The Experiences Entailed by the Intersectionality of Korean (Im)migrant Mothers’ Multi-identities in Layered Contact Zones of the United States

Abstract

Pratt’s (1991) notion of “contact zone” was used to investigate the lives of four Korean (im)migrant mothers in the United States, where they encountered clashes of languages and cultures. This study, part of five-year feminist cyber-ethnography, is an examination of their contact zone experiences from the perspective of the intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) of their multiple identities, which were complicated and added layers to the contact zones usually presumed to be experienced by (im)migrant adults when regarded a single category despite great diversity of their pre-migration capital (Bourdieu, 1991). The participants’ identity as mothers exacerbated confrontations in some contact zones, and their intertwined identities as highly-educated and motivated Korean women and wives situated them in both outside- within-ethnic contact zones.