speaks with her mother-in-law, the conversation is focused on the undesirable conditions of family due to the absence of the eldest daughter-in-law. Mrs. Kim recollected one of her mother-in-law’s comments with a sarcastic smile:
How in the world can the eldest daughter-in-law live abroad when it is
her duty to serve family jesa? Our ancestors cannot travel that far, across the
ocean, to be served your jesa dinner. Even ghosts do not like knocking the
doors of foreign homes. Do not send petty gifts any more. Ancestors do not
like foreign stuff. You must give up your eldest daughter-in-law’s right to the
second one if you want to live there.50
When they first came to the U.S., Mrs. Kim felt guilty for not hosting the Kim family jesa as the wife of the eldest son. Over time, however, this feeling faded away and she now thinks of her mother-in-law’s nagging as out of date and absurd. When
Mrs. Kim spoke about the issue with her husband, Mr. Kim’s response was timid and tried not to fully side with either with his wife or his mother. Professor Kim lives with his mother who cooks his food and does his laundry so that he can support his transnational family. Mrs. Kim’s sister-in-law also feels ambiguous about her not
50 This quotation is from Mrs. Kim’s recital of her mother-in-law’s comment. She mimicked her mother-in-law’s voice in a comic manner, so she ridiculed her mother-in-law’s authority and downplays the meaning of Confucius family rituals. According to the traditional Confucius family customs, the very first daughter must take care of family jesa and organize all other family events. Some mother-in-laws who had given these kinds of services as the first daughter-in-laws take pride in maintaining family value and obligations.
135 serving jesa. Over time, Mrs. Kim has come to feel alienated from her in-laws and, more attached to other gireogi mothers in McLean. She attends every monthly bible study meeting and socializes often. The below shows that how Mrs. Kim became attached more to other gireogi mothers than to her in-laws or husband.
I don’t think I have a communication problem with my husband
because we speak on Skype every morning. But, his night time is my morning
time. He wants to relax from the day by chatting with me, but I have to start
my day. In a way, I feel like I am closer to my gireogi friends than my in-laws
or my mother in Korea. We share everything we need here. We have a deep
understand each other’s concerns and loneliness. What support do I receive
from family? My in-laws just tell me to do my responsibility. They do not
understand my situation in the U.S. at all. While I still struggle to adjust to the
American way of life and to support my children, I also feel lots of freedom.
This is probably because I am liberated from fulfilling the role of the eldest
daughter-in-law. (Mrs. Kim, 48, McLean)
Traditional Korean conceptions of family, intergenerational relationships are defined by the value of a filial piety, known as Hyo. Younger generations are expected to obey their elders and feel indebted to their parents for their sacrifices, so children are expected to take care of and support parents when they get older (Yi 2000; Yi
2004). Typically, the responsibility of taking care of aging parents falls on eldest son and his wife, including serving jesa to the ancestors. The eldest daughter-in-law is usually expected to organize major family events take on the responsibilities and authority of her mother-in-law. While most modern Korean families do not follow these traditions, the burden of the eldest daughter-in-law deters many women from
136 engaging with their in-law family.
As Mrs. Ju and Mrs. Kim’s stories illustrate, traditional concepts of family roles are transformed when a family chooses to live a gireogi lifestyle. In addition to challenging the idea that all family members need to live together in a single home, long-term separation and abandoning family roles cause transformations of relational power dynamics. The messages gireogi families receive from one another have a great influence on the ways individual family members reconstruct their notion of family.
Oftentimes, the absence and rare contact with ralatives means that the roles those people played in the past are taken up by other people in families and communities.
Feedback of Native Local Community: English Competency and Making Up Self Confidence
Mrs. Suh (38, McLean) majored a fine art at one of the top-tier colleges in
Seoul and married a medical doctor while working at a small studio. When their daughter, Subin entered second grade in a Gangnam district elementary school, Mr.
Suh suggested that they relocate to the United States and live a gireogi life. Mr. Suh promised his wife that he would open a new studio for her in the United States, so she agreed. The three of them moved to McLean together because Mr. Suh got a yearlong position as a visiting researcher at the National Institute of Health. He did not fulfil his promise of opening a studio for Mrs. Suh during that year and returned to Korea with the promise that he would open the studio when Subin entered middle school.
Mrs. Suh was disappointed but decided to focus on supporting Subin’s education.
Since Subin had attended an English-speaking kindergarten in Gangnam, she did not have to take ESL classes and demonstrated outstanding academic performance. She
137 was elected the student association president in fifth grade and brought home an invitation from the vice president’s parents one night. Mrs. Suh understood the invitation but was nervous about speaking in English at the event. Subin convinced her to attend by assuring her and said that she would cover most of the conversations.
However, when they went to the party and a parent asked Mrs. Suh what her husband did, she was so nervous that she just murmured until Subin finally answered to the question on behalf of her mother. Mrs. Suh was ashamed of this incident and tried to improve her conversational skills by attending a local ESL academy but did not improve. While Subin has become increasingly confident at school, Mrs. Suh has lost her sense of self. She has now abandoned her dreams of opening a fine art studio in the United States due to the loss of her self-confidence.
All the women I interviewed are college graduates and some of them have either a Master’s or Doctoral degree. Despite the high education levels of gireogi mothers, many feel loss of self-confidence because they cannot communicate freely in
English. This is especially pronounced when native English speakers respond to them with impatience or intolerance. The loss of confidence they feel has effects on other domains of their everyday lives. When gireogi children achieve greater English competency than gireogi mothers, these young people often have to play the role of representing their parents to teachers and administrators, which can result in a loss of parental authority. Language barriers also hinder gireogi women from socializing with other American and Korean-American mothers whose native tongue is English. The loss of self-confidence can be exacerbated by the fact that many women gave up or postponed their own careers to pursue a gireogi life. As a coping mechanism, many gireogi seek out groups of, and socialize with, other Korean gireogi mothers in their
138 school district. This “selective assimilation” creates a boundary around potential social experiences.
Feedback of School: Silenced Voice, Voiced Silence
Mrs. Cho (35, McLean) regularly attends her son school’s Parent Teacher
Association meetings to get information about the school and check out what other parents are doing for their children. Her son, Min-gyu is in second grade at a McLean elementary school and, attends a hagwon. Mrs. Cho hopes Min-gyu will be selected for the Gifted Talented Program of the Fairfax County Public Schools. When they moved from Gangnam, Seoul to a Mclean apartment, Min-gyu immediately showed outstanding academic promise. Mrs. Cho wanted to make sure Min-gyu was offered a place in the Gifted Program, so she pushed him to study harder than his classmates.
Last winter, Mrs. Cho received an email from the school PTA about a special meeting regarding the possible change to the Gifted Program. Mrs. Cho called her gireogi friends to figure out what was going on at school and heard that the advanced students’ population in Fairfax County had increased dramatically in recent years so the County had to adjust the location of the program. This change meant Min-gyu would have to go different school in order to attend the Gifted Program. Mrs. Cho asked me to go the PTA meeting with her to get help with translation so that she would understand the exact situation and how it would affect her son.
The meeting was attended by numerous parents, American, Korean and
Korean-American, who expressed great concern about the potential changes to the program. There was a heated discussion about the potential effects on both students and families if the GT program moved. Some of the American parents brought a big
139 poster that read, “NO MOVING!” I sat next to Mrs. Cho, who did not say anything during the meeting, and translated as much of the many voices as I could. Even after the official meeting ended, parents continued asking questions to the PTA president and school principal. The PTA coordinator, a Korean-American woman approached the school leadership and asked about the specific details of the County’s decision.
While they were speaking, Mrs. Cho stood behind her trying to listen what kind of conversation and passed a written note to the coordinator to ask on her behalf. The coordinator paused the conversation, read it, and delivered the question for Mrs. Cho.
When I asked Mrs. Cho about the note, she said it was a question about the transportation change. Even though Mrs. Cho did not speak during the meeting, she paid full attention to the conversation and discussion on the floor as much as possible.
Her silence was not passive acceptance but assertive listening and she expressed her concerns in a written message to a representative mother. Gireogi mothers who attend school-related meeting usually observe attentively but do not raise questions due to the language barrier. However, they often utilize school translators, bilingual PTA members, neighbors, and friends to deliver their messages to the school officials.
They convey ideas and thoughts through representatives, making their silent attendance a visible voice to the public.
Recognition of Public Service: Multilingual Policy, Diverse Community
When a family begins thinking about pursuing a gireogi life abroad, they research the educational programs and public services including schools, libraries, churches, and parks. Many families choose Fairfax County because it has an excellent reputation among former gireogi parents and in resource, books, and websites about
140 education in the United States. According to the Fairfax County Public Schools’
“Language Minority/ English Learner Student Chart,” 79,907 students out of general student population of 178,778 live in a home where a language other than English is spoken.51 The number of “Language Minority Students” who spoke Korean during the 2011-2012 school year was 6,252 students, 8% of total language minority population, the second biggest number following Spanish speakers. Fairfax County
Public Schools offer a comprehensive ESOL (English for Speakers of Other
Languages) program52 and recently started Korean Immersion Program at Colin
Powell Elementary School to accommodate the growing population of Korean speaking children.
I had discussions with several other parents, including Mrs. Park about whether it would be beneficial to enroll our rising kindergarten children in the Two-
Way Korean Immersion Program.53 During orientation, the school principal recommended the program for students whose mother tongue is Korean. Many of Mrs.
Park’s gireogi friends were skeptical about registering for the program because they came to the United States for their children to learn English. Mrs. Park and I discussed our shared aspiration for our children to be multilingual and understand diverse cultures. At the moment, while our children have greater proficiency in
51 I had a chance of visiting Fairfax County Public School’s World Language Program office with other Korean visiting scholars (Professor Suh from Ehwa Women’s University and Professor Lim from Chonnam National University) on September 19, 2012. World Language Program’s coordinator, Dr. Gregory Jones, World Language Specialist, Christina Oh, and Curriculum Resource Teacher, Katie Han presented current situations of this program for us on that meeting. For about the specific programs of Fairfax County Public School’s World Language Program, see the webpage http://www.fcps.edu/is/worldlanguages/index.shtml. 52 See the webpage, http://www.fcps.edu/is/esol/index.shtml. 53 We received the program explanation handout on the orientation day. See the web document, http://www.fcps.edu/powelles/docs/Korean%20TWI%20InfoSheet_English%20version.pdf.
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English and although they understand Korean, they usually respond to us in English.
While we are both concerned that our kids may feel confused learning in two different languages, both of our daughters learned English at their preschools and did not struggle. Both Mrs. Park and I decided to enroll our daughters in the program after hearing the teacher speak about the academic and cultural opportunities it presents to for our children. During a school open house, Mrs. Park recommended the Korean immersion program to other gireogi parents, insisting that Korean and Korean-
American parents should encourage their children to strengthen the sense of Korean pride among the younger generation. After that meeting, one more student was enrolled in the program, possibly as the result of Mrs. Park’s recommendation.
Most of my interviewees consider public services offered by Fairfax County as better than those in Korea, particularly public schools, libraries, and parks. Several resources and services such as translation services, ESL programs, and Korean cultural events offered at these places contribute to a feeling of welcome of Korean migrants to the area. The Centreville regional library has more than 1,000 books in
Korean and offers private English tutoring for immigrants. The Korean American
Association of the Washington Metropolitan Area has hosted past two annual KORUS festivals celebrating the diversity of Korean-American heritage at Bull Run Park in
Centreville, Virginia.54 During a welcome message at the 11th annual KORUS festival in 2012, Sharon Bulova, chairperson of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors stated that “Korean Americans make up the largest minority population in Fairfax
County, which makes this celebration particularly close to the hearts of our residents.”
54 See the webpage, http://www.korusfest.org.
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The multilingual resources and public services for Korean immigrants and gireogi families offered by Fairfax County encourage them to feel welcome in their local communities.
Renegotiating Parenting: What is Good Education, After All?
For over ten years, Mrs. Kim (43, Centreville) worked as a nurse and her husband was a Taekwondo instructor in Korea. When they decided to live as a gireogi family, Mr. Kim stayed in Korea to run the two Taekwondo studios he owns there and
Mrs. Kim stopped working to focus on their children’s education. While the couple was concerned about their son’s English competency and academic skills before they migrated to the States, the two sons picked up conversational English skills very quickly. Despite these encouraging signs, the children’s academic skills did not improve at all. Their fourteen year old eldest son, Yujun stopped communicating with his mother and began using the Spanish he picked up playing basketball with children from recently immigrated families from other parts of the world. Mrs. Kim began to regret their decision to pursue gireogi life and send both of her sons to a hagwon.
Since Mrs. Kim had been insisting that gireogi life was the best decision for their children, she did not discuss Yujun with her husband. Instead, she started attending a
Korean church and consulted with the pastor who, suggested that she bring Yujun to the church youth club. Yujun did not want to attend Korean church at first but attended reluctantly one Sunday. After a time, Yujun was appointed the church youth basketball team leader and has not only gained enthusiasm about the basketball team but also began speaking with his mother again.
Mrs. Kim agonized over the values she placed on her son’s education because
143 she and her husband initially insisted academic achievement was the only acceptable path to a successful career. However, Mrs. Kim gradually accepted that undergraduate programs I medicine or law are not the best for Yujun. The church pastor encouraged
Mrs. Kim to encourage Yujun to pursue a career as an athlete because he shows the greatest promise and leadership in sports. Encouraging Yujun to pursue sports activity and leadership led her son to resume conversation and compelled her to rethink the values around education that she and her husband had been imposing on their son.
While Mrs. Kim was nervous about telling her husband about Yujun’s pursuit of atheletics, his response was encouraging. During the summer of 2012, Mr. Kim visited the family to investigate the possibility of opening a new Taekwondo studio in
Fairfax County. The studio opened in the spring of 2013 and all of the family members are involved in supporting the new business. Yujun started working as an assistant instructor and translator during his father’s classes, an opportunity which allows him to out his passion into practice.
