Article
Transnational
communication practices
of unaccompanied
young Korean students
in the United States
Tae-Sik Kim
Masaryk University
Abstract
Based on a study of unaccompanied Korean student migrants, this article
investigates how transnational communication helped the students continue
their transnational journey for educational success. Although suffering perennial
loneliness, the students continued with their studies because they still
believed acquiring education in the United States would be advantageous in
securing their success. They became actively involved in transnational communication
to cope with stresses and to gain emotional support. Transnational
communication played an important role in mediating between their pursuit
of education and desired cultural capital on the one hand, and the loneliness
and isolation as migrants on their own on the other.
Keywords
unaccompanied student migrants, transnational communication, flexible
citizenship, neoliberal identity, educational migration
Introduction
The phenomenon of unaccompanied South Korean (hereafter Korea/Korean)
adolescents in the United States is one recent example of educational migration,
which has been propelled by increasing competition in Korea. In the
practice known as jogi yuhaksaeng, a neologism meaning ‘‘early study
abroad students,’’ families send their children overseas as a strategy for
Corresponding author:
Tae-Sik Kim, Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Masaryk University, Jos
^
tova 10,
602 00, Brno, Czech Republic.
Email: beinkid@mail.muni.cz
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal
0(0) 1–20
! Scalabrini Migration Center 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0117196816639055
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accumulating socio-cultural capital in a competitive world (Ong, 1999). Korea
is known for state-driven economic development in the latter 20th century and
a recent economic restructuring that created a denationalized neoliberal
system after the financial crisis in 1997 (e.g., Hart-Landsberg and Burkett,
2001). Rapid economic development has expanded the size of the middle
class, who can afford to invest in their children’s education. However, the
increasing competition for prized and prestigious employment in Korea and
the global labor market have exerted additional pressure on families to provide
their children with a good education. The search for a good education has
led families to consider international education not only when their children
reach the tertiary level but also when the children are still in high school in
order to give them an early start in international education. Since the late
1990s, the number of Korean precollege students abroad has increased, the
social phenomenon that has been referred to as educational exodus (e.g.,
Abelmann et al., 2015). In the United States, the number of tertiary and precollege
students from Korea increased 60.55 percent in the first decade of the
21st century: from 45,685 in 2000–2001 to 73,351 in 2010–2011 (IIE, 2014). The
number of precollege students reached its peak at 21,000 in 2008. But even
though the number has declined recently, Korea has the second largest group
of international precollege students in the United States (Jang, 2013).
Typically, precollege students migrate to pursue their high school studies
overseas. Some may be accompanied by one or both parents while others
migrate without their parents. In the latter case, they usually stay with a
host family.
Findings from an earlier phase of a research project on
unaccompanied Korean adolescents found that the young students faced multiple
socio-cultural barriers in the United States (Kim, 2014). They felt socially
isolated, and this isolation forced them to spend most of their time in their
own rooms in the homes of their host families. Many participants openly
complained about perennial loneliness and boredom, which contrasted sharply
with how they described their daily lives in Korea, which were filled
with various peer activities and intimate family relationships. Alone in their
private rooms, the student migrants used the Internet heavily, mostly accessing
web services based in Korea, consuming Korean mass media products
available online, and maintaining peer networks back home. Although physically
separated from their families and friends in Korea, they were deeply
involved in their transnational communities. Their transnational communication
activities enabled them to counter their lonely lives in the United States.
As a follow-up to the earlier part of the research, this article analyzes and
discusses how transnational communication helped the young migrants continue
their transnational journey to educational success despite the everyday
difficulties that often forced them to think of returning to their families in
Korea.
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Literature review
Developmentalism and flexible citizenship
At the peak of precollege student’s migration to the United Sates in the late
2000s, major US news-media outlets reported the excessively competitive culture
of Korean education by highlighting the importance of educational success
and English skills in Korean society (e.g., Cho, 2007; Dillon, 2008).
