‘I am still close to my child’: middle-class Korean wild geese fathers’ responsible and intimate fatherhood in a transnational context

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper employs responsible fathering as a theoretical framework and explores the transnational fathering practices of wild geese fathers – middle-class Korean fathers who remained alone in their home country while sending their wives and children abroad for their children's education. Based on in-depth interviews with 64 wild geese parents in the United States, Canada, and South Korea, it analyses how wild geese fathers strived to fulfil components of responsible fathering – providing economic support and emotional/physical care for children – in the transnational context by utilising three tools of transnational fathering: remittances, transnational communication, and face-to-face encounters. It revisits the one-dimensional and economically-oriented portrait of transnational fatherhood by documenting wild geese fathers who actively renegotiated the gendered boundary of parenting and practiced more affectionate, expressive, and involved fatherhood from a distance. It highlights the significance of social class, legal status and technology as critical resources of transnational father-child intimacy. In sum, its analysis of middle-class Asian transnational fathering contributes to better understanding the growing diversity of transnational fatherhood.