Mrs. Lim quit her job as a cosmetics model ten years ago to move with her children to the States and start a gireogi life. Her husband owns a small advertising company in Seoul but makes frequent visits to the U.S. home. When their elder daughter entered college in Boston two years ago, their thirteen-year younger daughter, Sujin, expressed an interest in cheerleading. Sujin had always been a quiet girl and Mrs. Lim was surprised that she had an interest in that kind of physical activity. Mrs. Lim decided to not allow Sujin to join the school cheerleading squad out of fear that her academic performance would suffer.
Sujin kept insisting that cheerleading would not interfere in her academics, but
Mrs. Lim stood firm in her decision. It was not until Mrs. Lim received a letter from
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Sujin’s physical education teacher stating that getting involved with the cheerleading squad could actually have positive effects on her daughter’s self-esteem and confidence that Mrs. Lim began to reconsider her thoughts about education. Mrs. Lim decided to allow Sujin to participate in the cheerleading training group on the condition that she kept her grades up. I accompanied Mrs. Lim to a training session as a part of our interview. It was a cold evening in late November, but it was hot inside the gym. I was surprised to see teenage girls practicing acrobatics to energetic, upbeat music. Mrs. Lim pointed out her daughter as she practiced acrobatic feats. Since the majority of girls were white, Sujin’s black hair stood out. While we watched the girls practice, Mrs. Lim said that since Sujin joined the squad, her academic performance has improved.
As you know us, Korean parents always are primarily concerned with
grades and exams. We do not care our children’s aptitude and their
personalities. I did not even try to figure out what kinds of fields my kids are
interested in. I wanted Sujin to become a lawyer just because she loves reading.
What a stupid assumption I had! Sujin told me recently that she actually wants
to study biology and focus on the brain. I didn’t even know that is a field. I
just sent my kids to school and nagged them to do better academically. I
realize now that I had no interest in what my kids liked. After ten years of
educating my kids here in the U.S., I am just now realizing that ways that the
U.S. education system is qualitatively different from Korea. I am not pushing
my daughter to enter a top-tier college any more. I just hope she can do work
she loves and live a healthy life. (Mrs. Lim, 51, McLean)
Mrs. Lim recently began studying acrobatics and the field of brain science so
145 that she will be able to speak with her daughter about her passions. She drives Sujin to training three times a week and, even though both Sujin and Mrs. Lim feel physically tired after they train, both feel a greater sense of satisfaction and belonging.
Both Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Lim’s stories demonstrate the ways Korean gireogi mothers transform the values they place on education by responding to feedback from people in their communities. With the encouragement of Mrs. Kim’s church pastor and Sujin’s physical education teacher, these mothers renegotiated parenting style and educational values in ways that allowed their children to pursue their passions for physical activities. In my research, I found that this willingness to change their views about education is more common among gireogi mothers who have spent over five years in the United States. They used to emphasize to their children “unlimited competition” to survive at a neoliberal competition system. Outstanding academic performances and superb academic records were priority value for ensuring their children’s entrance to a top-tier college. As parents spend more time in the United
States, many gireogi mothers became less concerned with their children, “being educationally successful in the traditional Korean sense.” Discovering unexpected talents in their children, sometimes through uncooperative attitudes toward parental priority, presents an opportunity for gireogi parents to rethink their take-it-for-granted parental styles and values. When community leaders or teachers suggest a different approach to parenting, long-time gireogi mothers sometimes come to redefine their ideas about a “good education.”
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CHAPTER 5: THREE TIMES MOVING OF MENCIUS MOTHER: SCHOOL DISTRICT BELONGING AND NARRATIVE BELONGING
When my eldest son turned five years old, we moved from our small
city to Gangnam, Seoul, the so-called best school district in South Korea.
Some of my friends wondered why we moved to Seoul when my children
were still so young. I heard so many news reports and stories about how
Gangnam kids start learning English early as toddlers. Since my husband ran a
private business, it was comparatively easy for us to move and settle down in
Gangnam, so we lived a “weekend couple” life style for about two years. As
time went on, however, I realized that Gangnam was not the best educational
environment for my kids. My son complained about his English hagwon and
he seemed to be losing interest in academics. My husband and I agonized for a
while over how to improve our son’s academic skills and revive his academic
passion. Our conclusion was to move him to the U.S.A. and live a gireogi life!
We chose to move to a small suburban city in Virginia where my sister-in-law
lived. My son entered Prince William County public elementary school where
he is now in the third grade Gifted and Talented Program. My eldest daughter
entered a private preschool and is now first grade at the public school. My
youngest daughter is currently attending a private preschool in our community.
Since my husband’s business is going well, this kind of dual life style was
doable. We decided to move to the Fairfax County Public School District
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before my eldest son enters middle school and we had already done research
about places we might move by the time my husband visited this summer. The
most important criterion is a good school district with an excellent educational
environment. As Mencius’ mother did in ancient times, we mothers have a
responsibility to control the educational environment of our children. (Mrs. Yu,
45, Prince William County)
This kind of frequent moving to find better educational settings for children is not a unique story among Korean gireogi families. Among forty gireogi interviewees, seventeen families (42.5%) responded that they have moved within either Korea or within the U.S.A. Like Mrs. Yu, they justify this frequent movement by referring back to the education reasoning of the Mencius mother. Creating the best educational environment for their children is the top priority among gireogi families, and all other family issues and business are arranged in accordance with this priority.
This chapter examines mobility and their sense of belonging around school districts in the U.S. among gireogi families. I analyze the cases where families have moved to better school districts either to escape problematic educational environments or to pursue more competitive school achievement for their children. School district belonging is shaped by a strong attachment to an educational environment with a good reputation in combination with rationalizing movement through well-known proverbs, sayings, and moments in history. The latter part of this chapter analyzes gireogi families’ “narrative belonging” that gives them sufficient reasons for moving to new places and how they came to live there.
School district belonging is one of the most important types of belonging that gireogi families construct, rooted in a long history of educational values in Korean
148 society. The Confucian emphasis on the educational environment and drive for upward mobility is used by present-day Koreans to justify moving multiple times to seek out better school districts. Korean parents believe that their most important goal is to offer good educational environments and academic opportunities for their children. I argue that school district belonging does not necessarily correspond to class background but, rather, is based on functional adjustment and narrative belonging in a school district. Previous literature that focused on the relationship between education and social capital was centered on the importance of class background. According to this argument, outstanding academic performance and supportive parenting result from realizing accumulated social capital. Thus, working class families tend to expect their children to grow and learn naturally while middle class families seek out activities to maximize children’s development. (Annette
Lareau, 2003) There is a noticeable absence of analysis of how social capital is contextualized in a specific place in this literature. Accounts of the relationship between social capital and sense of belonging can illuminate the complex realization of social capital and its variations.
Everything for a Good School District
My eldest son is in eight grade but he does not have any interest in
preparing for college applications. I think one of the main reasons why he is
not passionate about his future is because he is socializing with friends. Most
of the Korean families in this school district are working families and they do
not have much interest in sending their kids to Ivy League schools. I am
thinking about moving us to a better school district where my aunt lives. She
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may be able to help me find some piano lesson jobs there. (Mrs. Song, 41,
Centreville)
Mrs. Song moved to Centreville with her husband nine years ago when he started his master degree near Washington, D.C. After Mr. Song finished his degree,
Mrs. Song did not return to Korea with him. Mrs. Song’s major in college was piano, so she decided to make a living teaching piano lessons, supplemented with a little financial help from Mr. Song in Korea. However, Mrs. Song’s efforts to manage this transnational life style have exceeded beyond their family resources. Considering their income level and job stability, Mr. and Mrs. Song’s family cannot actually afford this kind of dual life style. Mr. Song is a high school music teacher in Seoul and Mrs.
Song gives several private piano lessons each week on an irregular base. When they decided to live gireogi lifestyle, Mrs. Song’s in-laws helped to buy their current townhouse in Centerville. The monthly mortgage payment and living expenses are Mr. and Mrs. Song’s responsibilities, which leave them financially stretched. If Mrs. Song decides to move to a better school district like Mclean, their living costs will be even higher than now. Despite the obvious financial risk, however, Mrs. Song’s decision to move to McLean seems firm. She has already preparing for this move by expanding her social network through her piano lesson students and their mothers. Through this network, she has acquired information about where she can find housing that will allow her to belong to a good school district while spending as little money as possible on housing.
Mrs. Yoo also lives in northern Virginia with her two sons while her husband works as a high school science teacher in suburban Seoul. Mrs. Yoo worked as an elementary school music teacher when she was living in Korea. When they decided to
150 as a gireogi family, their eldest son was four years old. Mrs. Yoo gave birth to her second son after settling in Manassas, a community with many clusters newly immigrated Hispanic people. The primarily white population that lived there previously have begun moving to more suburban areas. Mrs. Yoo now regrets their hectic decision to select this community of new immigrants.
My husband’s old friend runs a small convenient store in Manassas, so
we thought starting a new life in the U.S. would be easier there than in a
totally strange place. Shortly after we settled in a small apartment in Manassas,
we realized that it is not a good place for raising children. There were many
undocumented Latino children at their school, so my children were learning
street slang rather than proper English. I was afraid that my kids would get
involved with school drop-outs or street gangs. Who knows? Environment is
so important for young children. Do you know that in Korea, mothers in
Bundang long to move to Dachi-dong, and mothers in Dachi-dong long to
move to the U.S.A? There is always a better school environment somewhere
else. We decided we should move into a better school district before my eldest
son entered kindergarten, so we came to Centreville three years ago. Now, I
am thinking about moving to McLean soon before my son turns eleven. (Mrs.
Yoo, 35, Centreville)
For gireogi families, a good school district means that the majority of students are either White or Asian, middle class and the schools must have high rates of admission to top ranked colleges and universities. According to this standard,
Manassas is not a good school district and Centreville is not as good as McLean school district. As we can see with the Song’s and Yoo’s families, providing an ever
151 better educational environment is the top priority of gireogi parents. While some gireogi families have enough financial resources to move frequently while also living a dual lifestyle, a considerable number of interviewees expressed that they are struggling to maintain transnational lives. In fact, some of the interviewees cannot afford to sustain a gireogi lives at their income levels but still strive to provide good educational environments by utilizing their social networks.
Most of the fathers in McLean gireogi families have professional careers such as medical doctors, college professors, media correspondents, or executive positions at big companies in Korea. When they decided to pursue the gireogi lifestyle, they had already collected information on the educational environment of McLean using their social networks in Korea. Many of these families connected with other families who returned and reported back about their experiences. Others learned more about the educational opportunities in McLean after they settled in a neighboring community like Centreville. As a rapidly emerging Korean community that encompasses various
Korean ethnic businesses such as restaurants and grocery stores, Centreville draws many new Korean immigrants. Gireogi families who did not have much information about school districts before they left Korea tend to settle down in Centreville. Like
Mrs. Song and Mrs. Yoo, as these parents adjust to living in a new place, they soon acquire more information about better school districts. While many Centreville families have working mothers who do not belong to the upper class, these women learn how to utilize the established social networks and establish a sense of belonging in places with better educational environments. Notably, both Mrs. Song and Mrs.
Yoo moved from Centreville to Mclean within a few months of these interviews. They report that they feel satisfied with this move because it is a better school district.
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The idea of raising children in a good school district can become such an obsession that some gireogi families undertake irregular methods to achieve this dream. In July, 2011, a visiting scholar at my university found a place to rent in
Fairfax County at a comparatively low price because she agreed to take care of the landlord’s daughter in case of the landlord’s absence in her rental contract. The landlord lady, Mrs. Kim (47, McLean) is a gireogi mother who has a daughter in eleventh grade. She bought a townhouse in Mclean when she and her daughter started their gireogi life eight years ago. Mr. Kim is a medical doctor who owns his clinic in
Seoul and Mrs. Kim is a TV drama script writer. When their daughter was young, Mrs.
Kim was just beginning her career as a script writer on a part time basis. At that time, it was possible for Mrs. Kim to support her daughter as an affluent gireogi mother.
When Mrs. Kim’s professional career grew more successful, she could not always stay with her daughter. At first, Mrs. Kim depended on her mother and aunt for child care but soon realized that she would need more help. She decided to look for a
Korean graduate student or visiting scholar to supervise her daughter whenever she is away from home.
There are other stories of peculiar living arrangements among gireogi families.
A friend introduced me to a woman named, Mrs. Choi who moved to McLean as a gireogi mother with her two daughters five years ago. Their family is currently renting her cousin brother’s home because Mrs. Choi frequently travels back to Korea for her job and her elder daughter will enter college next year. Rather than buying a home,
Mrs. Choi rents the second house of this distant relative and pays for educational consulting and supervision of her children while she is in Korea.
You may think that this kind of life style is crazy. But I believe I have
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to provide the best educational environment for my daughters no matter the
sacrifice I have to pay. As you know, the Korean education system is getting
worse, and school is such an important factor in a child’s growth. At least I am
giving my daughters a good school environment. (Mrs. Choi, 48, Mclean)
Both Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Choi justify their irregular parenting practices by saying that they are offering the best educational environment possible for their children. Hiring a supervisor and renting or buying a house in a good school district are minor efforts for these professional gireogi mothers. Even when Mrs. Kim and
Mrs. Choi are away from their children for periods of time to pursue their careers, the women always continue to supervise their children through international phone calls, webcam chat, and on-site alternate supervisors. In contrast to Chinese parachute families, who have less intense transnational contacts (Fong et al. 2010), upper class
Korean gireogi families maintain tight parent-child relationships using various communication technologies. For instance, both Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Choi use Skype almost every morning to communicate with their husbands in Korea while their kids also use a tablet device every night to talk with their mothers while they are travelling for work or with their fathers who live abroad.
