TY - BOOK

T1 - Making a 'Multicultural Special Zone'

T2 - Multiculturalism in South Korea

AU - Choi, Jihyun

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - This thesis contributes to research on urban and everyday multiculture by exploring an ethnically diverse, working-class neighbourhood – Wongok-dong in South Korea – from a cultural and political economic perspective. Wongok-dong, a commercial and residential neighbourhood located in an industrial city, Ansan, is one of the most diverse areas in the country with migrants coming from different ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds, largely from Asia – for example, from China, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. Over the last decade, the local government has promoted this area as a Damunhwa (multicultural) Special Zone, as part of an urban revitalisation project. The aim of the study is to understand how the multicultural is imagined, institutionally and spatially materialised, and practiced and experienced in this area. More specifically, it asks two questions: first, what are the political and economic forces underpinning the process ofestablishing the Damunhwa Special Zone? Second, how do the residents experience and evaluate the changes brought about by multiculturalism? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Wongokdong, the thesis examines the analytically independent but practically interdependent relationship between cultural and economic dimensions in the process of the multiculturalcity/place making, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the main concerns of the residents living in the multicultural environment. I argue that Wongok-dong has been transformed into a place that welcomes migrants and yet is segregated and racialised, showing the discrepancy between the rhetoric of a multicultural city and the material reality and lived experiences of thecity. The thesis highlights the conjunction of multicultural and neoliberal elements in shaping a local multicultural place and the role of everyday evaluations in (re-)producing the ethnic and ‘racial’ relations of a culturally diverse society.

AB - This thesis contributes to research on urban and everyday multiculture by exploring an ethnically diverse, working-class neighbourhood – Wongok-dong in South Korea – from a cultural and political economic perspective. Wongok-dong, a commercial and residential neighbourhood located in an industrial city, Ansan, is one of the most diverse areas in the country with migrants coming from different ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds, largely from Asia – for example, from China, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. Over the last decade, the local government has promoted this area as a Damunhwa (multicultural) Special Zone, as part of an urban revitalisation project. The aim of the study is to understand how the multicultural is imagined, institutionally and spatially materialised, and practiced and experienced in this area. More specifically, it asks two questions: first, what are the political and economic forces underpinning the process ofestablishing the Damunhwa Special Zone? Second, how do the residents experience and evaluate the changes brought about by multiculturalism? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Wongokdong, the thesis examines the analytically independent but practically interdependent relationship between cultural and economic dimensions in the process of the multiculturalcity/place making, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the main concerns of the residents living in the multicultural environment. I argue that Wongok-dong has been transformed into a place that welcomes migrants and yet is segregated and racialised, showing the discrepancy between the rhetoric of a multicultural city and the material reality and lived experiences of thecity. The thesis highlights the conjunction of multicultural and neoliberal elements in shaping a local multicultural place and the role of everyday evaluations in (re-)producing the ethnic and ‘racial’ relations of a culturally diverse society.

U2 - 10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1515

DO - 10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1515

M3 - Doctoral Thesis

PB - Lancaster University

ER -