Korean New Zealanders and their migrations

Last year’s Big Issues grant recipient Jane Lee recently presented her research at the annual Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference in Las Vegas, USA.

The AAG conference is one of the largest geography conferences in the world. This year it was held at the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas.

Ms Lee was awarded a grant to conductresearch for her thesis “(De)constructing the Korean New Zealanders' return migrations to 'homeland': The power of policy and societal expectations”.

The topic of Ms Lee’s presentation was “Korean immigrants’ return to Gohyang (homeland): Placed experiences of home”.  She talked about her PhD research broadly and shared some current findings. Ms Lee’s PhD research attempts to understand political and cultural meanings of return migration through the experiences of 1.5 Korean New Zealander returnees.

Most of the study participants have returned to Korea to seek better lives and employment. Based on current fieldwork data, Ms Lee explained that despite the increasing presence of Korean New Zealanders in Korean society, the population is still very much invisible in society and current debate. The research raises a number of political and social issues surrounding the returnees’ placed experiences and also discusses meanings of the returnees’ sense of belonging, home and identity.

In the United States, Ms Lee had the opportunity to talk to other migration researchers who offered new insights into the research topic and recommended some useful academic resources.

For Ms Lee, the highlight of the conference was hearing the presentation by Anastasia Christou, a scholar who has researched Greek American returnees over many years. Ms Lee says she has always enjoyed reading Christou’s work and being able to hear the researcher presenting her recent findings was a very rewarding experience. 

Another memorable experience for Ms Lee was the Korean Dinner organised separately by the Korean Association of Geographers.  She was surprised to see so many Korean geography scholars gathered at this event.  Ms Lee had an enjoyable and productive time talking to a number of people about their respective research as well as discussing the study of geography in and outside of Korea.  Ms Lee has since met up with some of the dinner attendees after returning to Korea.  She says the conference was unquestionably an invaluable experience.

Currently, Jane Lee is living in the GangNam area, a metropolitan city in Seoul. She is based at Seoul National University in a shared office with other geography and social science researchers. So far, she has interviewed one-third of her intended study sample and is hoping to have completed the first stage of the project’s interviews by the end of May.  The last month of the fieldwork will be spent doing follow-up interviews and gathering other resources.

Upon her return to New Zealand in July, Ms Lee is planning to move to the second stage of the fieldwork.  This will consist of talking to a number of recently employed young Korean immigrants about their working experiences and thoughts of their homeland and whether return is also a possibility for them.

The Asia:NZ research grant enables Ms Lee to travel to Korea where she can conduct in-depth interviews with mainly 1.5 generation Korean New Zealanders who have permanently returned to their country of origin.  “I am grateful to the University of Auckland and the Asia New Zealand Foundation for their financial and mental support during my research so far,” commented Jane Lee. The research has so far investigated the returnees' experiences of being a minority: firstly as immigrants in New Zealand, and later as returnees in Korea.

The project focuses on those who immigrated to New Zealand between 1992 and 2000, who spent most of their teenage years in New Zealand, and have returned to Korea in the past eight years.  The returns often took place during a period of significant change such as graduating from university, entering the workforce or getting married.

The research project is expected to be completed in 2011.

Image: Jane Lee presenting at the AAG conference

Article uploaded April 2009.