Longing for Upward Mobility, Downplaying Current Reality
Education is one of the main reasons why many Asians decide to migrate abroad in recent years. Asian Americans have been characterized as a hardworking
“model minority” in contrast to other immigrant groups. Korean, Vietnamese, and
Chinese migrants are among the most frequently discussed ethnic groups among these representations, which are supposed to model the most successful path toward social
154 mobility and adjustment. As Vivian S. Louie claims, the story of Asian Americans and education needs to be considered through contextualized theories rather than just ethnic culture models or economic forces models (2004: xv). Confucian family values, race, and class are important factors in the formation of Asian Americans and education stories. The belief that the most important parenting role is to provide a good educational environment works in combination with many Korean parents’ longing for upward class mobility.
I believe our current investment will bring about unaccountable results
in the future. Education, I think, is the most valuable thing you can dare to
invest in for your family’s improvement. If you value the importance of school
connections, then the most important decision you can make is selecting a
good school district for your children. I’ve never regretted our move to the
McLean high school district, even if we do not own our house and struggle to
manage our lives here. When my son graduates from a good college and gets a
decent job, then all of these costs will be paid and our family value will be
elevated. (Mrs. Son, 49, Mclean)
Mrs. Son moved to the edge of the McLean high school district when her eldest son turned fourteen. Mr. Son had already retired from his position as an executive at an electronic company two years prior, but managed to get a job working at a small company owned by one of his friends. The Son family income shrank about thirty percent, but Mr. and Mrs. Son decided to invest their retirement pension in moving to McLean. Mrs. Son is actively engaged in PTA meetings and school volunteer activities in spite of her limited English competency.
I was a so-called Dachi-dong ajumma (middle aged woman). I’ve
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always pushed my daughters to do more and to do better. We moved to Dachi-
dong when my eldest daughter entered the elementary school and our financial
status was not stable. My husband’s restaurant business did not go well and he
did not agree with me, but I moved to my sister’s house in here Mclean to live
a gireogi life. If things go well and my daughters enter good colleges and get
good job positions here, then we want to buy a house like my sister. I hope that
we can enjoy a pleasant and decent life when we finish this gireogi life.
Whenever I feel lonely here, I imagine the beautiful house where my family
will live in the future. Fortunately, my daughters are doing well so far. I think
my decision was right because my daughters are getting a superior education
than they would have as Dachi-dong kids. (Mrs. Song, 38, McLean)
Mrs. Song’s story reveals a desire to rationalize her current split family life with a through the hope for bright future. Even though Mrs. Song’s family income cannot support transnational family living, she insists on continuing this life style by living in her sister’s house, which can often be an uncomfortable situation. During our interview, Mrs. Song implied that her sister’s family has started giving her signs that she and her daughters need to move out soon. As I illustrated in the previous section, not all the Mclean resident gireogi families have enough financial resources to maintain their lives. Some endure uncomfortable living conditions while others depend heavily on social networks. As long as these gireogi parents can send their kids to a good school, they are ready to bear harsh conditions of current life styles. As
Mrs. Song’s story demonstrates, gireogi women often manage the unhappy realities of their current lives by working toward the realization of their dream future. The beautiful house that Mrs. Song envisions is a symbolic image that encompasses all
156 kinds of material compensation for her current parental sacrifice. Almost all the gireogi interviewees tend to emphasize the bright futures they expect to realize through their U.S.-educated children in order to minimize their tough reality.
Mrs. Kim (45, McLean) was a copy-writer for a big advertisement company in
South Korea and eventually attained an executive level position. When Mrs. Kim’s husband, a college professor, decided to spend his sabbatical year at a University located in Fairfax County, Virginia, she also received permission to take a one year leave. When the year was complete, Mrs. Kim had a feeling that her job position was no longer going to available to her. Additionally, Mrs. Kim’s only son insisted on staying in the U.S. When Mrs. Kim’s husband returned to his college in Korea, Mrs.
Kim officially quit her job and used her retirement pension to move to McLean with her son. She is currently working there as a private tutor at a small academy.
Mrs. Kim’s story illustrates several trends in class mobility when middle-class among gireogi mothers who settle in the U.S.A. Some professional gireogi mothers experience downward mobility in their careers and others become jobless. Among twelve gireogi mothers who had a pre-migration career, only three women were able to maintain their professional job level after migration. For a woman professional, it is a tough decision to give up her career for her son’s education. Mrs. Kim’s self-identity was transformed from career woman to a mother who is waiting for the discouragement she experienced in professional life to be compensated by the future success of her son. Whether a professional or a housewife, most gireogi mothers wish to be rewarded for the ways they sacrifice in their current situation by seeing their children become successful. Through fortifying their belief that the most important parenting role is to offer a good educational environment or opportunity to their
157 children, these women justify their temporary downward mobility with expectation of future upward mobility through their children.
The longing for upward mobility is not only present among working and middle class gireogi families. Upper class professionals express their wish to maintain their class privilege into the next generation. One of the most frequently used words among upper class gireogi parents in my interviews was ‘global citizen.’ When I ask these respondents to define the meaning of a ‘global citizen’, many said it is related to
English competency and global perspectives.
Why do I choose this kind of life style? It is because of English. At
least my daughter will be able to acquire English language skills even if she
does not succeed in entering a good college. English language is an important
sign of class right now, you know. Without English competency, one cannot
become a professional. As you know, South Korea is an excessively
competitive society. So many brilliant students graduate from top level
colleges every year, but cannot get decent jobs. If my daughter has good
English competency, then she will have an advantage over other people. Who
knows? As a global citizen, she may get a global job. (Mr. Kim, 51, McLean)
Mr. Kim, a professor at a top level university in Korea, is currently a visiting scholar at the Korean Studies Center of George Mason University in Fairfax. He is currently taking care of his daughter in McLean without his wife because Mrs. Kim is a pharmacist at a college hospital and was not able to get an extended leave to follow her husband. Like most gireogi mothers living without their spouse, Mr. Kim’s daily life is scheduled around his daughter’s school and extracurricular activities. As
Professor Kim mentioned, English competency now functions as a differentiating sign
158 of class in highly competitive South Korean society. The logic of competition in the late capitalism governs life philosophy and educational choices in contemporary
South Korea. Most of my interviewees responded that they have thought about moving into a better school district to make sure their children attain a superior education. Even in McLean, which is known as the best school district in Fairfax
County, one respondent commented that she would move from there into the Langley school district if she had enough financial resources. Whether upper class or middle class, most gireogi parents express their longing for upward mobility in a competitive global society through projecting their wishes onto their children.
I believe my son and my daughter will grow as global citizens here.
They will be able to communicate using professional English. I mean real
English, not the kind of grammar they teach in Korean school. I wouldn’t be
satisfied if they only acquired non-accented English. I think they have a more
global sense of the world that will help them realize their dreams in the future.
I mean, my kids are not just eager to become doctors or lawyers. Yes, when
they were in Korea, I wished and they dreamed about those kinds of things.
But now we changed our mindset. First of all, teachers are different here. In
Korea, the teacher is king and the mothers are like servants. I don’t dislike
Korea but as far as I am concerned, when it comes to education, the U.S. is
much better than Korea. Now, I dream they will become international
attorneys rather just a Korean lawyer, or that they will get a job in
international media or at the United Nations. Anyhow, I think we have
broadened our horizons since we started gireogi life. (Mrs. Lee, 43, McLean)
Mrs. Lee served as the room mother of her son’s class at a school in one of the
159 most competitive school districts in Seoul. In this role, she collected money from other parents for a gift for the homeroom teacher each semester and organized the monthly classroom cleaning schedule among the parents. During our interview, Mrs.
Lee often compared the differences in atmosphere at schools in Korean and U.S. schools. She preferred the public school teachers in the United States because they seem to set a more democratic atmosphere. She emphasized the ways teachers in the
U.S. bring in global perspectives and respect for multiculturalism and diversity. She is proud of the ways her kids have expanded dreams and anticipate getting global jobs in the future. For her, public education in the United States is a way to attain a global mindset and professional English competency.
Many McLean gireogi mothers expressed a desire to see their children get transnational jobs when they enter the job market. In contrast to mothers in
Centreville who anticipate their children assimilating into either mainstream U.S. or
Korean-American society, McLean mothers have desires that are focused on global mobility and power in kids’ future career paths.
I keep telling my sons at dinner every night, “Even though you were
born to Korean parents, you are educated in the U.S. So, you are different
from Korean kids. You are a U.S. citizen but you may not go into mainstream
U.S. society. Instead, you have the opportunity to get a global job using your
multinational and multicultural talents.” I know that my sons will not be able
to adjust in Korea or even in mainstream U.S. society. But I can expect that
my sons will get a good job position at a global corporation or global
institution. I hope that they work in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Tokyo in the
future. Metropolitan Asian cities will be good for them since they can use their
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English without feeling alienated. (Mrs. Lee, 51, McLean)
Both of Mrs. Lee’s two sons are U.S. citizens because they were born while their father was pursuing his doctoral degree in Chicago. However, citizenship does not guarantee that they will be able to get a job in the U.S. job market. It does mean that they can study in American public schools, get a U.S. passport, and hopefully, get a global job position. Compared to children in Centerville gireogi families, most of whom do not hold U.S. citizenship, lots of McLean children are U.S. citizen because their parents have lived in the U.S. Notably, McLean parents do not expect their kids to assimilate into mainstream U.S. society. Rather, they dream about their kids enjoying a cosmopolitan life style through acquiring global jobs. This discourse about the ‘global citizen’ does not occur among Centreville mothers as much as those in
McLean. These different perspectives influence the ways people in each community construct senses of belonging.
Social Performance of Story Telling, Narrative Belonging
Don’t you know the Korean saying, “the human being needs to play
in a big river?” I totally agree, and this is why I send my children to a bigger
place with lots of opportunities. You know, now is the age of globalization. We
need to raise our kid as a global citizen. How can you become a global citizen
without experiencing a global education? English is one of the basic skills that
a global citizen should acquire in school. For this reason, living a gireogi life
is a good investment. I expect my son to fill the emptiness I feel now when he
grows up. (Mrs. Kim, 45, Mclean)
Gireogi women often justify their decisions to sacrifice their careers to
161 practice kirogi life with Korean sayings about providing a good educational environment for their children. Gireogi families who move to better school districts also rationalize their choices during the short period before they can see beneficial results with Korean sayings. The phrase Mrs. Kim used, “the human being needs to play in a big river,” is often used to emphasize the importance of a person’s living environment. Gireogi parents often use similar Korean sayings such as “You can send a horse to Jeju Island, but human beings should go to Seoul.” or “It is better to become a Dragon’s tail than Chicken’s head.” All of these Korean sayings highlight the importance of educational environment and Confucian discipline. According to these sayings, a good educational environment is the basic upon which a person develops and can become accomplished. This traditional valuation of educational environments has transformed over time into a sharp emphasis on school districts and schooling among Korean parents.
In addition to Korean sayings, several well-known proverbs and historical episodes are referenced by gireogi parents as a way to narrate their own life stories.
The image of the Mencius mother is frequently referenced tale and serves as a powerful example, and justification, for the great lengths many women go to for their children. Mencius was one of the most prominent Confucian scholars and wrote one of the four Confucius canons. His mother is famous for the fact that she moved three times in search of better educational environments for her son. Since his father died when he was very young, Mencius’ mother took care of him by herself. The first place they lived was near a tomb, so the young Mencius used to pretend to have funeral ceremonies when they lived there. The second place they lived was near a market, where he pretended to buy and sell goods. After Mencius’ mother observed
162 the ways he behaved differently in each place, she decided to move to an educational setting. The final place she chose was a village near a school. There, Mencius started reading and writing, which provided him the foundation that would eventually lead him to become a prominent scholar. This historical episode is understood in Korean culture as illustrative of the important role mothers play in creating an environment where their children are able to succeed academically. This is an especially common reference among gireogi parents who have moved in order to seek out better school districts. These widely known stories are circulated and retold during times of turbulence and stress as a way to and confirm the sacrifices and choices parents make in order to educate their children. These historical episodes and Korean sayings serve to fulfill a situation need among gireogi parents by “providing reassurance, relieving anxiety, and reinforcing within-group worldviews.” (Ross 2009: 8) Evidence that the choice to move to a better school district usually takes time to appear. There is a great amount of anxiety produced in the transitional period about children achieving academic excellence or at least making friends in a new school. In these particularly uncertain times when families are adjusting to new communities, gireogi parents rely upon the authority of Korean sayings, historical episodes, and widely circulated discourses.
There are many diverse ways gireogi mothers share their different narratives. I analyze the ways these stories are told rather than the content itself to reveal the ways that social conditions shape the performance of storytelling and that the effect and the ways of the storytelling are used are more important than the text itself. In my analysis, I treat the narratives of gireogi parents as “social performances” (Polletta et al. 2011:110) to bring to light the communicative environment, social interactions,
163 and conditions of reception surrounding these stories.
One of the most common patterns that arose in the stories told by my interviewees was the deployment of Reassuring Questions. Typically, the storyteller would begin with rhetorical question to reassure their belief in a well-known Korean saying or proverb. Just as Mrs. Kim started her story with the question, “Don’t you know that the Korean saying, the human being needs to play in a big river?” many gireogi parents began telling their stories through asking questions. They ask things like “Have you ever heard that expression……?”, “Didn’t you listen the saying that……?”, “I wonder if you might have heard the saying that…….” Once I, the listener, gave a nod of agreement to let the person know that I am familiar with the saying, they would start telling their stories without hesitation. Beginning a narrative with reassuring questions allows the teller to explore whether the listener is trustworthy while also giving an authoritative background for performing storytelling.
When gireogi parents speak with persons of authority such as school teacher, a hagwon teacher, an afterschool activity instructor, a music instructor, or a consultant, they tend to use the Opinionated Claiming technique. Gireogi parents do not hesitate to give their personal opinions about their kids’ academic development or extracurricular activity preferences.
I think my son is too good to be in this level. He complains that drill
sessions in this class are too easy. When he was in Korea, he always took
upper level classes. If you are not sure, you can test him. Please, test him one
more time to make sure he gets into the appropriate class level. I do not want
him to waste his time. He wants more challenging questions and that is the
reason I am sending him to this hagwon. (Mrs. Son, 49, McLean)
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I think she needs more practice to perform well at the recital in June.
