Struggling to Make Time for Family: Work and Family Life of Korean-Chinese Institutional Care Workers in South Korea

Abstract

Even before the South Korean (hereafter Korean) government officially opened service sector employment to selected groups of ethnic return migrants in December 2002, the Korean care workforce had begun transformations through the increasing employment of undocumented migrant women in private households. In early 2002, over 42,000 undocumented migrant women were reported as employed in service sector jobs and 9,100 of them were domestic workers, including 60 women from the Philippines, and a large number of women from China (6,200 ethnic Koreans with Chinese citizenship and 2,660 Chinese).¹ In the following years as the Korean government has shifted its approach towards “unskilled” ethnic return migrants from a highly restrictive to a more inclusive one,² the employment of migrant workers as domestic and care workers has become a state-approved option for many Korean families who seek cheaper paid services to substitute female family members’ unpaid reproductive labor. Under the current immigration system — the Visit and Employment System — which allows “unskilled” ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet Union states to work as domestic and care workers for up to 58 months, Korean-Chinese (often called joseonjok) middle-aged women are increasingly taking domestic and care jobs, often live-in positions, as the most preferred workers for such jobs, given their maturity and shared Korean language and culture (Lee 2004).