‘I know more Korean than the brides’: migrant categorisations and intra-group heterogeneity within the Vietnamese community in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the representative and performative aspects of the legal title ‘marriage migrant’, which surrounds the everyday lives of Vietnamese women who married South Korean men. While previous studies have predominantly addressed how categorisation by receiving states reproduces certain identities and treatments for those on the move, little is known about how it influences migrants’ behaviour. Drawn on observations and in-depth interviews with Vietnamese women married to South Korean men, this paper demonstrates that the category ‘marriage migrant’ not only carries gendered and socioeconomic hierarchised identities but further shapes Vietnamese women’s actions in response to those responsibilities and classifications. The research findings emphasise how categorisation and discourse reconfigure ethnic networks at the intersection of gender, class, and mobility. This study offers a nuanced understanding of intra-group dynamics within migrant communities, highlighting the implications of migrant agencies in categorising politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Categorisation
• marriage migrant
• intra-group heterogeneity
• Vietnam
• South Korea

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants at the following events where I presented various versions of this paper: (1) The Annual Meeting of the Korean Geographical Society in June 2022, (2) The 13^th Engaging with Vietnam in October 2022, and (3) The session on “Transnational Circuits of Gender: Rethinking Korea-Vietnam Relations” at the 8^th AAS-in-Asia in June 2023. I am especially grateful to Prof. HaeRan Shin, Prof. Joon Kim, Kwon Heo, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I take the sole responsibility for any errors in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Locke, “Performativity, Performance and Education,” 248; and Shin and Lee, “How Does a Name Shape a Place?” 68.

2. The term ‘marriage migrant’ is ‘결혼이민자’ in Korean. Meanwhile, the term ‘marriage migrant women’ is ‘결혼 이주 여성’.

3. To explore further into the Vietnam-South Korea marriage migration phenomenon, see Bui, “The Marriage Migration Regime”; Kim and Shin, “Governing through Mobilities”; Lee, “Global Householding and Gendered Citizenship”; and Shin and Bui, “Transnational Marriage Networks.”

4. Vanolo, City Branding.

5. Baldassar et al., “The Vietnamese in Australia,” 949; and Su, The Border Within.

6. Hoang, “Vietnamese Migrant Networks in Taiwan,” 694.

7. Long, “When Refugees Stopped Being Migrants,” 22.

8. Son, “Identity, Security, and the Nation,” 176.

9. Kim and Jang, “Aliens Among Brothers?” 21.

10. Lynch, “What’s in a Name?”; and Sajjad, “What’s in a Name?” 45.

11. Moncrieffe, “Labelling, Power and Accountability,” 6.

12. The term “multicultural family” is written as ‘다문화 가족’ in Korean.

13. Castles, “International Migration at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century,” 270.

14. Goodman et al., “The Evolving (Re)categorisations of Refugees,” 105.

15. Magazzini, “What’s in a Name?” 216.

16. Hamlin, Crossing.

17. Kunz, “Expatriate, migrant?” 2145.

18. Olneck, “Facing Multiculturalism’s Challenges,” 678.

19. De Coninck, “Migrant Categorizations and European Public Opinion,” 1667.

20. Devanney et al., “We Are Still Quite Patchy About What We Know,” 3587.

21. Jacobs, “Categorising What We Study and What We Analyse,” 134.

22. Meyer and Boll, “Categorising Migrants,” 2.

23. See note 16 above.

24. Sigona, “The Contested Politics of Naming,” 457.

25. Robertson, “Status-making,” 219.

26. Devanney et al., “We Are Still Quite Patchy About What We Know,” 3586.

27. Bielewska, “Game of labels,” 629.

28. van Klingeren et al., “Real World is Not Enough,” 269.