Why don’t you give her lessons twice instead of once a week for the time
being? My daughter’s finger movements do not look natural and she is not
conveying the full feeling of the piece. She has to win an award this time.
(Mrs. Koh, 39, Centreville)
I don’t think we should change the location of the Gifted and the
Talented program. Changing the location would mean that our kids would be
studying in a different place from where they are currently. A sudden change
like that could cause academic and emotional instability. (Mrs. Hwang, 47,
McLean)
These kinds of opinionated demands are part of the effort to actualize parental wishes by appealing to authority and institutional power. Unlike newly immigrated
Korean parents, gireogi parents do not seem to have a fear of expressing their opinions. They often display a somewhat aggressive attitude and strong opinions in order to create situations or make cases to create more beneficial environments for their kids.
When gireogi parents perform their life histories in various settings, these narratives usually utilize the forms of Anecdotal Storytelling, Chronological Narrative, and Flashback Relating. Life histories are rarely performed at official meetings but are a frequent part of small, casual meetings. When a newcomer moves to a school district, the community organizes a casual gathering share information and to introduce them to the community. After the semi-annual youth orchestra recital at a local church in June 2012, a group of gireogi mothers organized a party both to celebrate the recital and welcome a new gireogi family. The group leader hosted it at
165 her house in McLean and they prepared a Korean style barbeque in the backyard.
While kids were playing in the yard, the mothers shared stories.
This kind of life is really tough. I wonder how you all manage it. If I
only had to think about myself, I would prefer to live in Seoul. You know, we
can get lots of help from maids and relatives back in Korea. But here we have
to do all by ourselves. I don’t even have time to feel lonely because I am so
busy. Driving them to their many activities is the toughest part. (Mrs. Lee, 43,
McLean)
You grow accustomed to this life very quickly and will become a
professional mother like us. I went through the same kind of confusion and
disappointment in the beginning. But then, I got past the comparison phase.
Since I was feeling so emotionally lonely and physically tired, I couldn’t help
but compare my life here to our former life in Seoul. When you see your kids
adjust to school and you become involved in all their activities, you eventually
forget you are lone mother. (Mrs. Lee, 51, McLean)
Yes, that’s true. Do you remember the night I came over your place? At
that time, I was desperate to get any kind of help. Everyone seems to go
through a tough phase. Even though I had the experience of moving from a
small city to Seoul, I felt so disoriented when I first got here that I could not
sleep well. As time went on and I came to know mothers in similar situations,
I felt supported and connected. You may become involved in things like us
soon. Do you know that orchestra rehearsal could not happen without us? (Mrs.
Hong, 34, McLean)
As these women illustrate, gireogi mothers help to open one anothers minds
166 by sharing similar experiences of emotional hardship, which grounds them in connection and friendship. Oftentimes, when one mother begins telling her life history, another mother picks up the lines of thought and similarly performs her story. In the groups of women I observed, no woman just sat and listened-each person contributed their personal experience of coming to a new country and school district. The telling of these stories was usually initiated by the oldest member or the noe who had resided in the area the longest. Younger mothers often referred to older mothers as unni (older sister) and this familial term reflects a tightly connected relationship. I found various kinds of comradery among mothers in both Centreville and McLean mothers. These strong bonds were evident at events such as informal social gatherings, as well as events for afterschool activities.
At social gatherings and group meetings, these narratives usually took the form of suda. These events usually take place at a house, church, or a park. The nature of these group gatherings creates an audience for storytelling, thus the ways people interact and communicate with one another are more diverse and active than in one to one communication. Most of narratives among the group members are performed in the middle of suda. Suda refers to chit-chat or everyday talk among women which can range across topics and themes (Kang 2005). In this context, women easily open up about their experiences without thinking about the structure of their narrative. Since any kind of trifle thing could become a topic, most suda are long-winded conversations and monologues. The dialogue below is a typical conversation that took place in the living room at a private residence where there was an informal gathering of gireogi mothers.
A: Unni, why are your eyes so red? Couldn’t you sleep last night while you
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were thinking something that? B: How did you know that? (with a big smile) I’ve always been thinking it. Everybody laughed. Someone clapped loudly and others whispered each other talking about their experiences. A: Unni, have you registered your children for a summer camp? B: No, I didn’t. I am still researching. C: I heard about a good one from Sohee unni. The O Korean church is offering a really good academic camp this summer, but no one knows how or when to register. The website doesn’t have any information about it. I may have to call one of our friends who attend the church. D: I have a good friend who is a member of the church. I can ask her for information about the camp. E: Oh, summer camps are always headaches. Why don’t the schools offer trustworthy academic summer camps? I would rather just pay the school for a good quality summer camp. There are so many competing churches and community centers with summer camp programs but there are few good ones.
As this scene illustrates, gireogi mothers’ suda creates a conversational carnival. Anyone can join suda without any hesitation and a topic can move from one to another without any relation. Gireogi mothers do not have to keep a social manner or a woman’s appropriate etiquette that is usually required at other social settings in
Korea. They can even verbalize a very private topic and use it to create a liberating atmosphere. While they try to keep women’s propriety expected by Korean men and women at other social fields, gireogi mothers release this kind of self- oppression at their own gatherings through suda.
In addition to conversations that take place in person, there is also a virtual form of suda that takes place among the Korean smart phone users. One of the smart phone applications, Kakao Talk messenger also strengthens the connectivity among the same school district parents. The same school district gireogi mothers chat anytime during the day using Kakao talk messenger group chatting.
I feel like Kakao talk is one of family members because I use it to
communicate every day. A lot of the time, I speak with other Kakao users
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more with than with my husband. As you know, we have a lot of common
topics to share and to discuss. We feel a tight connection to one another
because we share concerns and interests. Sometimes, we just chitchat without
any specific topic. This girl talk relieves the stress and loneliness. (Mrs. Lee,
38, Centreville)
Smart phone usage is widespread among gireogi mothers. They use messenger applications like Kakao Talk or Skype on a daily basis to communicate with one another as a way to share educational and parenting information, and to alleviate their feelings of loneliness or emptiness.
Suda, both in person an over digital communication devices, provides a space for gireogi mothers to speak about the emotional stresses related to the lone parenting.
This informal girl talk, creates social networks grounded common living conditions through the exchange of information. These narrative performances construct a place identity. Through repeated storytelling about why they moved to a new place and how they came to make a place there, these women assert a sense of individual and collective belonging in a school district community. These narrative performances help them rationalize their settlement in a new place and strengthen their sense of identity as a part of that place.
School District Belonging and Place Making
As the discussions in the previous sections suggested, gireogi parents believe that a school district is the most basic and important resource related to educational capital. The main reason gireogi mothers migrate is to offer a better educational environment for their children. In their narratives, the women emphasize their quest
169 for a good school district where excellent academic performance is emphasized.
While these women are part of mobile split families, they create a strong sense of place once they migrate through networks of belonging formed around school districts. Critical anthropologists and geographers have paid attention to differentiated place making or place-identity that people construct when they move to a different location. (Harvey 1996; Keith and Pile 1993; Massey 1994; Morley and Robins 1995;
Pred and Watts 1992) As I demonstrated in the chapter three, Centreville and McLean gireogi families create different senses of place and belonging that are expressed through varied adjustments and parenting styles. Considerable numbers of gireogi families reach beyond their financial resources in order to create their place identities.
1) My home is here, where my children are being educated. I know that my
husband might feel alienated hearing me say this, but I think the most
important role of a parent is to support the education of their children.
Being there for them is my primary mothering role, so my home is here. I
have made friends with lots of other gireogi mothers and Korean mothers
here and they are supportive both emotionally and informatively. I feel a
strong sense of belonging here.
2) Well, I feel like I belong both, here and there. I have to think about my life
as well as my son’s academic performance here and there. The opportunity
to attend a prestigious South Korean college is so much greater when a
child spends time abroad. So, I have to adjust both here and there, and
keep up to date about information both here and there. Even if this makes
me feel tired, I think this dual life style is a privilege of noble class.
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3) I don’t think I belong anywhere, neither the U.S.A. nor South Korea.
Everything depends on how you make your life and how you make sense
of your current life. For now, the most valuable thing is to offer a good
educational environment for my children and fully supporting them. So,
my home is here for now. After this, well, I may live a different kind of life.
Who knows? I might be a professional career woman later.
The answers to my questions, “Where do you think is your home? Where do you feel you belong?” varied among Korean gireogi mothers. The colorful responses above demonstrate the need for place making and sense of belonging to be understood contextually, rather than just geographically or economically. The first response, from a Centreville mothers, emphasizes a sense of home focused on parenting and adjustment. The second one, from a mother in McLean, reflects a dual, bifocal sense of belonging. The third one, from a mother who recently moved from Centreville to
McLean, expresses a flexible sense of belonging.
The initial premise of this study was that class differentiation is the predominant factor in the ways gireogi families create a sense of belonging. This assumption is based on social capital theory grounded in the belief that differentiated resources affect social stratification. Centreville mothers try to adjust to the new destination as their new, permanent homes. In contrast, McLean mothers tend to return to Korea when their children have completed what they believe to be a satisfactory amount of time in American schools. Thus, place making among
Centreville mothers is more aggressive than those in McLean. While Centreville mothers expand the boundary of their social networks using online communication and reaching out to Korean immigrant communities, McLean mothers tend to keep
171 their social networks bounded to people of similar social status through regular gatherings. Generally, the parenting style of Centreville mothers is more independent and authoritative than those in McLean. The fathers of McLean gireogi families are more visibly involved with transnational parenting than Centreville gireogi fathers and these different fathering roles affect mothering roles.
While there are distinctions among the parents in the two different communities, they are united in the fact that many gireogi parents stretch their limits to provide this environment for their children. One Centreville gireogi mother was driving for over forty minutes every day to take her children to a hagwon in McLean, and eventually decided to move to McLean. A Loudon County gireogi mother spoke about her search for a house in Fairfax County because the public schools in her area do not offer a Korean language program. The sense of place these mobile families construct is not based on geographically bounded experiences. They construct new senses of place by sharing widely known Korean sayings, suda among women, and life histories. This kind of narrative belonging shapes gireogi parents’ “patterns of thought” (Ryden 209) so that they prioritize their current place and educational environment. Since gireogi parents value the pursuit of superior school districts, they are always ready to move to find a better place. Unlike traditional place identity that is accumulated over long periods of time and based on past experiences (Huigen and
Meijering, 2005: 22), transnational gireogi parents continually create a sense of place through a process of making homes and establishing values in a new destination.
Even though many gireogi families select their residential communities according to class, their emotional attachments and investments do not always correspond to their class backgrounds. Transformations and fragmentations occur
172 because sense of place and sense of belonging are constructed throughout the migration process. Decision making, splitting parenting roles, separation, adjustments, and reorganization of life goals is an ongoing series of negotiations. In this sense, school district belonging is not reliant upon social capital, but rather it is a strategic belonging that is negotiated and renegotiated through human relationships and places following the life trajectories.
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CHAPTER 6: EDUCATIONAL TRANSNATIONAL FIELD
Following the 2013 convocation ceremony at George Mason University, located in Fairfax County, Virginia, a meeting was held school administrators and deans, Korean-American community leaders and diplomats, and Mr. Moon, Ilryong, chairman and member at large of the School Board for Fairfax County Public Schools, who delivered a speech to the graduating students earlier that day. The Dean of the
College of Humanities spoke to the attendees about plans for the opening an international branch of the campus in Songdo, South Korea. As the program coordinator for the Korean Studies Center at Mason, I helped organize this meeting and was in attendance. It was here that I learned that Fairfax County installed an office in Seoul seven years before in order to enhance transnational educational exchanges between the county and South Korea. I also found out that the Fairfax
County Korean language after-school program was launched with funding from
Korean government four years prior. These discoveries helped me realize that the
Korean government had been initiating educational globalization in the U.S., and specifically in Fairfax, through public and private schools as well as governmental bodies.
This chapter explores the possibility of theorizing the education as one of the main transnational social fields by examining educational practices between South
Korea and the U.S. at the empirical level. Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller define social field as “a set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through
174 which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed.” (2004: 1009) Applying the concept of “social field” to the study of transnational migration is useful because it offers a way to assess the multidimensional aspects of social dynamics and relations through which transnational migrants forge, maintain, and negotiate various domains. Drawing on theories from Levitt and Schiller, this study adopts a flexible approach to examining transnational social fields in order to grasp the social dynamics and uneven power distribution at play (2004). Another competing concept, “transnational social space,”
(Faist 2000) has been used to refer both general notions of transnationalism and geographically specific places. This study suggests that “transnational social fields” is a more grounded way to approach transnational studies.
As many migration scholars suggest, transnational social fields are usually divided into economic, political, civil-societal, and cultural fields that focus on specific activities and networks (Itzigsohn et al. 2010; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007).
Economic factors have been the most frequently discussed among transnational migration scholars because transnationalism is most often seen as a by-product of late capitalism or globalization (Levitt and Jaworsky, 2007). Labor migration constitutes the majority of modern world migration, and remittances contribute to the economies of many developing countries. Studies of political transnationalism have considered dual citizenship, electoral participation, multiple memberships in political associations, transnational parties and campaigns, and translocal community involvement (for example, Guarnizo et al. 2003). Transnational migration scholarship has also examined the transformation in social and familial life that results from the movement of bodies across national borders. Many studies have noted the ways class and gender
175 roles are reconstituted when transnational family and kinship networks are formed
(For example, Chamberlain 2002, Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007). Cultural transnationalism has not received active attention but a growing number of scholars have begun researching cultural hybridity, diffusion, and transnational commodity culture (For instance, Crang, Dwyer, and Jackson 2003).
To determine whether a social field as a distinctively transnational social field, we need to consider whether it is formed, managed, and reconstructed transnationally.
