Abstract
Here are some myths about transnational migration: It is transgressive or transformative; it is progressive and empowering; it leads to upward class mobility; it is masculine; it is anti-essentialist and subverts nationalism; it leads to cosmopolitan openness while transcending national and cultural boundaries. In Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters Youna Kim deftly busts all of these myths as she carefully examines the recent growing but greatly underexamined cultural trend of transnational migration of young, single, highly educated, and career-oriented Asian women to the so-called “cosmopolitan” cities in the West. Kim’s book departs from existing scholarship on transnational migration, which generally focuses on permanent immigration, family-based migration (male-centric movement with women as dependents), and female labor migrants in low-paid, low-skilled, temporary domestic service sectors. Kim, instead, focuses on the lives of whom she describes as “diasporic daughters” and the larger sociocultural and economic conditions that have propelled these women to move to the West.
Diasporic daughters refer to the new generation of women from Korea, Japan, and China (considered as East Asia’s big three and also reported to have the largest number of students studying abroad for higher education) who are mobile, come from middle or upper class family background, and choose to live an alternative lifestyle by moving abroad for further education and career and personal independence rather than getting married and settling down. Reflecting the global trend toward feminization of labor and the rise of knowledge-based economies, diasporic daughters symbolize the new trend in transnational mobility in which more skilled, educated, career-oriented women from developed Asian countries are moving to the West. Diasporic daughters’ transnational migration appears as an act of empowerment as it is done with these women’s self will and personal choice. Kim, however, points out that this seemingly empowering act is not a voluntary choice but rather coerced as many of these women make the decision to move abroad because of the gender inequities and structural restraints in their home countries. Kim argues, “if educated women in Korea, Japan, and China had a far better chance of success in their career choice and self-development at home, they would be without needing to propel themselves individually, or to force themselves to move out to a precarious international stage or within a provisional circuit of multiple migrations” (p. 41). With this statement Kim highlights the fallacy of popular discourses of personal choice and empowerment when it comes to young Asian women’s transnational mobility.
Next, Kim explores how young Asian women’s media consumption plays a role in building their anticipation of transnational lifestyle. Western media, particularly popular television shows such as Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives evoke images of Western women as free, individuated, and financially and sexually independent, and thus, subverting traditional gender roles that are expected of women in Korea, Japan, and China. For many young Asian women who dream of being unshackled from traditional gender norms and expectations and yearn to build their own self-identity and autonomy, the career-driven, independent women in the Western media appear to be full of choices and void of structural constraints. Despite the extravagant and erroneous representations of female independence and success in the Western media (many of the television programs that Asian women cite as their sources for imagining an alternative lifestyle and identities are frequently criticized by feminist scholars for overplaying female achievements, success, and freedom, and thus, undoing feminism) these mediated images provide a sense of what (a woman’s) life could be for many of the young Asian women. Although the mediated images of Western women and their lifestyle are not taken entirely at face value by young Asian women (they are not “cultural dupes”) but rather are used for reflecting upon their own life conditions, for constructing a different imagined self, and for understanding their “own positions and relationships in comparison to a variety of global cultural Others” (p. 71), Kim argues that young Asian women’s media consumption of western media do play a significant role in triggering their actual transnational movement.
But Kim also points out that the same Western media texts and images, which have played an important role in shaping migratory aspirations of the young Asian women become sources of alienation, disengagement, and withdrawal once these women move to the West. Of course, it is important to point out that this argument is made within the British context so this may not be the case in other social contexts. With the exception of the purpose of learning English diasporic daughters appear to rarely use Western media to learn about the new culture and people. Rather the cultural and national specificity of the local media contents and messages propel these female migrants to engage with their ethnic media and communicative activities as alternatives to feel connected and to have a sense of belonging. Kim argues that “as the necessary cultural resources and tactical arts of living” diasporic daughters use ethnic media as “defensive mechanisms” to cope with their everyday reality of estrangement, exclusion, and banal racism they face because of language barriers and cultural unfamiliarity (p. 96). What this eventually leads to is a revitalization and reinvigoration of nationalism rather than a broadening of cultural understanding and expansion of worldview. Contrary to the claims of how today’s mobile subjects transcend race, ethnicity, and nationality in understanding their own identity, Kim demonstrates just the opposite: ethnicity, race, and nationality continue to matter. The concept of transnationalism, then, does not mean assimilation, acculturation, adaptation, or even pluralism, as it is frequently understood as Portes (2001) points out, but rather the migrants’ continuous participation and engagement with cultural, political, and economic activities of their homelands despite their physical absence from them.
