Regulatory migration regimes and the production of space: The case of Nepalese workers in South Korea |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, AS2, 03-01, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570, Singapore;2. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, AS2, 04-18, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570, Singapore;1. University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S.A;2. Optimal Solutions Group, U.S.A;1. Faculty of Education, School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China;2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;3. Research Center of Chinese Characteristic Urbanization, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China;1. Department of Political Science, Brooklyn College – CUNY, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA;2. Department of Politics and International Relations, Kookmin University, Seoul, Republic of Korea;1. SUNY-Buffalo, United States;2. Simon Fraser University, Canada;3. University of Illinois-Chicago, United States;4. Illinois State University, United States;5. University of Minnesota, United States;6. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States |
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| Abstract: | This paper engages with contemporary debates in labour geography through its focus on: migrant workers as active agents of change; precarious employment, its complexities and consequences; and the importance of material spaces in migrant labour struggles. Since the early 2000s the South Korean government has been strengthening the institutionalised regulation of low-wage migrant workers. A key tool in this process is the Employment Permit System (EPS), in force since 2004. Under this policy migrant workers are temporary sojourners and effectively socio-politically, culturally and spatially excluded from Korean society. EPS restricts migrants’ freedom to choose or change workplaces, which renders them vulnerable to economic and social precarity. Employers use these restrictions to segregate migrant workers from co-nationals, and low-waged migrant workers often find themselves in exploitative working conditions in isolated places. This paper is based on deep ethnographic fieldwork in “Nepal Town” in Seoul and remote Nepalese workers’ accommodation. We examine how such precarious working conditions and isolation impact on workers’ active involvement in the formation and transformation of Nepal Town in Seoul. We examine the ways in which Nepal Town is a site of spatial agency and praxis for Nepalese workers and explore the potentialities of ‘reactive ethnicity’. The empirical insights provided, suggest that the regulatory migration regime for low-wage migrant workers is strongly linked with new formations of material landscapes of connection, mobility, freedom and safe space. Such space production enables migrant workers to perform agency and employ tactics of resistance in order to create spaces of possibility. |
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| Keywords: | Migrant workers Agency Migration regimes Precarity Nepal Korea |
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