Additionally, we must understand the frequency of movements of people, finances, ideas, and practices. The education-driven behaviors and practices Korean gireogi families form a distinct educational field (Ball et al. 1995; Ball 2002, and Butler and
Robson 2003) that distinguishes them from other immigrant groups. The exclusive reason gireogi families practice transnational life-styles is to pursue better educational environments for their children. The number of gireogi families is growing and they move frequently. While rates of participation, frequency of movement, and educational levels vary depending on the social capital and sense of belonging of families, educational transnational practices shape an independent social field. The dynamics of this transnational social field can be difficult to observe because migrants make educational decisions and practice educational acts while adjusting to new society, and over the course of lives, often extending to first- and second-generation migrants. While labor migration is still the most significant and visible transnational migrant population, education is mobilizing growing numbers of world migrants.
As an experimental theorizing effort, I identified and examined three different levels of educational transnationalism practiced between South Korea and the Unites
States: governmental level, institutional level, and familial and personal level.
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Educational Transnationalism at the Governmental Level
I intentionally differentiate governmental level educational transnationalism from the institutional even though considerable numbers of governmental activities are institutionalized. Governmental level educational transnationalism uniquely illustrates that these activities are practiced at the macro level and influence diverse modes of communications and transactions. It also brings to light ways in which educational transnationalism can often be in competition with other transnational fields. Moreover, I suggest that governmental level educational transnationalism between the United States and South Korea demonstrates an instance where state-run transnationalism is effective. In comparison with other transnational fields, education tends to be enacted through state decision making more than market-driven principles.
This is because most states apply national polices to their education in spite of global flows. A government gets profitable benefits and keeps its national policy by leading educational transnationalism
Governmental level educational transnationalism is enacted “from above,” with decisions and activities initiated by governments. Educational policies are deeply related to nation building and rebuilding. Thus, states have a vested interest in controlling educational transnationalism through creating policies that influence transnational practices.
I argued that governmental-initiated educational transnationalism between the
United States and Korea was initiated during the Joseon Dynasty, with the signing of the Korean-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1882. As elaborated in the chapter two, the Korean government was more interested in educational affairs than
177 economics or politics fields when it began forging international relations. Some pioneering Korean envoys to the United States stayed there either temporarily or permanently to learn about Western civilization and sciences. While many histories of
Korean-American immigration mostly documented labor migrants to Hawaii, the leaders of many early Korean-American communities were predominantly study abroad students [yuhaksaeng]. These yuhaksaeng were deeply involved in mobilizing the Korean Independence Movement during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) and later became political leaders in the new South Korean government or in the
Korean-American community.
Ever since the Korean government initiated educational transnationalism in
1882, it has continued to control policies related to transnational education. For instance, the Korean government created policies that limited the number of students who could study abroad by mandating a governmental examination, course work, and required remittances until the late 1980s.55 Even when restrictive policy was abolished in 1988 as a prerequisite for hosting the Olympics in Seoul, the Korean government still maintains policies that disallow early study abroad. Current Korean educational laws reflect conflicting views on study abroad. On the one hand, elementary and secondary school students who want to study abroad must officially quit attending public school because temporary or long absences for study abroad are not allowed. When students return from abroad, they are required to provide documentation detailing their schooling abroad to reenroll schools.
In contrast to these types of restrictive policies, there are other institutional dynamics that benefit students who study abroad. For instance, most of top-level
55 For more specific regulations, see the chapter two in this dissertation.
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Korean universities have special entrance examinations for students who have studied abroad and are proficient in English. These differing dynamics create an institutional ambivalence toward study abroad with the coexistence state-led globalization policies and institutional policies of institutions of higher learning. The Korean government seeks to both keep its national body within its borders by disallowing some students who from leaving the county, while also working to maximize the benefits of returning home students who have acquired global skills and knowledge abroad.
State-led style globalization policies have distinct consequences for transnational education. As discussed in chapter two, the Ministry of Education has managed English language education in public schools by recruiting native English speakers through TALK (Teach and Learn in Korea) and EPIK (English Program in
Korea) programs.56 Both programs emphasize cultural exchange between English – speaking countries and Korea while recruiting native English speakers as public schools’ English teachers or teachers’ assistants. The EPIK only hires college graduates who majored English or English education. TALK has looser criteria, hiring undergraduate students who want to experience Korean culture, many of whom hope to return to Korea or other Asian countries to pursue career opportunities after the program.57 The Korean government’s TALK and EPIK programs have had multiple effects on the country: First, they meet the need to recruit native English speakers as language teachers and teaching assistants in public schools. Second, they offer an opportunity for people from English speakers to consider further job opportunities
56 See the official websites for these two programs, www.talk.go.kr and www.epik.go.kr . 57 I have written many recommendation letters for the students who want to apply TALK program to evaluate their Korean proficiency level and cultural adaptability as a Korean instructor.
179 after they complete the programs. These two dynamics result in a third consequence: these programs facilitate transnational flows between Korea and English-speaking countries in the field of education and education-related labor markets.
In addition to English language initiatives, The Korean Ministry of Education also established CPIK (Chinese Program in Korea) recently to meet the high demand for Chinese language education. In order to address increasing transnational exchange, the Ministry recently established a separate institution focused on transnational and global businesses called the National Institute for International Education (NIIED).
The goal of NIIED is, “Raising global human resources and the center of educational
Korean wave”. The existence of this institution illustrates the way the Korean government seeks to incorporate nationalistic agenda into transnational or global education initiatives. Part of this strategy means opening its labor market to attract
English-speaking human resources. The term “Korean Wave [Hallyu]”58 is used to emphasize the Korean government’s parallel goal to capitalize on the spread of
Korean culture and products across the globe.
The Korean government’s involvement with public schools in the United
States is a recent phenomenon. Since Korea was a Japanese colony for over thirty years, between 1910 and 1945, the first modern school systems and curricula in the country were based on Japanese models. Even though many Korean intellectuals tried to establish an independent modern educational system during King Gojong’s Great
58 The term, “Korean Wave [Hallyu] was originally coined for transnational and global consumptions of Korean dramas in China during the late 1990s. As the international markets of Korean pop culture’s consumptions have been expanded into another East Asia, South Asia, the United States, and Europe, nationalistic connotation of this term disappeared. However, conservative and nationalistic Korean scholars and media still use this term to emphasize national identity of pop culture produced in Korea and by Koreans. For more specific discussion about the term, “Korean Wave,” see the Johan (2003 and 2005).
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Han Empire (1987-1910),59 Japanese imperialist aggression resulted in a strong
Japanese influence on the Korean educational system. Even after annexation and the colonial period had ended, the Japanese model had a strong influence on the policies and curricula of the public school systems in Korea. This is evident in the fact that up until the 1980s, the words use for “elementary school,” Gungmin Hakkyo (People’s
School), are directly from Japanese.
After colonialism, Korea experienced rapid industrialization between 1960s and 1990s. Along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, South Korea became known as one of the four dragons of Asia for its rapid development and globalization.
During this period, the number of Korean migrants to the United States grew exponentially. The Korean government took interest in U.S. public schools as the number of second-generation Korean-Americans became more significant. The
Korean government began supporting Korean language education at U.S. public schools and Korean community schools. In addition to sending teachers to experience at public schools in the U.S., the government provided financial support for Korean language programs. The Korean language portion of the World Language Program at
Fairfax County public schools was established through a grant from South Korea in
2011. Following this initiative, Fairfax County public schools has also established a dual immersion program in Korean and English for students in Kindergarten and first
59 One of the Korean intellectual groups that emphasized the importance of education during this early modern period is Daehanjaganghoe (The Association of the Great Han Self- Strengthening). This group published monthly magazines from July 1906 to July 1907 and one of the main contents of this magazine was about the editorials about education. For instance, the seventh magazine introduced one cabinet member’s proposal saying that “There is no hope to recover our national right and people’s benefits that have been lost so far from the governmental or societal level. The only hope we can have for now is a kind of indirect way of education that we can expect the effect in ten or twenty years.” (Busan University Jeompiljae Research Center, 2012, 13-14)
181 grade. While this experimental dual language program was initiated by Fairfax
County to accommodate the growing number of Korean-American students in the district, the Korean government has expressed interest in providing support in the form of both human and financial resources. The chairwoman of the Korean
Education Center in Washington, D.C. has made several visits to the school that participate in the dual immersion program to assess its effectiveness. Appointed by the Korean Ministry of Education, the chairwoman coordinates programs at
Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia that brings English teachers from Korea to learn about effective language instructions of U.S. public school classrooms. In addition to English teachers, teachers in other subjects are brought to the U.S. to learn about U.S. school systems, curricula, and teaching methodologies.
The Korean government’s intervention in Fairfax County’s public school system illustrates the fact that transnational initiatives can be driven by both international markets and state-led policies. The specific focus on Fairfax is, in large part, a response to the growing number of Korean emigrants to the area. At the moment of writing this dissertation, the Korean-American population in Fairfax
County is about 75,000 according to the Korean Education Center in Washington, D.C.
There are over 300 community-based Korean weekend programs and schools that teach second-generation children Korean language and culture in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The Korean Education Center supports and supervises community-based Korean educational programs, student events, and teacher’s training programs and conferences. In this way, the Korean government influences both U.S. public schools and the Korean-American community through language and cultural education efforts.
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Educational Transnationalism at Institutional Level
The dynamics created by transnational activities and practices that are institutionalized and those that are not have important impacts on the construction a transnational social field. If they are institutionalized, certain practices will occur on a regular basis and influence the volume and frequency of migrant movement.
Institutionalization creates the conditions for continued practices through stable structures. Institutional forms vary depending on several factors including whether the institutions are public or private. Public transnational educational institutions include government-initiated programs such as TALK, EPIK, the Fullbright Program, and study abroad programs at public higher educational institutions. Private initiatives include international schools and academies.
The line between public and private is often blurred when different types of institutions collaborate. For instance, the public TALK and EPIK programs began working with private educational consulting companies in creating strategies to reduce the costs of human resources. Similarly, the Department of Education of
Incheon City in South Korea began offering study abroad training during breaks for public school teachers in Fairfax County public schools through a private educational consulting company. Governmental and public educational institutions seek to save time and costs for on transnational educational activities by working with private educational institutions. The program coordinator of the Incheon City program said that the relationship between public and private institutions in transnational educational are almost like “cohabitation” because they depend on each other.60
60 I met him at the Dean’s lunch meeting that I explained in the beginning of this chapter. He
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Public transnational educational institutions often administer policies that involve the creation of programs and projects. The actual implementation of these initiatives is often delegated private educational institutions under the temporary contracts.
Some private transnational institutions administer programs without connections to governmental or public institutions. I met the director of B academy,
Mr. Lee at his office located in a five-story office building behind a small shopping mall in Fairfax. As we walked down a long corridor, we passed several classrooms filled with students. Displayed on the wall behind his desk was an impressive map.
The map had red flags placed on several Asian countries including South Korea. Mr.
Lee explained that he started B academy about twenty years prior as a way to pay for his college tuition. The Fairfax academy achieved great success and he quickly realized the concept had great potential. He then focused his efforts and resources on the business and has successfully launched seven branches located near Fairfax and in several Asian cities. When Mr. Lee started B academy in Fairfax County, the majority of his students were second-generation Korean-Americans. The majority of the parents from the initial years of the Fairfax academy had recently immigrated to the
United States and worked long hours at family-owned grocery stores, Laundromats, delis, and Korean restaurants. While the primary reason these parents migrated to the region was to educate their kids in America, they didn’t have the time to manage study and activities. B academy provided a service that released these working parents from the stress experienced when they could not support the education goals they set for their children. They trusted Mr. Lee’s Korean-owned B academy to fulfill this need.
was accompanied with the chairwoman of the Korean Education Center at Washington, D.C.
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Mr. Lee expanded this business to other locales near Fairfax county and later on to Seoul, Korea and other Asian metropolitan cities. One of these academies is located on a famous block in the Dachi-dong neighborhood of Seoul known for prestigious learning institutions. Other locations operate in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Beijing. Mr. Lee now spends more than half his times abroad working with the
Asian branches. Mr. Lee explained that the main objective of the Asian branches is teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to students who are preparing study abroad in the U.S.A. These businesses also provide consultation to Asian parents with students who are preparing study abroad in the U.S.A. Additionally, the Asian locations organize group tours for students to visit their dream colleges in the U.S.A. during summer vacations.
Mr. Lee has organized these businesses and programs without sponsorship from or collaboration with public institution. However, he has not operated completely without connection to governmental agencies. The academy received permission from the Fairfax county education department to issue I-20 forms for international students. This form allows incoming students to transfer some credits to public schools in the United States upon entrance. While B academy has not formal relationship with public institutions, this administrative procedure functions to draw more Asian students to study these local academies as a bridge to entering public schools or colleges in the United States. Additionally, this multinational private institution sometimes contacts public institutions to advertise in efforts to expand business.
Other educational institutions located in Dachi-dong, Seoul alongside B academy, are also private. Some Dachi-dong hagwons operate summer intensive SAT
185 preparation and intensive English writing programs for returning Korean yuhaksaeng.
While these hagwons are located in Seoul, South Korea, they advertise heavily in the
U.S., drawing both Korean students living in the States and U.S. college graduates to teach at these programs.
I interviewed a young woman named Geun-young, a junior at Georgetown
University who is from South Korea. Geun-young returns to Korea every summer to serve as an English writing instructor at a hagwon in Dachi-dong. Most of the students in the program are preparing to take the S.A.T. in preparation to enter a U.S. college. For Geun-young, these summer programs offer her a way to earn enough money for her tuition and expenses by working two months in at these private institutions in Dachi-dong. Geun-young said that many top-tier U.S. college Korean students return each summer to work in Dachi-dong and some even became full-time hagwon instructors after graduating rather than pursuing careers in the U.S.
