Eye to eye, nail to nail: Body and identity in Korean nail salon workers in New York City

This dissertation focuses on Korean immigrant women working as manicurists in the booming nail beautification industry of New York City. Korean nail salons are a peculiar case of 'ethnic economy' run by Korean women who service women of other ethnicity. The study of Korean nail salons requires one to take a gender specific perspective on the thesis of the ethnic economy. This approach raises questions about how Korean immigrant women have played a gender-specific role in creating the nail salon niche; how nail work has transformed domestic power relations; how shop culture reflects the hierarchical relationships among women in the workplace; and what is the nature of nail women's relationships with their customers and the work of nail beautification.; The affects of employment on gender relations in nail women's families are not easily discernable since other factors such as cultural and ethnic legacies, the position of the immigrant family in a racially stratified social context, and value degrading nature of nail work as an occupation. This dissertation looks at these different levels of analyses, demonstrating that "patriarchal ideology" does not necessarily underline the subordination of women and takes on different meanings with changes resulting from the new realities of immigrant life.; This dissertation identifies an economic interface in which gendered relations and normative representations of beauty are negotiated and played out between immigrant women and their American counterparts. Shop culture highlights struggles over language, tips, and competing as well as supporting relations among employees. The exploration of shop culture reveals conflict-laden relationships and a gulf between customers and nail women, between owners and employees, and between American and Korean cultures. Korean nail women constantly straddle these deep conflicting divisions.; The dissertation analyzes how interracial hierarchies and distinctions are created and maintained through an analysis of bodily discourses and practices in Korean nail salons. Finally, the dissertation scrutinizes practices in nail beautification as race or/and class coded styles of beauty that motivate and valorize particular expressions of differences.