Events & Calendars CHI Salon: "In Transit: Gender, Race and Korean Migration to Argentina and Remigration to the United States"

In this virtual talk, Lili M. Kim, a CHI Fellow and visiting lecturer in history at Amherst College and associate professor of history and global migrations at Hampshire College, examines the little-known history of Korean migration to Argentina that began in 1965 as a result of the agricultural treaty signed between war-torn South Korea and Argentina, as well as the subsequent remigration of Koreans to the United States in the 1990s. This presentation will focus on reconstructing the history of early settlements of Koreans as agricultural workers in the rural town of Lamarque, Argentina, and how Korean migrants came to dominate the garment industry as laborers and business owners in Buenos Aires. Utilizing both Korean and Spanish sources, Kim explores the centrality of Korean women's gendered labor and the formation of Korean Argentine communities in the face of racial discrimination and economic scapegoating during multiple Argentine economic crises in the context of globalization of labor and migration.