29. Heo, “Political and Spatial Changes in Ansan,” 317.

30. Olneck, “Facing Multiculturalism’s Challenges,” 675.

31. Bui, “Place-making of Vietnamese Married Immigrant Women,” 179; and Bui et al., “Making of Vietnamese Food,” 10.

32. Jung et al., “Marriage Migrant Women’s Friendship,” 14.

33. See note 6 above.

34. Baldassar et al., “The Vietnamese in Australia,” 949.

35. Su, The Border Within.

36. Baldassar et al., “The Vietnamese in Australia,” 939.

37. Hammersley, “Ethnography: Problems and Prospects,” 4.

38. Malterud et al., “Sample Size in Qualitative Interview Studies,” 1754.

39. Baltar and Brunet, “Social Research 2.0,” 57.

40. Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis,” 87.

41. See note 6 above.

42. The original Korean term is ‘배우자가 대한민국의 국민인 외국인’.

43. Kim, “Social Integration of Marriage Migrant Women,” 129.

44. See note 11 above.

45. Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper to preserve anonymity.

46. Yang, “Multicultural Families in South Korea,” 58.

47. Lee-An, “Fake’ or ‘Real’ Marriage?” 134.

48. Kim, “Citizenship Projects for Marriage Migrants,” 455.

49. Yi, “Suspicious Mothering,” 71.

50. Ahn, “Transforming Korea into Multicultural Society,” 97.

51. Ahn, Mixed-race Politics and Neoliberal Multiculturalism.

52. Lee, “Aspirational Interraciality and Desirable Whiteness,” 27.

53. Jung, “The Characteristics of the Marriage Migrant Women Appearing in the EBS Show,” 157.

54. Kim, “Racism in the Global Era,” 667.

55. Ibid., 668.

56. “Mungyeong City under fire for trying to use Vietnamese women to fight population decline”. The Korea Times. Available at https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/09/281_335816.html. Accessed on September 25, 2022.

57. As of the May 2021 exchange rate, 30 million South Korean won is approximately 26,500 US dollars.

58. The original Vietnamese term used is ‘máy đẻ’.

59. The number of Vietnamese women engaged in transnational marriages with Korean men expanded from 77 in the 2000 census to over 110,000 by 2022, establishing itself as the largest foreign bride community in South Korea, according to the Marriage and Divorce Statistics in 2022 published by Statistics Korea.

60. Kim, “Racism in the Global Era,” 668; Devanney et al., “We Are Still Quite Patchy About What We Know,” 3597.

61. Kim and Shin, “Governing through Mobilities,” 376.

62. In line with this study’s emphasis on avoiding generalisation, it is essential to clarify that this quote does not aim to underscore this phenomenon; instead, it focuses on intra-group tensions within the Vietnamese community in South Korea. Stories of unfaithfulness can be found in any community, regardless of gender, ethnicity, and class.

63. Kim-Bossard, “Mothering as Laboring,” 92.

64. Park, “Resisting Linguistic and Ethnic Marginalization,” 118.

65. Jang and Kim, “Cultural Conflict Resolution Styles,” 19.

66. Kim, “Learning Korean and Imagined Gendered Identities,” 69.

67. Hoang, “Moral Dilemmas of Transnational Migration,” 890.

68. As of the November 2021 exchange rate, 600,000 South Korean won is approximately 500.57 US dollars.

69. As of the November 2021 exchange rate, 300,000 South Korean won is approximately 250.28 US dollars.

70. Hoang, “Vietnamese Migrant Networks in Taiwan,” 692.

71. See note 17 above.

72. Hoang, “Vietnamese Migrant Networks in Taiwan,” 694; Kim and Shin, “Governing through Mobilities,” 376.

73. Lu, “Commercially Arranged Marriage Migration,” 265, 298.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Department of Geography at Seoul National University and the Ascending Future Leader Fellowship at Seoul National University [0448A-20240028].

Notes on contributors

My Hang Thi Bui

My Hang Thi Bui is a research fellow at the Asia Center, Seoul National University, South Korea. Her interdisciplinary research engages political geography, mobilities, and inter-Asian engagements. Dr Bui has published research on topics including the marriage migration regime, ethnic placemaking, culinary practices, and transnational investment among Vietnamese migrants in South Korea in several journals such as International Development Planning Review, Food, Culture & Society, Asia Review.