Some studies trace Korea’s competitive educational culture to its roots in
Confucianism (e.g., Robinson, 1994) while later ones attribute such a culture to
more recent experiences, such as the Japanese occupation, the United States’s
hegemonic domination, rapid economic development, and the recent turn to
neoliberalization (e.g., Shin, 2012). Korea’s modern educational system was
formally set up under the first military regime that promoted state-led developmentalism
in the 1960s (Kim and Lee, 2006). The ideology of the developmental
state can be traced to the early years of the opening of the nation in the
late 19th century and subsequent colonization by Japan in the early 20th century
(Cummings, 1990; Kohli, 1994; Shin, 2003; Svarverud, 2001). The early
modern elites in Korea subscribed to the idea of Social Darwinism. Influenced
by the idea that human life (and social life) is survival of the fittest, they
believed that human development through education was a way of following
the path of successful modern countries, including Japan (Svarverud, 2001).
Many Koreans continue to have notions of catching up with the rest of the
world and competition among nations even after experiencing democratization
and rapid economic development in the last several decades (Shin, 2003).
A strong hegemonic relationship with the United States, which was formed
at a time of historical turmoil, has also greatly influenced the shaping of
Korean elite education, privileging English skills as a prerequisite for obtaining
symbolic capital and academic degrees from renowned American colleges
(Kim, 2011; Park, 2010; Park and Abelmann, 2004; Shin, 2014).
In response to the financial crisis in 1997, the government enacted a series of
educational reforms aimed at attaining global competitiveness (Jo, 2005).
Stressing competitiveness, performance, and efficiency as means of quick economic
recovery, the government prioritized ‘‘human resources for competitiveness
in the global economy’’ (Yoon, 2014: 188). On the one hand, newly
adopted policies accelerated the decentralization of education by increasing
the curriculum and managerial autonomy of schools. On the other, students
were valued as educational consumers who deserved to receive a more competitive
and efficient education (Yoon, 2014). The ability to speak and write in
English has been stressed even more strongly as essential human capital,
along with global perspectives, which are believed to enable individuals to
respond to rapid changes in the global political economy (Park, 2010).
Research findings suggest that English proficiency is positively
correlated with ‘‘occupational success and social mobility’’ in Korean society
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(Koo, 2007: 13). To equip their children with the necessary human and cultural
capital, Korean families send their children to study overseas, especially to
English-speaking countries, to improve their life chances. In recent years, this
practice has extended to sending young children to study overseas (early
study abroad) to give them ample preparation (e.g., Shin, 2014).
Cultural capital, along with economic capital, is crucial in creating distinctions
among individuals in late-industrial societies, and education is an
avenue to build up this capital (Bourdieu, 1993). Flexible citizenship, on the
other hand, is the cultural logic of individuals who travel to more advantageous
locations in pursuing the accumulation of economic and cultural capital
(Ong, 1999). The two notions are important theoretical frameworks for
explaining the rise in international student migration in East Asia (Byun
et al., 2012; Huang and Yeoh, 2011; Shin, 2013; Waters 2015; Yamamoto and
Brinton, 2010). Chinese migrants in English-speaking countries have been the
focus of studies on flexible citizenship. Believing that children’s education is
the most effective means for a family to acquire cultural capital, many Chinese
families support the migration of their children to pursue studies overseas
(Waters, 2009). Korea is also a significant source country of international student
migration and, as mentioned earlier, the migration of unaccompanied
precollege students to English-speaking countries has been on the rise. The
belief that an early start in acquiring proficiency in the English language is
helpful in gaining admission to renowned universities later explains efforts
undertaken by families to accumulate cultural capital (Kang, 2013; Kim, 2014;
Park and Lo, 2012; Shin, 2013, 2014).
Transnational communication
Along with flexible citizenship, transnational communication practices
carried out by contemporary migrants with ties to multiple locations
make up another distinctive characteristic of the contemporary globalized
world. Advanced communication technologies enable international migrants
to routinely communicate with people in their countries of origin (Levitt and
Jaworsky, 2007). Based on a review of academic studies on transnational communication,
Kissau and Hunger (2010) stress several important points.
First, the Internet has become the main platform on which migrants’ sociocultural
and economic activities are performed. Transnational communication
helps migrants become involved with communities at multiple sites.
