Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women ─ Diasporic Daughters

This book explores the unstudied nature of diaspora among young Korean, Japanese and Chinese women living and studying in the West. Why do women move? What are the actual conditions of their transnational lives? How do they make sense of their transnational lives through the experience of the media? Are they becoming cosmopolitan subjects? Exploring the key questions within their particular socio-economic and cultural contexts, this book analyzes the contradictions of cosmopolitan identity formation and challenges the general assumptions of cosmopolitanism. It considers the highly visible, fastest growing, yet little studied phenomenon of women’s transnational migration and the role of the media in everyday life, offering detailed empirical data on the nature of the women’s diaspora. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, sociology, cultural studies and anthropology, the book provides an empirically grounded and theoretically insightful investigation into this evolving phenomenon.

Youna Kim is Associate Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, France. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (2005, Routledge); Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (2008, Routledge); Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (2012, Palgrave Macmillan).