Unequal opportunities in becoming cosmopolitan: Korean students’ gendered and classed acquirement of transnational mobility through studying abroad

Abstract

ABSTRACTUsing interviews with 74 Korean undergraduate students at ten elite U.S. colleges, I explore how intersections of gender and class decide who pursues transnational mobility and cosmopolitan life more successfully. Men from highly-transnational families tried to exert ‘agency for becoming’ while mapping out their ‘choice biographies’, aspiring and expected to be high-achieving and influential worldwide, often thanks to their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. By contrast, women across class and legal statuses tended to accommodate ‘normal biographies’, prioritising their (future) responsibilities as mothers, wives, and daughters. Regarding class limitations, both women and men from less-transnational families tended to expect to return to Korea upon graduation, feeling culturally and legally limited to utilising their degrees across national borders. Yet, across class lines, men were more ambitious and career-oriented than women, implying gender-based constraints among the skilled diaspora. These findings shed light on multiple forms of inequalities among high-achieving Asian student migrants.KEYWORDS: Education abroadtransnational mobilityKorean studentsclassgendercitizenship AcknowledgmentsI appreciate Naomi Gerstel, Joya Misra, Miliann Kang, and Millie Thayer for their constructive feedback on my dissertation research, of which this article is a part. I also thank the Sociology Department at Yonsei University for supporting me throughout my writing of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Dissertation Research Grants from the Graduate School and Sociology Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.Notes on contributorsJuyeon ParkJuyeon Park is a sociologist and ethnographer who studies and teaches gender, family, migration, and education. Much of her work examines the intersectional impacts of gender and class on parenting and parenthood, family arrangements, work and occupations, and migration strategies of Asian women and men, especially those with high levels of education. She currently studies and teaches as an assistant professor of Sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.