More importantly, it plays a significant role in bridging home and host countries
for migrants (Kissau and Hunger, 2010). As more migrants have maintained
strong transnational social networks with people across borders
through various digital technologies, the socio-cultural adaptation of
migrants in host societies has become less daunting than it was in the past
(Portes et al., 1999).
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Transnational interpersonal communication involves important practices
that allow migrants to constantly connect with people in multiple locations,
especially with those in their countries of origin (Bacigalupe and Camara,
2012; Collins, 2009; Metykova´, 2010; Wilding, 2006). Filipina migrant
women, for example, use the mobile phone as a means to continue parenting
their left-behind children in the Philippines (Madianou and Miller, 2011). In
particular, international students who are well accustomed to new technologies
tend to use their home countries’ social network sites to maintain peer
networks in their home countries (e.g., Li and Chen, 2014).
An aspect of transnational communication practices is migrants’ consumption
of mass media products from their home countries (e.g., Christiansen,
2004; Elias and Lemish, 2011), online home-country media (Yin, 2013), or
ethnic media in the host countries (e.g., Lin et al., 2010). Young migrants, in
particular, tend to use online media based in their home countries (Yin, 2013).
According to Metykova´ (2010), young migrants who are accustomed to
new technology before they migrate maintain their patterns of Internet use.
Whereas behavioral studies on Internet use by migrants tend to focus more on
the relationship between the pattern of Internet use and its cultural-psychological
consequences (e.g., Chen, 2010; Park et al., 2014), the contextual
approach to migrants’ Internet use shifts to understanding migrants’ living
contexts as the starting point of a transnational communication study
(Wilding, 2006). Wilding’s (2006: 127) research sought to answer the questions,
‘‘When, under what circumstances, and why, do people decide to adopt the
Internet as a communication technology?’’ and I also sought to understand the
role of transnational communication within the broader contexts of the adolescent
migrants’ life experiences as precollege students in the United States.
Transnational media consumption and communication have been studied
not only as communication practices but also as means to produce transnational
space where migrants form communities across the border (e.g.,
Georgiou, 2006; Kearney, 1995). The finding that unaccompanied Korean adolescents
built their own transnational spaces by constantly communicating
with people across the border and consuming cultures in which they were
grounded (Kim, 2015) led to this inquiry into how their transnational communication
mediates the discrepancy between the ideal of educational migration
and the reality the students face in the United States.
The research project on unaccompanied early study
abroad participants
Unsatisfactory life in the United States
The present article is based on a study that forms part of my dissertation
research project focusing on their life experiences (Kim, 2014), transnational
Kim 5
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communication practices (Kim, 2015), and identities of unaccompanied
Korean adolescents in the United States. This research project grew out of
my personal experiences not only as an international graduate student in
the United States but also as the uncle of two nieces who migrated to the
United States for their precollege education. I was also an English tutor for five
Korean high school students in Oklahoma City. The sharp contrast between
the public image of well-to-do educational migrants and their isolated life
experiences that I personally observed prompted me to start this research
project in 2010.
The first theme that emerged from the study was that most participants
were not satisfied with their lives in the United States (Kim, 2014). Their dissatisfaction
stemmed from limited social relationships with people in the
United States. At school, most participants did not have friends among their
American classmates. Rather, they tended to cultivate relationships with
fellow Koreans in their schools and communities. However, they had few
Korean peers in their schools with whom they could share various activities.
Many participants could not build relationships with members of their host
families, partly because of the temporary nature of their stay and partly
because of cultural and language barriers. Moreover, they did not have
access to public transportation in the United States, which restricted their
mobility and increased their social isolation. Even participants in Boston,
who had various transportation options for reaching different communities,
complained about the limited choice of activities and destinations. Due to
these conditions, almost all participants in this research project spent a large
amount of their time after school and during weekends alone in their private
rooms.
Many participants complained about their monotonous lives that were so
unlike their diverse life experiences in Korea, which were filled with many
activities with friends and family members. Even if they had come to the
United States to avoid the competition in Korea as well as to pursue educational
success in the United States, the young migrant students often romanticized
about their past experiences and people in Korea. These life
experiences in the United States were key contexts for understanding their
transnational communication practices.
