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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Image by ArtHouse Studio @Pexels.
Apologies that this post comes so last-minute. I only just discovered I was free, and my policy with Zoom lectures is only to announce those I can attend myself. If I didn’t, this blog would be overwhelmed, turning into a lighter version of the Korean Studies Events Database!
(You should totally sign up for the Korean Studies Events Database.)
The first lecture, from 3:30–5:00 pm (all Korean time), is:
“Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama: Sensuous Remembering” by Ayaka Yoshimize, author of a book of the same title. From the event page:
(Zoom participation: Pre-registration is not required. Please login with the Zoom Meeting ID: 923 4787 3527 and Passcode: KUMMC.)
This presentation reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of migrant sex workers in a diasporic city of Yokohama, Japan. Drawing on her performative sensory ethnography, Yoshimizu will focus on the transnational space of mizushobai (water trade) in Yokohama’s historically marginalized neighbourhoods along the Ōoka River, where sexual services were performed by racialized migrant women. Since 2005 the city has sought to rebrand one of these neighbourhoods, Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. Yoshimizu examines Yokohama’s dominant memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement, examining the built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works that obscure racialized migrants’ participation in the city’s place-making. She then seeks to create an alternative memoryscape based on her own fieldwork experience of becoming entangled with the local social relations, unexpectedly coming to perform social roles legible in the field, and, ultimately, having her relationship with the city refashioned anew. Yoshimizu writes the alternative memoryscape through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. This talk will end by introducing her current multi-sited research on transpacific memories of karayuki-san in Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Western Canada.
Then immediately after, starting at 5pm:
“Current status and policy response to migrant integration and multiculturalism in Korea” by Prof. In-Jin Yoon” (Korea University)
Also from the event page (but please note the pre-registration link there is wrong; instead, go to https://uni-due.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50qdeCgqToqHtePLf6_S_NppjpA9Wk6vica#/registration):
The current status of migrant integration in Korea seems to be far from ideal. The human rights violations against migrants remain common in the workplace and everyday life. The public’s perception and attitudes toward migrants have changed from paternalism to apathy, and is deteriorating to the level of hatred toward certain groups. Korean adults’ multicultural acceptance increased from 2010 to 2015, but has continued to decline since then. The level of social integration of migrant workers and married immigrant women, which are representative groups of migrants in Korea, is not high in both material and psychological aspects. Migrant workers have a high employment rate, but they work long hours in low-skilled, low-wage work, are exposed to non-payment or delayed payment of wages and physical and verbal violence, and their labor rights are greatly restricted. They cannot bring their families, and their opportunities to acquire permanent residency and nationality are greatly limited, so they are not subject to social integration. Marriage migrant women tend to have low employment rates, employment stability, and income due to their low age and education level, ability to understand Korean language and culture, the large age and cultural gap with their husbands, and the burden of childbirth and childcare. They are also dependent on their husbands because they need their consent when applying for permanent residency and nationality. The language and culture of their home country are not respected and they are under strong pressure to assimilate into Korean culture.
See you there!
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)