Making Multiculturalism

Chapter 5 turns to the Korean “multicultural agents” who work for Korean multiculturalism, including government officers, community volunteers, and social workers to describe in greater detail the local, day-to-day operation of Korean multiculturalism. Drawing on the idea of “makeshift multiculturalism,” the chapter traces how local multicultural programs were developed using individual actors’ prior knowledge and interests, and calls into question their contributions to making a multicultural society. Also, the chapter shows that multicultural agents ground their mission in diverse affective bases including benevolence, paternalism, and pity, and a multicultural “economy of gratitude” (Hochschild 2012) expects that gifts of service are exchanged for gifts of gender-specific reproductive contribution and commitment to marriage. Lastly, the chapter shows that marriage immigrants and their husbands take part in “making” multiculturalism.

Marrying into South Korean Rural Towns

Chapter 2 provides the background for the empirical study that is the basis of Elusive Belonging. I first describe the context of rural South Korea, where one in three marriages is an international marriage, followed by a description of international marriage trends in Korea. Because most of my subjects were matched by the Unification Church, an international religious organization that promotes intermarriage, I then explain the Unification Church and its matching process. I describe the Korean state’s policies regarding marriage migrants and its “multiculturalism” project. Finally, I provide general information on my informants.

Afterword

The concluding chapter situates local marriage immigrants within Korea’s immigrant communities across the country. It also discusses recent developments of “multicultural fatigue” and its implications and the new policies related to marriage immigrants and international marriages.

Searching for Filipina Sisterhood

Drawing on the literature on immigrants’ intra-ethnic solidarity and conflict, Chapter 7 examines on Filipinas’ relationships with their co-ethnics by focusing on three different spaces. First, the chapter shows Filipinas’ intimate, quotidian interactions with one another where both sisterly care and group image anxiety exist simultaneously. Second, the chapter describes the stories of Filipinas’ departures from their marital homes. Lastly, the chapter goes beyond the local co-ethnic setting to the scene of Annual Filipino Community Day, the region’s largest co-ethnic space for Filipino immigrants. These different spaces illustrate the generative process through which “Filipinos in Korea” as the community and the identity has been constructed.

Clashing at Home

To provide a more nuanced understanding of multicultural family relations, Chapter 4 delves into the context surrounding domestic tension and conflicts, especially those related to economic issues. I find that economic anxieties saturate multicultural families in the fissure between the projected image of an economically developed Korea and the lived reality of rural Korean families who receive marriage migrants. The chapter discusses how the so-called “Fairy and the Woodcutter Syndrome”—Korean husbands’ (and family members’) fear that marriage migrants will leave them—combined with economic anxiety, lead them to confine Filipinas physically and financially. The chapter also examines Koreans’ economic culture of frugality (kŭngŏm chŏlyak), which contributes to making homes oppressive for marriage migrants. Finally, it shows how economic anxiety pushes Filipinas out of their homes to exercise their economic agency and facilitate economic integration.

Introduction

The introductory chapter begins with a review of the literature on international marriages from Asia and within Asia, and then covers the literature on marriage immigrants. The chapter explains politics of belonging as the main theoretical framework, which links the political and the emotional. It discusses the intersections of intimacy and care, anxiety, and gratitude with hierarchies of gender, class, nationality, and race, and how these emotions can shape marriage immigrants’ sense of belonging to Korean society. It also describes the author’s subjectivity as a researcher with focus on the author’s liminal position in the field. The chapter concludes with an overview of the remaining chapters.

Challenging and Transforming the Community

Chapter 6 examines Filipinas marriage immigrants’ diverse paths of incorporation to the Korean rural community. The chapter aims to shift our attention from Filipinas’ struggles to adapt as newcomers to the dynamic process through which marriage immigrants are incorporated into the society over time. In the first part, two Filipinas’ stories show how model marriage immigrants have been incorporated into their marital families and communities, and in turn, how they have transformed these communities. The second part focuses on class-based and racial mistreatments that Filipinas experience and delves into a key issue that has yet to be fully discussed: namely the racialization of Southeast Asians.

Loving Strangers

Chapter 3 focuses on relationships among the married couples. The chapter begins by asking, “How do couples who met and married in a matter of days become husbands and wives?” By telling the stories of four couples who develop and share emotional commitment, love, and affection, the chapter shows how emotional relationships can be forged even with strangers through prevalent “heterosexual scripts.” It also pays attention to how marital intimacy is infused with the issue of remittances, which is an inevitable part of international-married couples. In discussing the couples’ gender relations, the husbands’ stories challenge stereotypes of Korean rural masculinity. This chapter shows that Filipina-Korean couples’ relationships can be troubled and challenging, but conjugal intimacy anchors Filipinas’ sense of belonging.