Sometimes, religious institutions run transnational educational programs using their local resources. My sister-in-law immigrated to Manila, Philippines from
Daejeon, Korea about twenty years ago. She and her family have run a business out of their home for Korean students who want to study English. Sending students to the
Philippines costs less than sending them to the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, or New
Zealand. At my sister-in-law’s home stay business, dormitory fees and tuition for a year of English language training in Manila and Laguna, Philippines costs about
55,000 pesos, which is about $1,500 per month. My sister-in-law recently started a new English camp program at the church where she is attending by connecting the church in Philippines and the church in Korea. A Catholic church in Suwon, Korea,
Maria’s Son Church operates English language camps during summer and winter
186 breaks in Manila, Philippines. According to the advertisement for their Winter English
Camp 2014, the program will recruit 42 elementary and middle school students. The cost of this six-week program including flights, insurance, and room and board is about 3,800,000 won (about $3,800 in U.S. dollars).61
The transnational education field is formed, organized, and sustained through governmental, public, and private institutions. The level of formality, organization, and sustainability can be diverse depending on each institution. It is clear that this field exists to fulfill and social need and is growing all the time through the existence of many different types of institutions.
Educational Transnationalism at Familial and Personal Levels
While the family also operates as a type of social institution, transnational educational practices enacted at the level of the individual family are far from institutionalization. The actors of these practices at familial level are usually parents or children. These individual and family level decisions shape the spaces of transnational education because they represent needs to be fulfilled by institutions or within the family itself.
Mijin Kim is a rising 11th grade student who is a part of a gireogi family that lives between Fairfax and Korea. After learning that many students from Ivy League universities in the United States return to Korea during summer vacation, Mijin’s father, an affluent businessman, organized an intensive summer writing class for
Mijin and her friends. Like her father Mr. Kim before her, Mijin is within the top 3%
61 See the advertisement at the homepage, www.mariasons.or.kr.
187 at her high school. For this reason, Mr. Kim was not satisfied with sending Mijin to any of the SAT hagwons in Dachi-dong. Mr. Kim contacted yuhaksaeng organizations and found several Korean students attending Ivy League colleges who were experienced and motivated instructors willing to stay in Seoul during summer vacation. He provided these instructors a small office and where they taught five gireogi students, including Mijin. Mr. Kim and the instructor created a contract that the father of each student signed. It stated that the students had to attend lessons from
9am to 5pm every day, take practice SAT tests every week, and had to raise their test score by at least 50 points over the course of the summer. Each gireogi father paid about $5,000 for two month’s tuition to the instructors and took kids and instructors every weekend out to dinner. Mijin’s father expressed deep satisfaction with the intensive summer tutoring was going on. He intends to continue organizing this non- institutional course, finding instructors through the current instructor and his own research.
In addition to gireogi families, there are other kinds of transnational educational practices performed by families known as joki yuhak and parachute families. Joki yuhak, early study abroad, is widely practiced among middle and upper class Korean families who want their children to study in an English-speaking country for a certain period of time. They usually do this by sending their kids to relatives who live in an English-speaking country. If they do not have relatives abroad, they will find a Korean family or hagwon who can take care of their children. Unlike with gireogi families, neither parent accompanies their children abroad due to financial or familial reasons. Homestay businesses that cater to these types of students are flourishing in popular joki yuhak destinations. Since Fairfax County is well known in
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Korea as one of the best school districts in the U.S.A., many Korean parents seek to send their kids to Fairfax even though they do not have relatives in the area. Korean parents of a joki yuhak student sometimes pay $15,000 to $30,000 per year to homestay families depending on services their kids receive, seeming it as an investment in their children’s future.
I interviewed a homestay family who hosts three middle school ages boys in
Fairfax. Mr. and Mrs. Kim own a five-bedroom house located in the Oakton high school district. Mrs. Kim is a Korean-American mother of a boy in middle school and has a great interest in education. She started the boarding house business three years ago and serves as the primary guardian for the three boys as well as her son, giving them rides to their private schools and after-school hagwons each day. On weekends,
Mr. Kim, a full-time employee at an internet company, drives the three boys and his son to basketball games and church meetings. Mrs. Kim keeps the families of the boys informed about what is going on each day by uploading pictures to blog.62 I met one of the boys’ parents, Mr. and Mrs. Shin, who visited their son during the winter vacation in 2013. The family took a trip to New York and Philadelphia during their stay. Mr. Shin said that his son has made marked progress in English competency and he is satisfied with his son’s adaptation to private school in Fairfax.
Not all joki yuhak students and parents are as satisfied with their investment.
62 Not all the home stay family offer online services like Mr. and Mrs. Kim’s family. (http://trojan28.blog.me/150141832542) They criticized a recent trend that many Korean- American families try to open home stay businesses without any preparation or information. According to Mr. and Mrs. Kim, the ideal guardians for joki yuhak students need to take care of them just like their own kids. They also introduced several websites that offers information about joki yuhak. These sites are mostly types of online communities and they are offering the local school districts’ characters, famous private schools, home stay house pictures, and college information. More than half of these also run consulting businesses about study abroad [yuhak] in general. For instance, see the online community, http://cafe.naver.com/jinuhak12/441.
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As a Korean newspaper released in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland reported, joki yuhak students and home stay families frequently experience social problems such as irresponsible guardianship, maladjustment, and isolation.63 Since these businesses are not formal institutions, most homestay families open their businesses without official business permits. Since there is no way to supervise this kind of business, Korean parents who visit homestay families when deciding where to send their children depend on the impressions they have when meeting the homestay families. While Mrs. Shin is satisfied with her son’s stay with the Kim family, she mentioned that many Korean parents send their kids to boarding school after becoming dissatisfied with home stay situations.
Gireogi families are the most representative cases of transnational educational practices at familial level. As discussed in the body of this dissertation, gireogi families decide to live apart for their own familial reasons and motivations. While joki yuhak students and families tend to depend on relatives home stay businesses and yuhak consulting companies for information, gireogi families usually do their own research, planning, decision-making, and initiate gireogi lifestyles using their own resources and networks.
The most important factor for both joki yuhak and gireogi families when they select a place for students to study abroad is educational environment, particularly school districts. For Korean parents, a good school district means a high rate of top-
63 The article of Korea Times of September 13, 2010 analyzed the cases of joki yuhak students who have shown social deviation under the title of “Aftereffects of joki yuhak, they suffer when they become adults.” (Korea Times, A1, September, 13, 2013) Another article of the same newspaper of September 16, 2013 reported one home stay family was arrested for sexual harassment of the youth and forcing them to drink. (Korea Times, A1, September, 16, 2013)
190 level college admission, a wide range of extracurricular and AP programs, parents in esteemed professionals, and active PTAs. They prefer residential areas with few commercial buildings, low crime rates, and a minimal percentage of black and Latino populations. These same standards apply when Korean families consider a private school. When considering both public and private options in the United States,
Korean families seek out environments that will aid in their children’s educational development.
Parachute families are usually upper class Asian families, mainly from Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Like joki yuhak and gireogi families, they want to educate their children in an English- speaking country like the U.S.A. or Canada. The decision of staying in the U.S.A. or
Canada sometimes made by the parachute kids themselves rather than by their parents
(Newman 2009). Parachute kids are young, school-aged children who stay in English- speaking countries without their parents. They usually live with a relative or at a private school dormitory. According to one study, in 1990, more than 30,000 parachute kids from Taiwan alone lived in the U.S.A. (Hom 2002). This number is growing as Asian countries continue imposing constraints on educational environments and highly competitive college entrance examinations.
People also practice educational transnationalism at the personal level. The decision to pursue college study abroad, high school and college exchange programs, and adult training programs abroad are mainly planned at the level of individual, reflecting each person’s needs and motivations. This process involves applying for visas to the host country. For instance, the U.S. consulate issues a J-1 exchange visitor visa for individuals who want to visit or participate in work-and study-based exchange
191 programs.64 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korean issues a D-2 student visa for foreign students and D-4-1 language training student visa for foreigners who want to study Korean in the country.65
Performing Educational Citizenship
In this chapter, I have discussed three levels of transnational educational practices: governmental, institutional, and familial/personal. When these three levels are compared to other transnational fields on a theoretical level, they could easily be categorized as only institutional and informal. In order to build a new and more accurate concept of “educational transnationalism,” more empirical evidence is needed to explain the distinct characteristics of the wide spread phenomena of transnational educational acts and practices.
History of international migration has primarily focused on the political and economic forces that influence movement (Massey et al. 1998). For this reason, transnational migration fields have been studied primarily at the macro level.
However, the post-industrial migration has become increasingly diversified in terms of destinations and motivations of migrants. This moment in transnational migration presents a need for scholars to these diverse migratory phenomena that do not fit into political economic models.66
64 http://j1visa.state.gov/basics 65 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs runs http://hikorea.go.kr/pt/mail_kr.pt to take care of foreigners’ issues. 66 Massey et al. also criticized one of the traditional migration theories, ‘push and pull’ theory as insufficient explanation of migrants’ decision-making in spite of the absence of economic and demographic disparities. They suggest “a more extensive use of household surveys, life histories, and in-depth community studies” (Massey et al. 15) to avoid reified application of a macro level theory.
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Recent migrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to highly industrialized countries do not only migrate to pursue economic opportunities. As I have shown, educational opportunities are often one of the main reasons people choose to migrate.
Simply considering statistics about international migration does not reveal long-term plans of individual families or their varied histories of settlement. Often motivations change over time. While a family may have initially migrated for economic reason, their decision to stay in a place may include educational factors. As second and the third generations of immigrants to the United States becomes increasingly representative of nations from around the world, migration theory needs to develop new theories to explain these new practices. Educational migration has emerged in recent decades on a greater level. Post-industrial migration is now taking place for numerous reasons. Often it has to do with quality of life factors that are not economic in nature. Educational opportunities have become an increasingly important factor for individual migrants and their children. In some cases, families make decisions to move to places that are far from home and have less economic opportunities in the form of jobs. Oftentimes, these families see the decision to move as better in the long run for their descendants’ educational opportunities, despite initial economic sacrifices.
Educational migration affects the changing conceptions of citizenship. As transnational studies has discussed, conceptions of citizenship are not only tied to nation, territory, and land. Entrepreneurial transmigrants frequently cross national borders for business purposes. Consumers pursue transactions across borders by either physically going to different locations to buy goods or through using diverse channels
193 of transnational investment, consumption, and transaction. People who pursue better educational opportunities justify their transnational activities as consume commodities and services globally. Many Korean gireogi families leave the national education system to educate their children in educational environments that they see as higher in quality. Korean gireogi families perform educational citizenship by activating their right to learn and educate themselves across the national borders.
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CONCLUSION: EMPLACED TRANSNATIONAL SPACES AND BELONGING AMONG GIREOGI MOTHERS
Again, At the Airport
Mijin and Misun’s father, Mr. Kim, who had organized intensive English summer program in Dachi-dong, Seoul, Korea, visited Fairfax during his daughters’ winter vacation in December 2013. Misun is now a junior in college and Mijin is an
11th grade high school student. During this visit, the Kim family took a family trip to
Florida and had New Year’s Day rice cake soup together. At the breakfast table on
New Year’s Day, Misun said to her father, “Dad, you look so old. How have you come to live such a lonely life without us in Korea?” Following this painful question, the
Kim couple just stared each other for a moment. That night they made the decision to reunite once Mijin enters a college in two years. More than ten years have passed since the family separated, living a gireogi life as a way to provide the best possible educational opportunities for their two daughters. After spending time together as a family for a few short weeks, Mr. Kim had to return to Seoul. At Dulles International
Airport, Mijin and Misun gave their father a big hug and Mr. Kim grabbed the hands of his wife. The lounge in front of Korean Air that Sunday morning was crowded with families saying goodbye to departing guests. I recognized some of families who were there to see gireogi fathers off, on their way back to Korea after a reunion like the
Kim family. Some families shed tears in front of the security gate while others were busily headed for the parking lot. I tried to imagine what might be on the mind of
195 gireogi fathers when they travel back home to Korea. I also thought about the many other gireogi fathers who could not make the trip to and hadn’t seen their families in a long time. After dropping off Misun at her friend’s house for a birthday party and
Mijin at her math academy, Mrs. Kim invited me over for a cup of coffee at her home.
We spent the past ten years living for our daughters, we would like to
spend the next ten years living for us. We do not regret our decision to live a
gireogi life, but our lives have changed a lot because of it. I had to stop my
career and couldn’t spend quality time with my husband. I know he has
already started renovating our Seoul house to welcome me back, but now I
feel like here is my home. So many parts of my daily life are in here. Making
Mijin’s breakfast and lunch box, driving her to her hagwons…... Will I be able
to live with my husband again after all this? Will it be difficult to adjust? I
think it will take a great deal of effort to adjust to life in Seoul when I return.
(Mrs. Kim, 52, McLean)
Mrs. Kim’s reflections about her gireogi life illustrate that emplaced transnational lives influence one’s sense of belonging. Gireogi experiences shape family relations and family dynamics. Each family member’s sense of belonging changes as they continuously readjust their motivations, plans, and investments over the course of their lives.
This concluding chapter summarizes findings from the previous chapters and makes suggestions about the emplaced differences of transnational social fields. I discuss the ways Korean gireogi families construct different belongings depending on two main factors: 1. their ability to mobilize social and cultural capital, and 2. the frequency of social contact and quality of relationships in the receiving communities.
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The majority of my research focuses on mothers and children who live in Fairfax school district located in Virginia, just a few miles from Washington, D.C. After laying out my main arguments and findings about transnational families’ sense of belonging, I discuss the theoretical implications and limits of this research, and make suggestions for future research.
Social and Cultural Capital and Structural Belonging
The gireogi families who I met during my filed research cannot be generalized into a monolithic type. My research shows that there is diversity among them in terms of life style, educational values, parenting, and social networks. I did find, however, some tendencies that differentiated the daily lives of families in the two localities of my research: the McLean and Centreville neighborhoods in Fairfax County. There are visible differences in the management of social and cultural capital between families in these two locations, particularly in time management and social networks. Some of these differences can be attributed to the socioeconomic standing of these families - generally, those families in McLean are wealthier than those in Centreville.
Differences in access to valuable information, particularly about schools and educational resources, created disparate senses of belonging among gireogi mothers.