Constant and instant transnational communication
The second theme of the project suggested that the student migrants used the
Internet heavily for transnational media consumption and building social networks
across the border (Kim, 2015). The Internet was an important avenue
for coping with boredom and loneliness for the adolescents who were stuck in
their rooms. Based on their accounts, the students surfed web services based
in Korea to consume Korean media content, to obtain information on things in
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Korea, to maintain social networks with peers in Korea, and to constantly
communicate with their family members in Korea. While they were physically
located in the United Sates, their private rooms after school hours turned into
transnational spaces filled with interactions with people and cultures in Korea.
Various Internet technologies, such as file sharing and Internet phone,
helped them stay in touch with people and maintain years-long media practices.
Thus, technological availability and literacy were important conditions
of their transnational communication practices.
In addition, participants commonly identified cultural sensibilities and
emotional attachments to Korea as important reasons for their transnational
media consumption. They liked to watch Korean television shows starring
familiar entertainers and featuring culturally understandable humor rather
than American television shows that were still foreign to them. Also, they
relied on their parents for emotional support. Their statements about their
transnational communication reflected strong desires to be active members
of peer communities in Korea. Distanced from their old friends in Korea as
well as troubled about making new friends in the United States, the adolescents
actively tried to build and to maintain their existing social networks in
Korea by using the Internet.
Feeling foreign in relation to their American classmates and host families,
the adolescents turned into active communicators interacting with familiar
people and cultures. These two different pictures of their daily lives in the
United States raised questions for me: Does their transnational communication
with people and things in Korea become a means of lessening their daily
difficulties in the United States? Does their transnational communication
mediate between their goals to acquire education in the United States and
their difficult lives in the United States?
Methods
Participants
Data for this project came from interviews with precollege Korean students in
three cities in the United States: Oklahoma, Boston and Dallas. The initial
interviews were conducted in Oklahoma City (OKC) in 2010, where I was a
doctoral student and was familiar with the Korean community in the area.
There were no available statistics on Korean students in OKC. According to
some members of the Korean community, there were a number of Korean
students enrolled in private schools in OKC. A series of interviews conducted
in 2010 revealed that many participants in OKC complained about their monotonous
daily life due to restricted mobility and limited places to go to in the
city. Guided by those findings, I conducted the next phase of data collection
in Boston, a bigger city as well as home to a bigger Korean community.
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Although the Korean American population in Boston is smaller than in other
major cities such as New York and Chicago, Boston is the most popular destination
for early study abroad students. Unlike the students in OKC, those in
Boston could easily reach other urban communities, including Korean business
areas, because of convenient transportation. The final phase of data collection
was conducted in Dallas in late 2010. While Dallas is larger than Boston
in terms of population, it has fewer education-related institutions. Since
Korean businesses in the Dallas metro area are spread throughout multiple
suburban centers, like Carrollton and Allen, the living environment for
unaccompanied minors was expected to be different from that in Boston.
In compliance with Institutional Review Board (IRB no. 12066) requirements,
all participants were over 18 years old and were either juniors or seniors in high
school. Since the first semester of an academic year begins in March in Korea,
there are usually some technical problems when Korean students transfer to
American high schools. Therefore, Korean high-school students usually lose a
semester in order to be in line with the American academic calendar. Moreover,
many Korean high-school students spend around a year practicing English
before they transfer to American high schools. For this reason, Korean juniors
and seniors are usually older than American juniors and seniors.
A total of 31 Korean adolescents participated in the study. They were
recruited through purposive sampling. With the help of several key informants
in each city, I purposefully recruited participants who were not accompanied by
their parents, lived with host families, and had been in the United States over
one year. A key informant, who was also a Korean high-school student in OKC
and a friend of my niece, helped recruit participants in OKC. In Boston, a
Korean teacher who taught English to Korean students at a private institute
introduced eight students to me. A participant in Boston also helped me recruit
another two students. In Dallas, a former student of mine introduced two participants,
and those two students helped me recruit four additional participants.
