Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections between Peru and South Korea

Abstract

first helped me learn how to ask anthropological questions. Hyun Mee Kim and Teofilo Altamirano gave me astute advice in the field. I am grateful to Sharon Dilworth and the late Hilary Masters at Carnegie Mellon University for encouraging me to write and see the world. Some of my most enjoyable moments during the research and writing process came alongside friends doing the same thing. I continue to value the friendships of and learn from fellow researchers, including

The Temporal Borders of Transnational Belonging: Aging Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore

“…Some women suggest that if their care goes unreciprocated (by employers or kin), their embodied, ethical practices of self-transformation through volunteer work, faith-based commitments, and “doing good” are what will carry them across temporal borders and into their futures, materially and imaginatively. These narratives recall Erica Vogel (2020)’s suggestion that migrants’ cosmopolitan experiences propel them into imagining future possibilities beyond the bounds of “here” and “there” as “globalization continues to impact people’s lives and ideas about their futures and pasts long after they have stopped moving, or that particular global moment has come to an end.” While there remains a tentative quality to these future possibilities for middle-aged women migrants who are anxious about returning in older age, they nevertheless re-orient their actions in the present to find ways to soften the ruptures of temporal borders. In these important ways, migrant women express their agency in the face of temporal borders, which are not insurmountable, but malleable and hold creative potential.…”

“…If one can imagine these women 20 years later, it may not be that surprising to find them still working abroad, their returns postponed and notions of home even more layered. Migrants’ cosmopolitan encounters and relationships abroad, cultivated over many years, further complicate binary notions of home (Johnson & Werbner, 2010; Palmberger, 2019; Vogel, 2020).…”

Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses

“…They also began exploring the effects of the 1997 IMF crisis from the margins and how those most vulnerable are made even more precarious during this period (Song 2009). The focus on precaritization also sets the tone for the following decade of anthropology, particularly the transnational routes of migrants entering Korea (Vogel 2020), including female migrants (Freeman 2011;Cheng 2010) and transnational Korean adoptees (Kim 2010). I locate this book within this field of feminist anthropology of Korea.…”