Yang-Sook Kim

Abstract

This article examines how state eldercare provision influences care workers’ subjectivities and claims for dignity and self-worth. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork conducted in South Korea, I argue that migrant and native-born care workers construct different ideals around what is “good” versus “bad” care through the marking of ethnic and professional boundaries. South Korean women employed as state-certified care workers emphasize the expertise and skill they provide as professional caregivers, and as such, demand expanded rights and protections from the state. In contrast, Korean-Chinese migrant women, who share a similar ethnic background but migrated from China to South Korea, emphasize their value as fictive-kin who can provide wholehearted care as informal workers. These divergent strategies not only result in the use of ethnicity to mark clear boundaries between the care work provided by each group, but they also (re)produce ethnically-segmented, two-tiered labour markets institutionalized by eldercare policies.

Keywords

Boundaries, care work, ethnicity, long-term care insurance, South Korea, subjectivities

From: Critical Sociology 2019 44 (7-8)

Editor: Wang Yi