(Un)making deserving citizens: Education, activism, and military service of undocumented Korean immigrant young adults

(Un)Making Deserving Citizens: Education, Activism, and Military Service of Undocumented Korean Immigrant Young Adults examines how undocumented Korean immigrant young adults navigate their liminal status in the United States. Presently, there are 192,000 undocumented Korean immigrants, a group that makes up the eighth largest undocumented population in the United States. While the reality is that one out of seven immigrants with Korean heritage are undocumented, their day-to-day experiences remain largely unexamined. This stands in stark contrast to the extensive media coverage and research conducted on Latinx immigrants. Focusing on the invisibility of the undocumented Korean immigrants, my research deconstructs the ways in which the meanings and practices of “deserving citizens” have been reassembled and rearticulated through the undocumented Korean immigrant young adults’ experiences. In particular, I investigate how the notion of deservingness is imagined, challenged, and redefined through their education, activism, and military service. Through transnational approaches, I argue that the deserving citizens are shaped by kinship, ethnic community, and the state, inflected by racism, memories of the Cold War, and the militarized modernity of Korea. While analyzing the contradictions of young adults who resist or compromise the myth of the model undocumented minority and the notion of an ideal youth-citizen, I document their genuine contributions to social change, particularly through their activism, in an era of increased anti-immigrant legislation. Informed by interdisciplinary insights from education policy studies, global studies, ethnic studies, and youth studies, my work expands the field of undocumented immigrant studies.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Policy Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Chung, Ga Young

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mayo, Cris
• Kwon, Soo Ah
• McCarthy, Cameron
• Dyson, Anne Haas

• education, race, immigration

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2019 Ga Young Chung

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105851

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105851