I conducted all interviews in Korean on a one-on-one basis.
Data analysis
Based on a pilot study with three unaccompanied adolescents in 2008 (these
participants were excluded from the present study), I developed 23 openended
questions in three categories: general questions about the participants,
questions regarding the use of communication technology and questions
regarding everyday communication and interpersonal relationships.
Following the methodological guidelines of the grounded theory method, I
began data analysis as soon as the first data were collected (Charmaz, 2006).
The first data analysis allowed me to add more questions and categories, such
as questions regarding identity and the cultural consequences of the students’
lives in the United States, to the interview protocol for the next phases of data
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Table 1. Detailed demographic information.
Name Gender Age Current City Current Host Years in the US
Bada Female 18 Boston American 5
Chang Male 19 Boston Korean 2
Dana Female 18 OKC Relative (Korean) 6
Doosik Male 19 Dallas American 3
Dowon Female 18 Dallas Acquaintance (Korean) 2
Giwook Male 19 Dallas American 3
Han Male 19 OKC Relative (Korean) 3
Hana Female 18 Dallas Korean 2
Heeseon Female 19 OKC American 2
Hyun Female 19 Boston American 2
Inpyo Male 19 Boston American 3
Jaeha Male 19 OKC American 3
Jimin Female 19 OKC American 3
Jin Female 18 OKC American 3
Jisuk Male 18 OKC Korean 2
Jongsoo Male 18 OKC Relative (Korean) 3
Jooho Male 18 Dallas Korean 2
Joon Male 19 OKC American 3
Lin Female 18 OKC American 3
Minkee Male 18 OKC American 2
Noah Male 19 Dallas Korean 2
Ryoo Male 19 Boston American 2
Saeho Male 19 OKC Korean 3
Seewon Male 18 Boston Korean 3
Sungil Male 18 Boston Korean 3
Song Male 18 OKC American 3
Soo Female 19 OKC Relative (Korean) 3
Taewon Male 19 Boston Korean 3
Wonsang Male 19 Boston Korean 3
Young Female 19 OKC American 3
Yuna Female 19 Boston Korean 3
Notes. 1. The listed names are pseudonyms.
2. In column 5, those designated as Korean or American hosts are neither relatives nor acquaintances
of the students’ families.
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collection. Instead of changing the third category of questions, I added two
more categories. Therefore, the next phases of data collection in the three cities
were conducted with five categories and a total of 52 questions.
I transcribed interviews verbatim in Korean for data analysis and coded the
data by repeatedly reading the fully transcribed interviews in order to compare
interviews and find similarities and differences in the data, which eventually
led to finding common themes. I selected and underlined important
comments representing each theme. This process was conducted not only
for refining the properties of each theme but also for describing the essential
nature of the themes (Thorne, 2000). These underlined comments and their
corresponding themes were reviewed by a colleague, a native of Korea, in
order to ensure reliability. During the process of data analysis, each participant
was assigned a pseudonym.
Findings
Deciding to study abroad
Throughout the interviews, most participants expressed their (and/or their
parents’) desires for their educational success, which often meant entering a
renowned American university. Most participants said that their decision to
study abroad was not voluntary but was that of their parents, who were
worried about their children’s future. However, they understood why
their parents pushed them to go abroad for secondary education. Some participants
who voluntarily decided to come to the United States were heavily
influenced by the neoliberal social atmosphere in Korea and by their parents.
Table 2. Summary of demographic information.
Category Number of Participants
Current city
OKC 15 (Male: 8, Female: 7)
Boston 10 (Male: 7, Female: 3)
Dallas 6 (Male: 4, Female: 2)
Age
18 17 (Male: 11, Female: 6)
19 14 (Male: 8, Female: 6)
Years in the USA
1–2 10 (Male: 6, Female: 4)
2–3 19 (Male: 13, Female: 6)
4 or more 2 (Male: 0, Female: 2)
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Regardless of their role in the decision-making process, all participants
believed that English skills and obtaining a university degree in the United
States are important for a successful life.
