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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 901

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

From Seoul to Sydney: Educational Migration and Transnational Families

Authors: LEE, JAMIE SHINHEE
Submitted by: LEE, JAMIE SHINHEE (UNIV. OF MICHIGAN-DEARBORN, United States of America)

Korean drive toward globalization, segyehwa, (Kim 2000) has an overarching effect on contemporary Korean society, among other things, hyper-stressing the importance of English. English is discursively constructed as a language one needs to “survive and flourish in the globalizing world” (J. S. Park 2009: 26) and speaking English is “an index of cosmopolitan striving” (Park and Abelmann 2004: 650). The ideology of necessitation (J. S. Park 2009) is heavily promoted thorough language education policies, school curricula, and teaching practices in Korea. It has also led to the “English learning boom” (H. Park 2006) and “English fever” (J. K Park 2009). Equally important but not extensively researched is its impact on family.

This study is concerned with educational migration, a temporary or permanent sojourn of an individual or a family outside his or her home country mainly for educational purposes. It focuses on recent trends of residing in English speaking countries mainly to expose Korean children to an English immersion environment. This sociolinguistic phenomenon is driven by the belief that having the experience of living outside Korea gives an academic and career advantage.

This ethnographic study examines linguistic and cultural socialization of five Korean families recently relocated to the suburbs of Sydney, Australia by comparing and contrasting language acquisition, mothering practice, parental education involvement, and familial support and conflict in each of these families. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews, home visits, and “linguistic autobiographies” (Hinton 2009) and drawing on linguistic anthropology and interactional sociolinguistics, this study examines motivations for and consequences of educational migration, benefits and drawbacks, and discusses the impact of globalization and English language ideologies on educational migration.

This study aims (1) to determine whether there have been any significant changes in terms of language acquisition, acculturation, cultural practice, family dynamics, attitudes toward English and English education; (2) to investigate factors contributing to a success or failure of educational migration; (3) to see how the division of labor is established between mother and father when it comes to being a facilitator in children’s linguistic and cultural socialization; and (4) to answer whether improved proficiency influences power dynamics between parents and  children.

References

Hinton, Leanne (2009) Trading tongues. In A. Reyes and A. Lo (eds.) Beyond Yellow English.New York: Oxford University Press, pp.  331-346.

Kim, Samuel K. (2000) (ed.) Korea’s globalization. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Park, Hyu-yong (2006)  Seykyeyhwa sitayuy yengehaksup yelkiey tayhan piphancek tamlon: Sahoycek kihohwa kwacenguy thamsayk [Critical discourse analysis of ‘English- learning’ boom: In the lens of social symbolization]. Sahoyenehak  [Sociolinguistics], 14(2), 169-196.

Park Jin-kyu (2009) “Education fever” in South Korea: its history and symptoms. EnglishToday 25: 50-57.

Park, Joseph S. (2009) The Local Construction of a Global Language: Ideologies of Englishin South Korea. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Park, So Jin and Abelmann, Nancy (2004) Class and Cosmopolitan Striving: Mothers’Management of English Education in South Korea. Anthropological Quarterly 77 (4), 645-672.