Spatial Capability for Understanding Gendered Mobility for Korean Christian Immigrant Women in Los Angeles

This paper suggests a new concept, ‘spatial capability', for understanding how women's freedom of mobility is systematically constrained. Based on the capability approach, it demonstrates that women's adaptive daily culture causes individual agents voluntarily to limit their mobility. Through the orally expressed experiences of 42 married Korean immigrant women in Los Angeles, this research effectively argues how the marginalisation of the subjects in the migration decision, along with their limited daily mobility, constitutes their spatial capability. It also shows that their daily culture, including their gender roles and their Christianity, enhances their constraints by adapting the limits and ultimately becomes the limitation itself. Gendered mobility should be approached in terms of potential freedom and accompanied by a consideration of the dialectic relationship that exists between the social constraints and the individual agents.

The politics of forgetting: Unmaking memories and reacting to memory-place-making

This article examines responses to place-of-memory making that provoke the memory unmaking practices which constitute the politics of forgetting. Based on in-depth interviews, participant observations, and archival research the work focuses on two tragic incidents in South Korean history, the May 18 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju in 1980 and the Sewol Ferry disaster on 16 April 2014. In both cases, once the indurate actions of the conservative national governments in power at both times became known, they provoked nationwide anger that precipitated each regime's eventual downfall. Despite widespread outrage, those in government during the respective events had support from right-wing organisations as well as private citizens both in the actions taken and the ensuing politics of forgetting that enabled them to obscure these two tragedies. We argue that the erosion of memory places using the politics of forgetting exemplified by these two events is the result of each governing party's search for exoneration. By focusing on the positive as well as the negative reactions to the memories in question, this study expands discussions on the diversity of spatial strategies that inform the politics of forgetting and remembering.N

Transnational Religious Place-Making: Sri Lankan Migrants’ Physical and Virtual Buddhist Places in South Korea

This article looks at the relationship between virtual Buddhist practices that keep Sri Lankan migrants' engaged with Buddhist community and leadership both in South Korea and elsewhere. Based on mixed ethnographic research methods including participant observation and in-depth interviews, the research demonstrates the following findings. First, the key actors of the Buddhist place-making included Sri Lankan migrant workers, a Sri Lankan ambassador, Sri Lankan temples, Korean temples, and virtual temple participants from other countries. Migrant workers' collaboration with them contributed to institutionalizing the physical temple. Second, the making of the virtual temple interacted with the making of physical Buddhist places, rather than replacing it. Hosting a virtual temple via Skype expanded into including Sri Lankan migrants who live in other countries. This study contributes to the mobilities discussion as well as place-making discussion by articulating the specific process of transnational religious place-making.N