More than a half of the participants actively sought information about education
in the United States before they migrated; five participants attended
information sessions and the so-called study abroad fairs held by schools and
private agencies. Most participants said they felt pressured by the fact that
many of their classmates had already left for English-speaking countries.
Growing up in a very competitive educational culture, many participants
expressed their fear of being left behind by their classmates and friends,
whom they considered and called their competitors. Fears and dreams combined
to incline the young students and their parents to be apart to pursue
their shared educational goals. For example, Noah (male, Dallas, 19 years old,
two years in the United States) said:
I first didn’t want to come to America. It was my dad’s idea. He was so worried
about my grades. He was always very enthusiastic to support my education.
I had never stopped cram schools since 8 years old. I didn’t want to come to
America because I was afraid of English and making new friends. But I was also
worried about my grades. I didn’t think I could get in a good university in Korea.
Impossible. So I agreed with Dad. I heard that it was much easier to get in a good
university like some renowned state universities [in the United States].
While most participants considered entering reputable colleges to be the chief
purpose of their journey, a few participants mentioned being competitive in
the job market in the future. However, the road to educational success did not
turn out to be smooth. They soon realized that their lives in the United States
would be difficult without direct parental care, stable peer networks, and
various daily activities. As mentioned earlier, the young student migrants
spent a large amount of time alone in their own rooms, which led them to
turn to familiar people and cultural products in Korea available through the
Internet.
Transnational living and transnational communication
Uprooted and away from their families, friends, and familiar environments
and mostly on their own in the United States, the students intensively consumed
Korean media products available online, communicated with their
parents and family members, and maintained existing peer networks in
Korea through various social networking technologies.
Many participants specifically stated that media consumption and interpersonal
communication with people in Korea helped them avoid daily stresses
and the lack of personal relationships and diverse socio-cultural activities.
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Hyun (female, Boston, 19 years old, two years in the United States) specifically
explained that her quieter life in the United States made her lonelier. She
sought out Korean media content, through which she could watch familiar
scenes and people. Similarly, Dana (female, OKC, 18 years old, six years in the
United States) said, ‘‘Whenever I get depressed, I watch a Korean TV show. I
can forget everything with that. It makes me relaxed and happy.’’ Other than
relieving daily stresses, watching Korean television shows also played an
important role in building spaces where the participants felt more comfortable,
as reflected in Soo’s (female, OKC, 19 years old, three years in the United
States) statement:
I have no problem with my English, but I still don’t want to speak too much in
English. I get exhausted. So after school, I want to relax with Korean language.
I feel at home while watching Korean TV.
By accessing Korean television shows, they became more relaxed in their
‘‘home’’ space built across the border. The students’ patterns of media use
were not new to them. More than half of the participants said they used media
as they had in Korea, which meant that they not only consumed the same
kinds of media content but also continued the same way of consuming media.
Those who participated in various private education programs after school in
Korea said they did not have enough time to watch live television shows when
they lived in Korea. Thus, they downloaded television shows or accessed
online streaming sites late at night or on weekends to catch up on shows or
episodes they had missed. Taewon’s (male, Boston, 19 years old, three years in
the United States) experience is a good example:
When I was in Korea, I didn’t watch TV during weekdays because I didn’t have
much time to do so after school and hakwon (cram school). Every weekend,
I watched a lot of Korean reality TV shows and dramas. I downloaded them.
I am doing the same thing here. During weekends, I feel like I am at my home in
Korea.
Transnational interpersonal communication with family members in Korea
was also a very important after-school activity. Ryoo (male, Boston, 19
years old, two years in the United States) talked to his mother when he felt
lonely. For him, his mother was the most appropriate person to encourage him
to do his best. Through their conversations, he was reminded of his parents’
endless efforts to support his expensive education in the United States.
For these adolescents, their own rooms in their hosts’ homes became transnational
spaces formed by transnational communications. As discussed above,
through the Internet, they maintained their connections with their families,
friends and cultural activities in Korea. Many participants did not regard
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Korean Internet use as an activity they chose consciously but as simply a part
of life in the United States. Moreover, their Internet use in the United States
was a continuation of their Internet use in Korea.
