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Discussing Lived Racism in Context: A Long-Term Study among Koreans in Argentina
By Violeta Martinez Courtis, 2023
Dr. Corina Courtis, University of Buenos Aires (UBA)
Monday, October 7, 2024
4:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Bunche Hall, Rm 10383
Within the frame of a broader study on discourse about ethnic-racial discrimination in Argentina, this presentation focuses on the ways in which Korean immigrants and their descendants living in Buenos Aires have conceptualized, verbalized and impugnated experiences of prejudice and everyday racism across three decades.
Combining an anthropological outlook with linguistic tools, Dr. Courtis examines and compare two types of discourses collected between the mid-1990s and the beginning of the 2020s. On the one hand, she analyzes verbal accounts of everyday racism included in biographic narratives gathered among ethnic Koreans; on the other, Dr. Courtis explores discourses produced -- frequently by community leaders or referents -- for circulation in the public sphere.
The study reveals progressive transformations in the way Koreans have discussed lived racism in Argentina, from a “restricted” form of talk to overt contestations of anti-Asian racism, and identifies relevant contextual factors impinging on the discursive turns described.
Dr. Corina Courtis is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist. At the intersection of migration studies, political anthropology and socio/ethnolinguistics, her research interests center on the relations between migration and citizenship. She has worked on issues of ethnic discrimination and everyday racism, focusing on the Korean immigration in Buenos Aires.
Dr. Corina Courtis is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist. At the intersection of migration studies, political anthropology and socio/ethnolinguistics, her research interests center on the relations between migration and citizenship. She has worked on issues of ethnic discrimination and everyday racism, focusing on the Korean immigration in Buenos Aires.
She is the author of Discriminación étnico-racial: discursos públicos y experiencias cotidianas. Un estudio centrado en la colectividad coreana de Buenos Aires (2012), and several publications on the subject.
This is part of the "Koreans in the World" project hosted by UCLA's Center for Korean Studies. This event is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS Award Number: AKS-2023-SRI-2200001) as part of its Strategic Research Institute Program for Korean Studies.
Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Anthropology
This is part of the "Koreans in the World" project hosted by UCLA's Center for Korean Studies. This event is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS Award Number: AKS-2023-SRI-2200001) as part of its Strategic Research Institute Program for Korean Studies.
Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Anthropology
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Journal Article
DOI
Domestic work and international migration in Latin America: Exploring trajectories of regional migrant women in domestic service in Argentina
Corina Courtis,
+1 more
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01 Sep
2014
- Womens Studies International Forum
- Vol. 46, pp 24-32
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TL;DR: This article examined international migration and domestic service at an intra-regional level, drawing on statistical information and the insertion of migrant women as domestic workers in destination countries of the region, focusing on the particular case of Argentina.
Abstract:
Synopsis Besides emigration towards developed countries, Latin America has a regional migration dynamics of its own — one in which the presence of women, as well as their employment in domestic service, has proved decisive. Combining a macro perspective with a case-based socio-anthropological approach, this paper examines international migration and domestic service at an intra-regional level. Drawing on statistical information, we first present an outline of the regional migration context and the insertion of migrant women as domestic workers in destination countries of the region. The core section of the article centers on the particular case of Argentina, and illuminates the experience of migrant domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The paper closes with a series of reflections on the operation of gender as an organizing principle of relations and opportunities involved in international migration.
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Domestic work and international migration in Latin America: Exploring trajectories of regional migrant women in domestic service in Argentina
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Corina Courtis a
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María Inés Pacecca b
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.002
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Highlights
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Current immigration in Argentina builds on Latin American female domestic workers.
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We analyse interviews made to 18 domestic workers from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay.
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We assess the relevance of gender-based practices in their migration processes.
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Restrictive migration regulations impinged on migrants' insertion in precarious jobs.
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The “family” logic of households as a workplace may hamper access to diverse rights.
Synopsis
Besides emigration towards developed countries, Latin America has a regional migration dynamics of its own — one in which the presence of women, as well as their employment in domestic service, has proved decisive. Combining a macro perspective with a case-based socio-anthropological approach, this paper examines international migration and domestic service at an intra-regional level. Drawing on statistical information, we first present an outline of the regional migration context and the insertion of migrant women as domestic workers in destination countries of the region. The core section of the article centers on the particular case of Argentina, and illuminates the experience of migrant domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The paper closes with a series of reflections on the operation of gender as an organizing principle of relations and opportunities involved in international migration.
Introduction
In recent decades, a significant increase in international migration (CEPAL, 2007) – chiefly to developed countries – has brought migration into the limelight and to the center of discussion in numerous forums. The growing share of women in migration trends – conceptualized, at least qualitatively, as the “feminization” of migration flows – has become a matter of growing academic interest, and has made apparent the need to introduce a gender perspective in migration studies.
