Predestined Migrations: UndocumentedPeruvians inSouthKorean Churches

Abstract

This article explores how undocumented Peruvian laborers have established a significant presence within some of Korea's powerful evangelical churches through their identification of respuestas (answers or signs) from God. Many Peruvians arrived in Korea in the early 1990s on their way to more profitable labor destinations, such as Japan or Europe, but stayed after finding factory work. Through their conversions to Protestantism in Korea, they have begun to identify events such as unplanned pregnancies or their ability to evade deportation as signs that their migration to Korea was predestined. Through promoting their respuestas to various audiences, Peruvians not only recast their unlikely migration as predestined but change their own status from being economic laborers to recognized leaders within Korean churches. Korean church leaders embrace Peruvians and respuestas as a way to promote their church's own cosmopolitan image and desires for launching global missions to locations such as Peru. As such, respuestas are a common framework through which migrants and church leaders co-create their global aspirations and experiences.

Ongoing Endings

“…Unlike other destinations for labor in East Asia, South Korea has a significant population of Christians (an estimated 20 percent of the population identifies as either Catholic or Protestant) and many had taken an interest in Korea's growing population of migrant workers (Kim and Oh 2011). I argue elsewhere that Peruvians make attractive members for global-minded churches that want to show the cosmopolitan nature of their congregations (since Peruvians are so unusual in Korea) and that working with the churches allows Peruvians to create global opportunities for themselves that they would otherwise not be able to find (Vogel 2014). I argue elsewhere that Peruvians make attractive members for global-minded churches that want to show the cosmopolitan nature of their congregations (since Peruvians are so unusual in Korea) and that working with the churches allows Peruvians to create global opportunities for themselves that they would otherwise not be able to find (Vogel 2014).…”

“…I use "undocumentable" as a way to describe how Peruvians in Korea are not made merely illegal (De Genova 2002), but are also essentially placed outside of the realm of legal inclusion because they are both ineligible for current visas and illegible as migrant workers partly because they are Latinos in a place where the majority of migrant laborers are from Asia (Vogel 2014). I use "undocumentable" as a way to describe how Peruvians in Korea are not made merely illegal (De Genova 2002), but are also essentially placed outside of the realm of legal inclusion because they are both ineligible for current visas and illegible as migrant workers partly because they are Latinos in a place where the majority of migrant laborers are from Asia (Vogel 2014).…”

“…With the implementation of the Employee Permit System, Peruvians like Oliver became not only undocumented, but what I term undocumentable . I use “undocumentable” as a way to describe how Peruvians in Korea are not made merely illegal (De Genova 2002), but are also essentially placed outside of the realm of legal inclusion because they are both ineligible for current visas and illegible as migrant workers partly because they are Latinos in a place where the majority of migrant laborers are from Asia (Vogel 2014). As undocumentable migrants, no matter how many years they manage to stay, or the number of ties they make in the Korean community, they can never become permanent residents, but are rather stuck being, at best, permanently temporary.…”

Dressing the Myanmar Migrant Body: (In-)Visibility and Empowerment in Thailand

“…Popular and literary narratives shape our imaginations about the lives of migrants, often creating and reinforcing stereotypes and thereafter creating blind spots in perceiving migrants’ presence beyond stereotypes (Samie 2013; Wald 2011). In a similar vein, scholars who highlight the perspectives of migrants on invisibility focus mainly on strategies by migrants to overcome this situation (Aguilar-San Juan 2009; Garbin 2013; Vogel 2014). If we shift the focus from invisibility as a tool of systemic domination to the material ways in which presence and (in-)visibility is marked by migrants, the potential for invisibility to empower migrants becomes apparent.…”

In search of the Solemn with Sri Lankan migrant priests

“…My work draws lines of connection between the historical, theological and pedagogical underpinnings of Sri Lankan Catholicism and the affective responses that South Asian priests elicit in Europe.The flow of missionaries from the northern hemisphere into Asia and Africa diminished drastically with the start of decolonisation processes in the second half of the 20th century. This slowing down became so prevalent that the flow itself has nearly halted and even started to reverse, as homegrown missionary movements in the southern hemisphere embark on evangelising projects in neighbouring countries (Zehner 2005;Vogel 2014), as well as in Europe and the United States (Napolitano 2007(Napolitano , 2015Hanciles 2013;Gallo 2016). In the case of Sri Lanka, half a century after independence, Catholic religious workers appear to move in the opposite direction of their predecessors, with a relatively small but steady trickle of chaplains, nuns, young clergy pursuing graduate studies, and others working for the Vatican or religious congregations, who travel to and sometimes settle in Europe for several years at a time.…”