In this sense, social capital played a particularly important role in constructing a sense of place and sense of belonging among gireogi families. The term I use to refer to the differentiated senses of belonging caused by varying degrees of access to and management of social and cultural capital is “structural belonging”. Structural belonging is a sense of belonging that is constructed through accessing, managing, and actualizing resources of social and cultural capital.
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While mothers in both McLean and Centreville organized their time around their school-aged children’s schedules, there were differences in the ways after school time was structured. McLean mothers tended to organize tight after-school schedules with various extracurricular activities and hagwon study, leaving little free time for their children. Hagwon is the Korean name for a private tutoring school that usually operates after school hours or on the weekend. McLean has numerous hagwons with instructors who are current or former teachers and counselors. Some McLean families spend as much as 2,000 USD each month to send their children to these private institutions. McLean mothers often prioritize hagwon study in planning their family schedules. Hagwon is one of the most frequent topics of discussion among McLean gireogi mothers at social gatherings and school-related events. In addition to providing supplemental tutoring, these private institutions often offer educational consulting services ranging from time management skills to college admissions processes. McLean mothers usually do not work and often hire maids or nannies to help clean, cook meals, and drive students to activities. McLean gireogi fathers make frequent visit to their families in the U.S. The children of McLean gireogi families often return to Korea to participate in intensive summer programs in the Dachi-dong neighborhood of Seoul, which is known for its elite private educational institutions.
Centreville mothers also manage intensive schedules filled with time consuming rides to hagwon and after-school activities. However, since they are generally less well off than their McLean counterparts, many Centreville mothers have part-time jobs in the Korean-American community to support their tight financial situations. For this reason, gireogi mothers in Centreville tend to rely on friends and Korean church folks rather than nannies or maids. Since these mothers
198 often treat friends and neighbors like extended family members, Centreville mothers become more connected to their local Korean-American community. Working
Centreville mothers may not have much time to spend with their kids while working, but they frequently call or send text messages to their children to check in on them.
Children in Centreville gireogi families often have some to play or spend time with their siblings after school. Due to financial constraints, there are usually longer periods of time between visits of fathers in Centreville gireogi families. This sometimes results in more authoritarian parenting styles among Centreville mothers, who seek to compensate for the absence of father figures
The majority of both McLean and Centreville mothers study English as a
Second Language at either local hagwons or community colleges, but their motivations for doing so vary. Some McLean mothers try to continue their professional careers through participating in degree and certificate programs in
English language at community colleges. Other McLean mothers study English to set an example for their kids. Centreville mothers generally enroll in ESL programs at hagwons as a part of their visa requirements.
The ways of which McLean and Centreville mothers socialize with other gireogi and Korean-American mothers plays an important role in shaping their senses of belonging. McLean gireogi mothers usually do not socialize with Korean-
American mothers. They usually only interact with other McLean resident gireogi mothers through religious meetings and support groups for their children’s activities, such as orchestra performances. Through exclusive social gatherings, McLean gireogi mothers maintain a tight-knit group of women of a similar socio-economic status who value private education and the systematic organization of children’s lives. Centreville
199 gireogi mothers’ social networks usually reach into the Korean-American community through part-time jobs, church activities, and online community activities. Centreville gireogi mothers are usually invisible among Korean-American communities, keeping the fact that they live in the United States without their husbands to themselves.
More than half of McLean mothers expect their children to attend Korean colleges rather than colleges in the United States. One of the main reasons for this tendency is that McLean gireogi parents hope their children will maintain the upper class privileges they already have established for them in Korea. This kind of
“domestication” of foreign study can be interpreted as a strategic accumulation of educational capital for the Korean upper class (Kang and Abelmann 2011). South
Korea is known as a hakbeol (academic cliques) society where academic achievement and networks are regarded as one of the most important resources in determining and maintaining social class. In comparison, Centreville gireogi mothers expect their children to attend college or university in the United States. While both McLean and
Centreville mothers imagine their children will become a “global citizen” with numerous educational and career opportunities, McLean mothers prepare their children to enter job markets in East Asia or Korea while Centreville mothers expect their children to grow into well-adjusted Korean-American U.S. citizens.
The different ways gireogi mothers in McLean and Centreville manage time, socialize, and parent their children influence the different ways they construct senses of belonging. McLean mothers construct a “bifocal belonging” by vigilantly collecting educational information about entering higher educational institutions in both the United States and South Korea. Centreville mothers maintain “adjusted belonging” by assimilating into the larger Korean-American community, particularly
200 connecting with other working mothers. The visible class differences between the families in the two locations affect their home-making practices. Since most McLean gireogi families still have considerable amounts of property in Korea, investing in foreign study is a way to maintain their privileged upper class social status.
Conversely, most Centreville gireogi families no longer have property in Korea other than what is minimally required for gireogi fathers. Thus, Centreville gireogi families tend to disconnect from their former Korean life style and try to assimilate into the local Korean-American community.
Feedback and Relational Belonging
When migrants move to new destinations, their sense of belonging and sense of place are disoriented. In the process of making new homes and adjusting to new places, migrants develop new place identities. The feedback people receive from those in their receiving communities plays an important role in building a sense of belonging. Community studies scholars, Geoff Mulgan has asserted that “people are keenly attuned to reading feedback from social environments on whether they belong”
(2009). There has little scholarly work about the relationship between receiving community feedback and migrants’ social integration in a new place. In my research on Korean gireogi educational migrant families in Fairfax, Virginia, I have found that both long-time residents and newcomers experience an awareness of the feedback they receive. People who have moved recently are the most sensitive to this feedback.
Reconstructing a sense of belonging in a new environment is in large part built upon how migrants read and respond to various forms of feedback. “Relational belonging” is a type of belonging constructed and reconstructed in the processes of creating social
201 relations in new communities. Mulgan identified several things that must be examined when considering the feedback systems that affect belonging. These include groups of people such as family, friends, and ties by association. Additionally, larger systems such as the economy, politics culture, physical environment, everyday public services, homes, the law and its enforcement inform sense of place (2009).
I contribute to research and theory in community studies and agree that all of the areas Mulgan identifies are important factors in the creation of new place identities. Additionally, media representations are important sites where feedback is presented in ways that can influence the perceptions and interpretations of a social group within a larger society. In this dissertation, I focus on the specific feedback systems and representations that shape gireogi mothers’ senses of belonging, senses of home, and parenting styles.
Among these various forms of feedback systems, media representations of gireogi families are highly influential. The U.S. media typically depicts gireogi families as “fractured” and “abnormal,” focusing on the split nature family arrangements in order to educate their children in an English-speaking country.
Korean television shows and commercials depict gireogi fathers as sympathetic image while gireogi mothers are portrayed as selfish figures. Many gireogi mothers are well aware of these representations and they feel that they are unfairly represented in media depictions of gireogi families.
The Korean-American community in Fairfax often holds contradictory attitudes about Koreanness, ones that make new Korean immigrants and gireogi families feel uncomfortable. Many Korean-Americans who have lived in the U.S.A. for a long time treat only traditional Korean concepts as acceptable. Modern and
202 contemporary culture is seen as dangerous. This results in negative feedback being espoused by Korean-American communities toward new Korean migrants. This feedback complicates the ability of gireogi families to develop a sense of place and national belonging. Stereotypical images of gireogi mothers are unfaithful to their partners, selfish, affluent, overly assertive, and only concerned with the education of their children, circulate in the media and in Korean-American communities. Gireogi mothers struggle against most of these images, but sometimes embrace the perception that they are assertive regarding their children’s education. The receiving community’s negative feedback hinders the ability of gireogi mothers to build a sense of place. In many instances, these women actually hide their transnational lifestyle and identities from others.
The growing number of gireogi families is transforming traditional concepts of family and family dynamics among Koreans and overseas Koreans. Many modern
Korean people do not think cohabitation is a necessary condition for family ties. As gireogi families illustrate, temporary or prolonged physical separation of family members in pursuit of a better education for their children is now an acceptable living condition for many South Koreas. The frequency of visits among family members and online communication are keys to shaping and reshaping familial belonging. At the beginning of my research, I thought that Centreville families communicate online more frequently than McLean families to make up for their rare visits. When I conducted interviews, however, I found that McLean gireogi families tend to use online communication methods more frequently. This happens because many
Centreville gireogi mothers do not have spare time to communicate because they work part-time jobs. Infrequent physical contact and rare communication loosen
203 bonds in many gireogi families. Living gireogi lives always transforms family relations and dynamics. The feedback family members receive from one another is crucial and changes family dynamics and perceptions. For instance, the ways in-laws respond to gireogi mothers can cause these women to rethink the traditional concept of family and Korean family obligations. Conjugal relationships are transformed due to long distance separation. Since they do not live together and do not see one another often, gireogi couples rely on past memories and long-distance communication to maintain their relationships. Many gireogi couples that have been separated for long periods of time try to maintain a formal conjugal relationship by focusing on their children’s educational issues.
Oftentimes, Korean gireogi mothers’ parenting style and educational values are transformed in response to feedback from their surrounding communities. Advices and encouragement from church pastors, teachers, and friends, can have a great influence on the ways gireogi mothers renegotiate their roles and values. Some mothers I interviewed came to realize that non-academic fields can be possible future path for their children. The obsessive emphasis placed on outstanding academic performances and excellent grades was replaced with communicating with children about their interests. Some assertive mothers became highly supportive mothers in these instances. I found this kind of transformation is usually more common among gireogi mothers who spent more than five years abroad. As gireogi mothers spend more time in the United States, they come to redefine their concepts of “being educationally successful in the traditional Korean sense” and a “good education.”
School District Belonging and Narrative Belonging
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It is common among Korean gireogi families to move frequently in search of better educational settings for their children. A considerable number of gireogi families have moved either in Korea or in the U.S.A. Since creating the best educational environment for their children is the top priority among gireogi families, other family issues and business are usually arranged in accordance with this priority.
In this dissertation, I have analyzed cases where families have moved to better school districts either in order to escape problematic educational environments or to pursue more competitive schools. I found that there is a correlation between these families’ senses of belonging and their relationships to the school districts their children attend.
What I term “school district belonging” is shaped by a strong attachment to an educational environment. For Korean gireogi families, school district belonging is formed through a combination of the perception that districts has a good reputation and rationalizing moving their families to new places through well-known proverbs, sayings, and episodes in history. Along with school district belonging, gireogi mothers construct a “narrative belonging” as a way to create and share their reasons for moving to new places and how they came to live there.
School district belonging is one of the most common types of belonging that families construct during their gireogi lives. This type of belonging is rooted in a long history of educational values in Korean society. Contemporary Korean parents are often motivated by the Confucian emphasis on educational environment and drive for upward mobility. Confucianism is sometimes a way people justify the burdens they may face when they seek out better school districts. School district belonging does not necessarily correspond to class background. This type of belonging is based on functional adjustment and the ways people narrate their belonging in a school district.
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While the previous literature tells about the relationship between education and social capital, it does not consider the ways social capital is contextualized in a specific place. Analyses of the relationship between social capital and sense of belonging can illuminate the varied and complex ways social capital is realized in new environments.
This research shows that many gireogi families select their residential communities according to class. However, their emotional attachments and investments do not always correspond to their class backgrounds. Sense of place and sense of belonging are constructed throughout the migration process, which results in transformations and fragmentations of identity. Gireogi families engage in an ongoing series of negotiations including decision making, splitting parenting roles, separation, adjustments, and reorganization of life goals. For these reasons, school district belonging is not exclusively shaped by social capital. It is a strategic belonging that is negotiated and renegotiated through human relationships and places.
Gireogi families often rationalize their choices to move in search of better educational environment during the times before they can see the beneficial results of their investments. Korean proverbs such as “the human being needs to play in a big river,” “you can send a horse to Jeju Island, but human beings should go to Seoul,” or
“it is better to become a Dragon’s tail than Chicken’s head,” highlight the importance of educational environment and Confucian discipline. Investing faith in a traditional valuation of educational environments sometimes leads to an obsessive attachment to school districts among Korean parents. In addition to Korean sayings, there is the model of Mencius’ mother, who moved three times in search of better educational environment for her son, who became a well-known Confucius scholar. The image of the Mencius mother is frequently used by gireogi mothers to justify their attachments
206 to school districts. Locating their own decisions and live choices within this historical episode and Korean sayings plays a part in “providing reassurance, relieving anxiety, and reinforcing within-group worldviews,” (Ross 2009: 8) in uncertain times when families are adjusting to new communities.
These things help gireogi families, especially mothers, narrate their stories.
Gireogi mothers share their stories with one another as “social performances”
(Polletta et al. 2011:110). The rough narrating their lives, these women reveal social conditions that shape their performances of storytelling. In this dissertation I have focused on the ways of stories are presented rather than their contents. In treating these narratives as performances, I seek to illuminate the communicative environment, social interactions, and conditions of reception surrounding these women’s stories.
The most common pattern I found in the telling of stories by gireogi mothers is the use of Reassuring Questions. The storyteller begins with a rhetorical question referring to, and performing a reassuring belief in well-known Korean sayings or proverbs. A woman may say, “Don’t you know that the Korean saying that says……?”, “Have you ever heard the expression……?”, “Didn’t you listen the saying that……?”, or “I wonder if you might have heard the saying that…….”
Beginning a narrative with reassuring questions allows the storyteller to explore whether the listener is trustworthy while also giving an authoritative background for performing storytelling.
When gireogi parents speak with persons of authority in education such as school teachers, hagwon teachers, afterschool activity instructors, music instructors, or consultants, they often use the Opinionated Claiming technique. When gireogi parents perform their life histories in social gatherings with one another, they use
207 several techniques including Anecdotal Storytelling, Chronological Narrative, and
Flashback Relating. Suda, the chit-chat or everyday talk among women, can range across topics and themes (Kang 2005). Suda is an overall form of narratives and group conversations at social gatherings and group meetings among gireogi mothers.
