Subjectivity and health for Korean "goose mothers" in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Abstract

The number of Korean goose mothers living in New Zealand with their children, while their husbands remain in their home country, is rapidly increasing. This particular form of Asian migration to Western countries is a new phenomenon, and brings with it new forms of family life. Existing research does not tell us much about how these mothers adjust to, and manage their health in, such different circumstances. This research explores how these Korean goose mothers experience their subjectivities in the new country and how these subjectivities relate to their health practice. Drawing on a critical perspective, I suggest that multiple subjectivities form through the different cultural discourses that are available to the mothers in their new context. Discourses around gender, health and ethnicity provide relevance to the Korean women, through constructing meanings of what it is to be a good mother, a Korean as well as a member of an ethnic minority group while in New Zealand. These constructions position the women in asymmetrical relationships: between men and women, between western health practitioners and Korean patients, and between the host society and the ethnic minority group. These multiple and simultaneous relationships complicate the Korean women's subjectivities, which are constantly renegotiated in response to these relationships. By both complying with and resisting positionings caused by these asymmetrical relationships, the women reinterpret and reformulate their subjectivities. They experience changes in their health, because their health practice relates so closely to their multiple subjectivities in New Zealand as mothers, Koreans, and members of an ethnic minority group. These findings provide further possibilities for understanding, and for intervening with Korean goose mothers' adjustment and health, if we attend to these multiple and contingent subjectivities which are complicated by gender and ethnicity in their new context. [From Introduction