A term that frequently follows transnationalism to define global citizenship is cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism, in an ideal sense, implies a “post-national” identity, which transcends national borders and ethnic boundaries based on universalistic norms. The images of “cosmopolitan” cities such as New York and London in the media create a sense that living in those places can automatically lead to the creation of “cosmopolitan” subjectivity. Kim, however, explains that the actual social reality and living conditions of transnational life for the Asian female migrants that she studied do not “easily generate a cosmopolitanizing experience of the world, a fluid and extended sense of belonging beyond national boundaries” (p. 120) but rather a heightened consciousness of nationality and ethnicity. Because the Asian female migrants’ cosmopolitan subjectivity is contingent upon their interaction and experience with the Western Others—who are mostly indifferent, selective, or apprehensive of the non-Western others—being “cosmopolitan” remains more as an imagined ideal than a lived reality. In fact, Kim points out that cosmopolitanism, for many of these Asian female migrants, becomes available mostly (if not only) through their practices of consumption in today’s global consumer economy. This practice of “cosmopolitanism” significantly deviates from the original meaning of cosmopolitanism as openness toward and acceptance of culturally different world. By showing transnational Asian women’s failure in becoming “cosmopolitan” subjects, Kim critiques the idealistic and Western-centric notion of cosmopolitanism and the social hierarchies and power differentials between nations that the term tries to undermine and hide. When places such as London rebrand themselves as attractive “cosmopolitan” cities by using cosmopolitan signifiers and promote themselves as open to cultural diversity and multiculturalism but fail to make foreigners feel belonged and included due to indifference, hostility, and selective understanding of the non-Western others based on racist and Eurocentric assumptions of the East then it becomes imperative to reexamine and critically interrogate the meaning of cosmopolitanism and what it means to be a cosmopolitan subject.
Kim makes a very forceful and convincing argument on why it is necessary to move away from the romantic paradigm of transnational migration of young Asian women to the West as progressive and emancipatory. Regardless, one might question whether what Kim describes as characteristics of transnational women’s life experiences—status discord (landing on a job that is beneath one’s qualifications), precarious lifestyle, and so forth—are unique to these women Kim studied. Considering that many more people (even those who are highly educated) are now temporary workers who drift from one place to another for works or projects (with works/projects displacing jobs), forming a new social class referred to as “precariats,” we can question whether the new, precarious, transnational lifestyle of the women Kim studied is part of the global trend (rather than being an unusual or a particular case). If so, then it would be useful to connect these women’s transnational lives to a wider global social context in which precariousness has become a normal way of living due to the changed working and living conditions in the neoliberal global economy. Of course no researcher alone can practically operate empirical research at a vast global scale so hopefully more future research in this area (within different sociocultural contexts) will emerge to help us answer whether living in precarity has become a global trend or today’s normal way of living and what that means for our future.
Overall, those who are interested in or studying globalization, transnational mobility, and global media, should greatly benefit from Transnational Migration. Kim does a great job in pushing the reader to rethink many of the familiar concepts (based on Euro and male-centric perspectives) that have remained unchallenged for a long period of time. With the growing influx of international students from East Asian countries to the United States and United Kingdom today and with more than half of those being women, this book will be regarded as highly relevant to understanding the lives of many young transnational Asian women and pertinent issues in their transnational experiences.