As a region,1 Latin America has a substantial share in the migration processes that presently raise concerns among “First World” States, as most Latin American countries have strengthened their role as labor exporters and emigrants' destinations have diversified beyond the United States, to European countries — particularly Spain, Japan, Canada, Australia and Israel. There are a considerable number of Latin Americans living outside their countries of birth: it is estimated that at least 4% of the region's population lives in extra-regional countries and that this figure accounts for approximately 13% of international migrants worldwide. International migration from the region, which stands out for its increase in women migrants and their widespread entry into the service market of host countries, particularly the domestic service sector2 — the emigration of South American women to Spain, the US, and Canada being especially relevant, has also contributed to the quantitative relevance of women in contemporary international migrations.
But besides emigration to developed countries, Latin America also shows a migration dynamics taking place within the region, one in which women play a decisive role, with domestic work as a sector of paramount significance. By combining a macro-perspective with a case-based, socio-anthropological perspective, this paper approaches the relationship between international migration and domestic work at the Latin American level.
Domestic work in Latin America may be traced back to colonial times (Kuznesof, 1989), and there is a long-standing link between female migration and employment in domestic service in the region. Since the 1960s, urban middle-class households in several Latin American countries have relied on migrant women (both internal and international) for housework and childcare. This demand has set off and fueled the movement of hundreds of thousands of young girls and women, giving rise to an early, albeit thriving feminization process supported on “family” logic: the migrant woman's family of origin, confident that household work is much more protective than factory or office work; and the employing family at the destination, willing to hire (and house) girls and women through work agreements where labor rights are easily blurred in favor of (fictional) kinship practices. As shown by a general overview of regional statistical information,3 this process has been particularly active in Argentina, Venezuela and Costa Rica in the past decade. The analysis of contemporary Argentine cases, focusing on the experience of Bolivian, Paraguayan and Peruvian migrant women taking on jobs as domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (BAMA),4 allows us to review different stages of the migration process (deciding on migration, organizing the trip, arriving at the destination, finding lodgings and work, saving or sending remittances, family reunification, etc.) in order to highlight the relevance of gender and gender-based practices as organizing principles of many of the relationships and opportunities involved in international migrations (see Grieco and Boyd, 1998, De Jon, 2000, Pessar, 1982, Piper, 2007, among other authors who have explored the relationship between gender and migration).
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Section snippets
Context: international migration, female migration and domestic work in Latin America
International migration has been an integral component of Latin American history. Vis-à-vis the drop in overseas migration inflows5 (which were remarkably high at the turn of the twentieth century and played an influential demographic and cultural role in some countries), recent decades have seen a rebound in
Rethinking migration and domestic work in Argentina
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the influx of over 2,000,000 European immigrants, Argentina clearly became an immigration country. Since the 1850s, the country has also received small albeit steady inflows from neighboring and nearby countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and – more recently – Peru. Until the mid-twentieth century, these Latin American immigrants (always less than 3.5% of the total population) remained in the Argentine
Closing reflections: Women working for women
The household, conceived as a space for domestic life and as a workplace (this being true for both the employer and the employee, though in differing degrees), becomes a place of solidarity and hierarchy, of reciprocity and exchange, of gender and class codes. The patrona and her employee appear in counterpoint, and the differences between them can be either exacerbated or softened by gender: the employer may erase this common denominator and directly exercise the power afforded to her by class
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Korean Immigrants in Text and Talk: A Disscourse-Centered Approach to the Social Processing of Korean Immigration in Argentina
Korean Social Science Journal
Abbr : KSSJ
2004, 31(1), pp.113-136
Publisher : Korean Social Science Research Council
Research Area : Social Science > Social Science in general
Corina Courtis 1
1University of Buenos Aires
number of Cited : 0
Candidate
ABSTRACT
This article examines the hegemonic trend in the social treatment and processing of Korean immigration in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is suggested that Korean immigrants gained visibility --especially during the ‘90s-- through the circulation of public and private discourses that articulated biology, culture and class in a shadowy operation of local racism: the ethnicization of class conflict. A corpus of contemporary everyday discourses on Korean immigrants --namely news stories published in the main national newspapers and informal interviews with non-Korean residents-- is therefore analyzed against the specific background of Argentina’s ethnic formation, its migration history, and the political and economic context informing discursive production.
Taking discourse as a situated social practice, this article attempts to contribute not only to the study of racist phenomena, but also to a facet of Korean studies that has lately attracted academic interest: that of the Korean diaspora in Latin America.
KEYWORDS
Korean immigration in Argentina, national diversity formation, ethnicization of class conflict, everyday discourse
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