Aspirations, ambivalence, and performances: the hyphenated identities of Indonesian worker-students in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the lives of Indonesian migrant workers undertaking study through the Indonesia Open University in South Korea. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and social media, the paper explores the rationales, experiences, and identity performances of these worker-students, placing emphasis on how these individuals challenge their socially constructed position as migrant workers. In doing so, the paper extends scholarship on the significance of migration in Asia and the way this is tied to the differential valuing of migrants, as low or high-skilled and workers or students. We draw particular attention to the transformative potential of migration but also the ways in which changes in subject position are negotiated in relation to existing social structures and identity positions. In the context of the focus on discrepant knowledge mobility, then, the paper shows how boundaries between types of migration are blurred through their connection with knowledge and the making of unexpected Inter-Asian connections.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• migrant workers
• identity
• knowledge
• Indonesia
• South Korea

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Francis L. Collins and Ho Kong Chong for organizing this special issue. Thanks are also due to colleagues at the Center for Koreanophone Studies in HUFS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For the EPS-TOPIK, Indonesian workers need to have gone through at least a year of learning and to pay around 15 million Rupiah (approximately US$1500), which is five times the average monthly salary in Indonesia.

2 This paper is based on findings from the dissertation research of Suray Nugroho, supervised by Younghan Cho, on the identity negotiations of Indonesian migrant workers in Korea. To protect the informants, we identify them by pseudonyms, and have translated the interviews from Indonesian into English.

3 UT Korea provides a letter both in English and Korean indicating that student-workers need to study on Sundays.

4 S2 denotes a Master’s degree programme. In Indonesia, higher education is into the three categories: S1 (Strata One, Undergraduate), S1 (Strata Two, Graduate, Master’s Degree), and S3 (Strata Three, Doctorate).

5 The headlines in the original online news and media streaming include: ‘Kesuksesan Bajindul Menjadi TKI dan Kuliah di Korea’ (Bajindul’s Success of Becoming a Migrant Worker and Student in Korea) & ‘TKI, Mahasiswa, Vlogger’ (Indonesian Migrant Workers, Student, Vlogger (Tonight Show @ Net TV (Translated by author).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.