Although participants in Boston had access to a relatively larger Korean community
and good public transportation system, like the participants in the two
other cities, they were dissatisfied with their peer communities. For the participants,
their friends in Korea remained their reference point for their peer relationships.
They spent a lot of time on the Internet consuming Korean media and
engaging in transnational communication with people in Korea. These transnational
relationships, made possible by communication technologies, filled
the void of meaningful social ties and relationships in the United States.
Remaining in the United States
Despite many complaints, the students said they would remain in the United
States, except for one participant who wanted to go back home to Korea.
They got used to their lives in the United States although they were dissatisfied
with their day-to-day experiences. In this ironic situation, the adolescents
adjusted to their transnational lives by considering the end goal of their educational
migration, managing their dissatisfaction with life in the United
States, and coping by way of transnational communication. This balancing
act is suggested by Hana’s (female, Dallas, 18 years old, two years in the
United States) reflection:
Sometimes, I think that I want to go back to Korea right now. But, I usually get
okay after chatting with friends (in Korea) and Mom. Then I think I have to do
my best for entering a good college here. I always know I will be depressed
again. But I also always know it will be okay. It is my life in America. So I just
want to accomplish my mission soon.
Despite difficult experiences in the United States, the young student migrants’
belief in the value of educational success and the importance of educational
and cultural capital in a competitive world nudged them to strive to accomplish
their goals. They became motivated through communication with their
parents. Many participants were concerned about the high cost of their study
abroad and their parents’ as well as their own sacrifices of being separated
from each other. They strongly believed that the best reward for themselves
and their parents was to be successful in their studies. Giwook (male, Dallas,
19 years old, three years in the United States) expressed this sense of
responsibility:
My mom has spent a lot of money since my 6th grade when I first came to
Canada. Then, I moved to Dallas because my mom thought the US was better
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than Canada for me to get into an American college. Actually, my mom doesn’t
talk about money at all while messaging on the Internet. She always asks me
what I need. But I know I am spending more money here for my host’s home and
tuition. I always feel guilty. Now I have one-and-a-half more years to go to
graduate from high school. I will do my best to get in a good college.
There were also those who tried to reduce the amount of time they used the
Internet. Jin (female, OKC, 19 years old, three years in the United States)
explained the reasons:
I sometimes try not to use the Internet because it’s not good for my studies.
Because I am using Korean on the Internet all the time, I am afraid my English
[will be affected]. And I also spend too much time with stupid things on the
Internet.
I asked Jin, ‘‘So did you successfully manage Internet use?’’ and she answered,
‘‘Not really. I become more depressed without the Internet. It was a
necessary evil.’’
Accustomed to using the Internet to consume media products in Korea, the
adolescents regarded the Internet as a means for coping with stressors in the
United States. At the same time, they believed excessive use of the Internet
could undermine their goal of doing well in their studies. However, like Jin, all
the participants were unsuccessful in reducing their use of the Internet. Dana’s
(female, OKC, 18 years old, six years in the United States) admission that she
became lonelier and bored without the Internet was common among the
participants:
I tried not to use the Internet when I first came here. And I concluded that I could
not live without the Internet. I’d better go to bed one hour later after watching a
one-hour TV show. That’s much better for my life here.
Although they experienced difficulties and loneliness in the United States,
many participants saw the advantages of early study abroad. They commonly
pointed out a better chance to enter a renowned American college as the first
reason for continuing their studies in the United States. Heeseon (female,
OKC, 19 years old, two years in the United States) is an example of a participant
who expressed a strong belief in educational success:
I want to get into a good college in the United States. Even if I go to just a so-so
university, at least I can master English, which will be very important in this age.
It will help me get a good job, like a highly paid job at a famous corporation like
Samsung.