In these spaces, women open up about their experiences without thinking about the structure of their narrative. It is an atmosphere of a conversational carnival. Women easily join suda without hesitation and the topics of conversation can move from one thing to another without any relation. These narrative performances help construct place identities. Through the repetition of storytelling about why they moved to a new place and how they came to make a home in a new place, these women assert an individual and collective sense of belonging based in their school district community.
These narrative performances help them rationalize their settlement in a new place and strengthen their sense of belonging.
Theoretical Implications
Implications for Sense of Place Studies
This study has revealed several implications that sense of place and sense of belonging are constructed at local places by transnational migrants. As I have argued in this dissertation, gireogi mothers create an emplaced sense of belonging within transnational life styles. While creating and maintaining transnational households, they practice place-making in their local receiving communities through building various kinds of belongings. Social capital, feedback, educational value, and reflexive processes are all factors that shape emplaced belonging for gireogi mothers. I have found that gireogi mothers construct senses of belonging based on resources, how
208 they respond to community feedback, the level of emphasis they place on school districts, and how they narrate their stories. These findings show that transnational families try to make places by creating senses of home at new local destinations.
Sense of place studies and community studies have tried to reconceptualize the meanings of place and belonging in the wake of globalization (Appiah 2006; Block
2008; Harvey 1996; Massey 1997; May 1996). These studies show that the meanings of place and belonging are far from disappearing within the globalized conditions of modern life. People are actually more actively seeking to fulfill these fundamental human needs in adapting to new, globalized places. Scholars agree that there is no homogeneous sense of tradition within globalizing communities. Migrants transform racial, ethnic, and cultural landscapes of communities by bringing pieces of their heritages with them. The process of community transformation, however, is not merely made by migrants but also by the changing perceptions of long-time residents of receiving communities. The stories I heard in my research about a suburban
American community illustrate how new traditions are built through negotiations between new and resident communities. This dissertation project documents some aspects of this type of transformation through focusing on place-making dynamics among Korean gireogi mothers in Fairfax County. Gireogi mothers redefine traditions and images of the community in making meaning out of their transnational lives. The sense of belonging created around their school district often plays a strong role in this process.
Implications on Transnationalism Studies
Transnationalism is defined as “the processes by which immigrants forge and
209 sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994). While transnationalism is not a new phenomenon, contemporary migration trends are different from migratory patterns of the past and there is a need for critical scholarship to account for these changes.
Modern modes of transportation, communication and media have meant that people move faster. These developments have also made it possible for people to move without entirely “uprooting” migrants’ sense of home. Recent immigrants tend to maintain aspects of their cultural heritage and connections with sending societies while they simultaneously try to adjust to new places.
Transnationalism studies have identified several transnational fields: economic, political, and cultural. In this dissertation, I argue that there is a need to further conceptualize education as a distinct transnational social field.
Korean gireogi parents’ specific education acts form an educational transnational field that distinguishes them from most other immigrant groups. The exclusive reason gireogi families move frequently and practice transnational life- styles is to pursue better educational environments for their children. Education migration is practiced by Korean families at both the institutional and non- institutional levels. As yet, there has been little empirical research in this area. This dissertation project is an effort to make visible a recent migration trend and to make a case for the further study of transnational education migration.
This study also emphasizes the importance of emplaced transnationalism by exploring migrants’ senses of place and belonging. Contrary to media depictions in both the United States and Korea, gireogi mothers do not live free and easy transnational life styles. Often, these women struggle to create and maintain their
210 belongings through resources and networks. Their mobility is unevenly distributed and their belonging is relational. Emplaced transnationalism provides a much needed revision to abstract conceptions of transnationalism by contextualizing transnational migrant experiences.
Limits of Research
A transnational family is a multi-local or multi-sited unit made up of members living separately in different places (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002). As one of contemporary transnational phenomena, transnational families illustrate how transnationalism is ingrained in everyday lives. Studies of transnational families need to explore the everyday lives and practices of family members living apart from one another. An important site for these types of study is the power distribution, dynamics, and gender relations among family members.
A gireogi family consists of a gireogi mother, gireogi children, and a gireogi father. The typical arrangement in this type transnational family is the mother and children living in an English-speaking country and the father living and working on their home country. A rich picture of a gireogi family can be illuminated by studying the everyday lives and relational networks among family members. The focus on this study has been on belonging and their place-making among gireogi mothers. While this approach has enabled me to shed light on previously uncovered dynamics in a transnational migrant population, it also presents limits. The limits of this research are presented.
First, this study does not paint a whole picture of transnational families. My research on gireogi mothers’ sense of belonging and place is a crucial part of
211 understanding the family dynamics of gireogi families. Many gireogi families experience an unexpected sense of disorientation or loss when they start living gireogi lives. Mothers in particular must cope with disempowerment and disorientation. This study discusses parenting styles but, the relations between each gireogi parent and their children were not studied at an in-depth level. Some of this lack of attention to family dynamics was due to the fact that it was hard to find times to connect with busy families and most of interviewees did not allow me to observe their family time.
For these reasons, my analyses of parenting styles were based on limited observation and narration in interviews. Furthermore, this study did not collect a significant amount of information about gireogi children. The few gireogi children that I met during my field research showed a tremendous diversity in age, language preference, sibling and school friend relations, academic performance, time management, and involvement in afterschool activities. While I originally intended this dissertation to provide a picture of the sense of belonging among gireogi children, I have had to bracket that out with the intention to pursue these types of study in future research.
Second, this study is not focused on gender relations. Separation of families affects each person and relationships between them. Relationships between mothers and children, fathers and children, wife and husband, and in-laws are all influenced by separated family arrangements. Since gireogi mothers practice lone parenting, the mothering role is usually expanded to include things that are usually the role of fathers. As discussed in the chapter four, the expectations of in-laws change as gireogi families live extended periods of time apart. All of these dynamics cause changes in gender relations. As illustrated in the chapter three, many gireogi mothers became empowered their mothering roles by expanding their social networks or becoming
212 involving social activities. However, this is only the mother’s side of story. A deeper investigation into relations in gireogi families would give much greater attention to the experiences of fathers.
Third, this study focuses on one of many transnational educational migration contexts. This dissertation is about belonging among gireogi mothers in mainly
Fairfax County, Virginia. While Fairfax County is one of the most popular destinations for gireogi families, a study of families in Fairfax County cannot claim to represent the diversity among this kind of family. Many American suburban communities with prestigious school districts may reveal similar and different place- making techniques among gireogi mothers. The Fairfax County was a rich site for the study of this kind of place-related belonging and because it houses both a Korean-
American community and newly-immigrated community. The stories of women in
Fairfax illustrate some of the ways Korean gireogi mothers create senses of belonging.
Suggestions for Future Research
The limits of this study open up new questions for future research. I offer suggestions for further studies. First, gireogi fathers and gireogi children can be studied to understand how transnational family arrangement constructs different belongings among split family members. This kind of research necessitates multi- sited ethnography as a research method and requires fieldwork over extended periods of time. Researchers need to observe family dynamics and interactions among family members. Creating a rapport with family members is important. Particularly, studying gireogi children requires caution not only because they are minors but also because they are particularly sensitive to the opinions and responses of adults around them.
213
Most gireogi children perceive themselves as different from Koreans, Korean-
Americans, and Americans. For these reason, their sense of belonging needs to be studied multidimensionally. Even though some gireogi children are acculturated as
1.5 generation Korean-Americans, their national belongings are more complex than
1.5 generation Korean-American youth. By the senses of belonging that are created by all transnational family members, an extended study could suggest how globalization and transnationalization are practiced in everyday lives.
Second, there is a room for research about gireogi families who return to
South Korea. Over twenty years have passed since Korean gireogi families emerged in the field of transnational education. Some people remain in the English-speaking country, others return to Korea. As discussed in the chapter three, many McLean gireogi families usually return to Korea in order to send their children to Korean colleges. Returned gireogi families often serve as a resource for future gireogi families. Informational networks among these former and future families can be researched to understand efforts to maintain and transfer social capital through education across generations. Studies of gireogi children’s readjustment processes and their influence on Korean schools can illuminate how transnational youth constitute a new body of multicultural students.
Third, a comparative study between Korean gireogi families and Chinese parachute families could be a fruitful area for research. These two types of family practice occur among middle and upper class East Asian families who seek to educate their children in a developed English-speaking country like the United States, Canada, or Australia. Both China and South Korea have adopted highly competitive college entrance examinations due to overpopulation and limited job markets. Additionally,
214 both countries traditionally value on educational achievement more than technical training. Both Korean gireogi families and Chinese parachute families seem to represent a social crystallization of an ever-competitive social anxiety in East Asian countries. Comparative research on these transnational families can illustrate how different East Asian countries respond to globalization and transnationalization and how educational transnationalism is practiced at the family level.
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APPENDIX 1. DEMOGRAPHIC CHRACTERISTICS OF THE PARTICIPANTS
Centreville Kids Jobs McLean Kids Jobs and Mothers and Mothers Study Study 1 Mrs. Song two son Mrs. Kim (47) One TV drama script th (41) (8 grade, daughter writer, Medical 2th grade) (11th grade) Doctor's wife 2 Mrs. Yu three Mrs. Choi Two cable TV (45) kids (8, (48) daughters narrator 6, 4) (17, 13) 3 Mrs. Yoo two former Mrs. Son (49) two son (35) sons music (17, 14) (10, 5) teacher 4 Mrs. Lee two ESL study, Mrs. Kim one son A former copy cleaning (38) sons company (45) (9th writer, tutor (10, 5) worker grade) Professor's wife 5 Mrs. Kim Two Taekwon Mr. Kim (51) one Visiting (43) sons -do daughter scholar (15, 8) hagwon (15) wife- master Pharmacist 6 Mr. Oh (49) Two A former Mrs. Kwon One son, ESL study sons reporter, (36) one studying (15, 12) graduate daughter studies (11, 7) 7 Mrs. Lee Two ESL study, Michelle two (37) daughters Korean (38) daughters (7, 5) restaura-- nt’s part- (13, 10) time cashier 8 Mrs. Park (45) two sons Homesta Mrs. Song (38) two y daughters business ( 16, 13) 9 Mrs. Shin Three ESL Mrs. Cho (35) one son (53) kids( 20, study, (2nd 17, 15) works grade) at Korean bakery 10 Mrs. Joo Three Divorced, Mrs. Kim One Professor's full-time (51) kids (19, (48) daughter wife insurance and one son 17, 11) company (11th, 9th) worker 216
11 Mrs. Chang Two Part- Mrs. Lee Two sons ESL study (42) daughter time (51) (11th, 8th th th (4 , 6 laundry- grades) grades) mat cleaner ESL study 12 Mrs. Koh One ESL Mrs. Choi one Professor’s (39) daughte study (50) daughter, wife r (13) two sons( 21, 11th, 8rh grades) 13 Mrs. Park Three Part- Mrs. Lee two Professor’s (40) kids (3rd time (39) daughters wife Korean grade, school 4, 2) teacher ESL study 14 Mrs. Lee Two Full- Mrs. Hwang two sons Visiting (52) sons time (47) scholar (22, 18) nail artist 15 Mrs. Chung Two Part- Mrs. Hong Two sons (36) daughte time hair (34) (10, 7) designer rs (10, ESL 7) study 16 Mrs. Koo One son a former Mrs. Sohn one son dance (50) (17) instructor (40) (11) 17 Mrs. Shin Two sons ESL Mrs. Suh (38) one daughter Mr. Suh: Medical (12) (33) (6, 4) study doctor 18 Mrs. Yi (39) One ESL Mrs. Lee (43) one son A former daughter study and one correspondent’s wife and one daughter son (16, 13)
19 Mrs. Suh two ESL Mrs. Lim two Mr. Lim: The (43) sons study (51) daugthers owner of an advertising co. (17, 15) (20, 15) 20 Mrs. Ju (50) two ESL study Mrs. Kim (52) two Mr. Kim: Part-time daughters daughters businessman (20, 11th restaurant waitress (19, 15) grade)
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APPENDIX 2. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Korean Transnational Family Study Mother Interview
Interview No. Name of Interviewee: Address: Telephone Numbers: Date and Hour of Interview: Duration of Interview: Comments:
Interview Completed: Date Follow-up Interview: Date Case Number
1. Place Making 1) What is the most important reason to practice transnational educational migrant family pattern in the U.S., particularly in this community? 2) What kind of challenges did you face from arrival to adjustment? How did you overcome this difficulty? Can you describe the whole history of your migration? 3) How do you feel and perceive your new residential community and school zone? 4) How do you feel sense of belonging in your community and home country? When do you feel at home in your community and how do you manage this feeling to secure your emotional attachment? 5) What social class did you belong to in Korea and what social class do you feel you belong to in the U.S.? 6) Can you compare the quality of your life in Korea and in the U.S.? How much are you satisfied with your current life style?
2. Transnational Connections 1) How do you manage relationships with your family members, relatives, and friends in Korea? 2) How often do you visit Korea? What is the main reason of this visit?
218
3) Do you think being Korean had benefited or helped in your adjustment and parenting here? 4) What do you think of your current life style? Do you follow Korean style or American style? Can you describe your daily life style? Why do you follow Korean life style in a certain circumstance and American style in a different case? 5) Can you describe your family relations? 6) How are the relationships between you and your kids? 7) If there is any change in the relationship between you and your kids after you immigrated to the U.S., can you describe with a concrete anecdote?
3. Parenting 1) What do you think of mother’ roles and what is the most important role among many parental roles? 2) If your parental role has changed since you came to here, what kind of change happened? 3) Do your kids recognize your parental authority and follow your parenting style? 4) If there is a certain change in your kids’ attitude toward you, what is it? 5) Do you attend any parental meeting or P.T.A.? How often do you attend this kind of meeting and what kind of information do you share in this meeting? 6) Can you compare the educational environment of Korea and the U.S.? 7) Why do you think Korean parents prefer the U.S. educational environment?
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BIOGRAPHY
Young A Jung received Ph.D. in Modern Korean Literature from Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. She holds a MA and BA in Korean Langugae and Literature from the same University.
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