Speaking transnationally: An ethnographic study of Indonesian migrant workers on the borderlands (Korea)

This is an ethnographic study of the processes of identity negotiation within a community of Indonesian migrant workers in South Korea, a Borderlands where a diversity of cultures collude and collide. I explore the ways that this community of diasporic people use narratives both to construct and to resist discursive constructions of their multiple identities, including those of "legal" and "illegal", foreigner, nationality, ethnicity, and solidarity.; Data for this project were collected through participant observation, audio and video recording in a variety of locations in Indonesia and South Korea, including migrant worker shelters, a migrant workers union live-in protest site, migrant worker churches and a variety of one-time events related to migrant workers from July, 2003 to August, 2004.; In order to understand the ways in which these Indonesian migrant workers negotiate their multiple identities, it is essential to first understand that traditional cultural and national boundaries have become more porous through the present day forces of globalization. Present day conditions of transnational flows of people have meant reconceptualizing identity as multiple and provisional, and culture as constructed, relational, and a site of struggle and contest. The Indonesian migrant workers in my study drew on narratives as a communicative resource in the negotiation of their multiple identities on the Borderlands. Narratives of self-introduction/arrival were told both to establish a cohesive, legitimate identity and to resist the identity of "illegal" worker found in Korean public discourse. Narratives of victimhood/oppression allowed the migrant workers to cope with the exigencies of their everyday existence and construct legitimate and meaningful identities based on their own cultural discourses. Finally, solidarity narratives were used within a migrant worker labor union to discursively construct a collective "worker" identity among the diverse community of migrant workers from more than 90 countries. These narratives also worked both to resist the dominant "othering" discourse found in Korean society and to construct a sense of shared experience with the Korean people.; As a study of migrating and diasporic people, this study provides an alternative perspective on both long-term intercultural contact and notions of identity negotiation on the Borderlands.