Precarious motherhood: Lives of Southeast Asian marriage migrant women in Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of Southeast Asian women married to Korean men to understand the social adjustments made by marriage migrant women as they cross national borders to form new families. The process of marrying into Korean families and becoming mothers of Korean children links them firmly into their new society, but their foreign origins and appearance mark them as outsiders and give them an ambiguous status that is at once both of insider and outsider. Based on interviews with fifteen marriage migrant women who reside in Gyeonggi Province, we discuss their experiences of motherhood, to show how ideas of nation, ethnicity and class interact. Their experiences in becoming “Korean mothers” create complicated and multi-tiered identities, practices, and strategies which engage with Korea's patrilineal ideology, family norms, the cultural expectations of a homogeneous society, and the motherhood norms of Korea's middle class. Finally, we highlight the agency of the marriage migrant women as they create and manage changing families and motherhood roles in a globalized world.