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Influence of Homeland on Migrants’ Social and Economic Status: through Oral Life History

Lee Seon Ju 1

1이화여자대학교

ABSTRACT

Do nations really lose their power and influence through globalization? It cannot be denied that the fierce movement of capital accumulation and the necessity of response at a transnational level diminish the power of a nation’s status. But the power of a nation doesn’t weaken at all in control and influence with respect to people’s migration. When migrants leave their homeland to start new lives in another country, how possible is choosing one’s vocation according to their one’s ability? This article selects the oral life histories of 4 Chosun-tribe individuals and 5 Korean Americans, whom I interviewed extensively to show the influence of homeland on the migrants’ socio economic status. There are three reasons why I selected Chosun-tribe individuals and Korean Americans as research subjects. They make up most of the migrants involved in Korea. Second, Chosun-tribe individuals, who have lived as a powerless ethnic minority in China and migrate to their ancestral homeland, and Korean Americans, who immigrated to America as the Third World individuals in the 1970s, can be shown to have been the same sort of unskilled workforce and to have had the same sort of low-class social status. Third, both Chosun-tribe individuals and Korean Americans who have come back to Korea for marriage or job constitute the same sort of return migration. Even though they constitute the same sort of return migration, Korea’s treatment of them is significantly different. This research shows that what job the migrants have and what social status they take are determined by the political and economic status of the homeland.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.