CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Khegay, Galina |
|---|---|
| Title | Precarious life in ethnic homeland: ethnic Koreans from the CIS in South Korea |
| Summary | The Korean labor market is highly dualistic - on the one hand, there are large enterprises and the public sector with better working conditions, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) on the other, which are in constant need of labor force due to low wages. To support the latter, the Korean government developed a temporary labor migration scheme to invite foreign workers. Simultaneously, it offered a visa to the Korean diaspora in China and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in recognition of their ethnic kinship, allowing them to find employment in low-skilled jobs. Ethnic Koreans from CIS who, unlike Koreans from China, do not speak the Korean language occupy the lowest position in the hierarchy of foreign workers in the labor market. Their lives in the ethnic homeland are precarious, filled with unpredictability and insecurity. This thesis aims to add ethnographic findings to the existing literature on the reproduction of precarity and the ways it sneaks into the interactions between different groups of people affected by it in various ways. By analyzing Korean temporary labor migration schemes, statistical data, and existing literature on precarity, I argue that the variegated visa system for ethnic Koreans in China and CIS is aimed at the reproduction of a precarious class made of ethnic kin to fill the low-skilled labor market. Participant observation in the irregular lowest-paying jobs and non-contract based factory work was carried out in two Korean cities, Asan and Gyeongju. A close study of the life of ethnic Koreans from CIS in their workplaces demonstrates how precarity is experienced on an individual level. |
| Supervisor | Rajaram, Prem Kumar; Caglar, Ayse |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/khegay_galina.pdf |
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