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Interestingly, although they reported being unhappy in the United States, more
than two-thirds of the participants said they wanted to remain in the country
even after they finished college. Some participants mentioned that they wanted
to succeed first in the United States and later live in Korea. Three participants
had another plan: they wanted to transfer to a Korean college after two years at
an American college. Those who wanted to return to Korea soon also acknowledged
that they would have better chances for admission to a Korean college
after a couple of years studying at an American college. Overall, the young
student migrants still thought that studying in the United States was worth the
sacrifices because they believed a US education would increase their chances of
success educationally and professionally. Thus, they continued to live abroad
despite homesickness, disconnectedness, and boredom. Caught between their
desire to achieve their life goals and the difficulties of living on their own in the
United States, the young students availed themselves of multiple online devices
in order to be connected with their significant others and cultural products in
Korea. Somehow, the transnational connections provided by the Internet helped
the young student migrants in preparing themselves to be equipped with competencies
in a competitive world.
Although the young migrants did not regard the United States as a desirable
destination, they opted to stay in the United States, viewing it as a ‘‘land
of opportunity’’ where they could increase their cultural capital by gaining
English skills and earning a degree from an American college. The contextual
approach to young student migrants’ Internet use adopted in this study led to
the finding that transnational communication was a necessary condition in the
pursuit of flexible citizenship. Many participants attempted to reduce their use
of the Internet because it might hinder them in improving their English skills
and adapting to a new culture. However, they became more stressed and
lonely when they had no access to the Internet (and by extension, access to
people and things Korean). The Internet, as one participant described, was a
necessary evil. The use of the Internet to connect with Korea enabled the
young students to continue their studies in the United States while drawing
support from people and communities across borders. The strategies
employed by the young students call to mind the importance of transnational
communities, as elaborated by Portes et al. (1999: 220):
Whereas, previously, economic success and social status depended exclusively
on rapid acculturation and entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, at
present they depend (at least for some) on cultivating strong social networks
across national borders. For immigrants involved in transnational activities and
their home country counterparts, success does not so much depend on abandoning
their culture and language to embrace those of another society as on preserving
their original cultural endowment, while adapting instrumentally to a
second.
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As seen in their life experiences and transnational communication practices,
the unaccompanied adolescents were not active in communities and peer networks
in the United States. Rather, they remained connected and actively
involved in their home communities and maintained strong ties with family
members and friends through borderless communication technologies.
Through transnational communication, the young migrants maintained links
to their families, peers, and culture back home, which helped them to pursue
educational success away from home.
Concluding remarks
Grounded in the national atmosphere of neoliberal socio-economic transformation,
upper middle-class families in Korea took to educational migration in
the hopes of advancing the educational and employment prospects of their
children. Although physically separated, adolescent migrants and their parents
engaged in transnational family communication, using every available
technology to support the young migrants in their educational pursuits.
Parents’ continuous encouragement provided important motivational support
for the young migrants, who were concerned about the amount of money their
parents were spending for their overseas studies and were burdened with
psychological issues. The young migrants’ transnational communication
with their peers allowed them to be active members in their familiar communities.
Through constant and instant contacts, sharing media experiences, and
building online communities with friends in Korea, they were able to cope
with feelings of isolation, which might have led them to consider abandoning
their studies in the United States. Also, their heavy consumption of Korean
media products helped them to deal with stress. For many, Korean media
consumption was the best way or even the only way of entertaining
themselves.
Experiencing isolated and unstable lives in the United States, they were
very active in building and maintaining their own transnational spaces
where they felt protected from daily stresses and where they could recharge
their energy. Such spaces filled young migrants’ need for friendship, entertainment
and parental support. Availing themselves of communication technologies
and devoting their time to building and maintaining transnational
communities, they were able to survive the lonely journey they believed
was necessary to equip themselves with skills and capital to survive in
this world. Transnational communication allows mobile people to consume
familiar media products, to build social networks and to share daily experiences
with significant others across borders. Transnational communication
is no longer an optional communication practice but has become
contextualized in the lives of globally mobile individuals. The young migrants
who participated in this study did not make particular efforts to adjust to
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their US setting. Instead, they created their own spaces, connecting with
people in Korea in order to get through each day and to continue to pursue
their studies. Transnational communication provided a means to help them
cope with the difficulties of studying overseas that were part of their journey
to success.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this paper.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial,
or not-for-profit sectors.
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