Abstract
Cross border marriage has been a feature of South Korean (henceforth Korea) life for more than three decades. Despite the increasing numbers, there continue to be barriers to marriage migrants’ integration into Korean society. This thesis argues that Korean ethnic nationalism, the belief in Korea as a single ethnic nation sharing one ancestry and Korean patriarchy, are key to understanding discrimination and the difficulties experienced by marriage migrants and explores this with reference to NGOs and marriage brokers associated with cross-border marriage in Korea.Cross-border marriage in Korea has come a long way from its inception following the Rural Bachelor Marriage Support Project. Today, it is highly institutionalised and systematised. Institutions, especially cross-border marriage brokerage agencies and NGOs, sit at the heart of Korea’s marriage migration system and attending to their representational practices, and crucially the politics of their representations reveals how their interests legitimise hegemonic ideologies in Korean society. Consequently, this thesis seeks to explore how the two types of institution legitimise Korean ethnic nationalism and patriarchy through representations, and the logic that underpins these representations.
By conducting i) participant observation with an NGO project on representations of marriage migrants produced and circulated by brokers and ii) media research on advertisements of marriage brokers, and iii) semi-structured interviews, this thesis explored representational practices of two institutions. It argues that marriage agencies Koreanise the foreign brides by racialising and imposing certain gender roles on foreign women. It examines the logic that underpins these representational practices, which is namely the interest of subordinated Korean men in restoring their beleaguered masculinity. This thesis further argues that the NGO’s roots in the Korean feminist movement prevents them from recognising this process of Koreanisation and male clients’ vulnerable masculinity. This thesis finds that the portrayals of marriage migrants are closely related to the interests of ethnic Korean men and women, a cog in a larger system that maintains Korean ethnic nationalism and patriarchy.
| Date of Award | 3 Oct 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Katharine A H Charsley (Supervisor) & Bridget Anderson (Supervisor) |