Making and faking kinship : marriage and labor migration between China and South Korea / Caren Freeman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Freeman, Caren, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intercountry marriage--Korea (South).

Intercountry marriage.

Intercountry marriage--China.

Women immigrants--Korea (South).

Women immigrants.

Foreign workers, Chinese--Korea (South).

Foreign workers, Chinese.

Rural families--Korea (South).

Rural families.

Family policy--Korea (South).

Family policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (279 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the years leading up to and directly following rapprochement with China in 1992, the South Korean government looked to ethnic Korean (Chosǒnjok) brides and laborers from northeastern China to restore productivity to its industries and countryside. South Korean officials and the media celebrated these overtures not only as a pragmatic solution to population problems but also as a patriotic project of reuniting ethnic Koreans after nearly fifty years of Cold War separation.As Caren Freeman's fieldwork in China and South Korea shows, the attempt to bridge the geopolitical divide in the name of Korean kinship proved more difficult than any of the parties involved could have imagined. Discriminatory treatment, artificially suppressed wages, clashing gender logics, and the criminalization of so-called runaway brides and undocumented workers tarnished the myth of ethnic homogeneity and exposed the contradictions at the heart of South Korea's transnational kin-making project.Unlike migrant brides who could acquire citizenship, migrant workers were denied the rights of long-term settlement, and stringent "as restricted their entry. As a result, many Chosǒnjok migrants arranged paper marriages and fabricated familial ties to South Korean citizens to bypass the state apparatus of border control. Making and Faking Kinship depicts acts of "counterfeit kinship," false documents, and the leaving behind of spouses and children as strategies implemented by disenfranchised people to gain mobility within the region's changing political economy.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on Language and Translations

Introduction

Part I. Migrant Brides and the Pact of Gender, Kinship, Nation

1. Chosŏnjok Maidens and Farmer Bachelors

2. Brides and Brokers under Suspicion

3. Gender Logics in Conflict

Part II. Migrant Workers, Counterfeit Kinship, and Split Families

4. Faking Kinship

5. Flexible Families, Fragile Marriages

6. A Failed National Experiment?

References

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780801462825

0801462827

9780801462818

0801462819

OCLC:

763161307