ABSTRACT
This chapter explores dual historical processes, in which South Korea as a nation-state operates powerfully, governing and controlling various dimensions of “labor import” and migrants’ work and lives, while at the same time contemporary globalization has been eroding the nation-state system, disrupting the isomorphism among territory, people, and nation-state sovereignty. It argues that the South Korean state functions simultaneously as a racial state that plays a major role in creating and maintaining a racially segmented labor market, and as a multicultural state that facilitates management of diverse ethnicized populations. Female migrants constitute about one third of the entire migrant worker population residing and working in South Korea. Apart from Russian and Filipina women who enter South Korea on “entertainment visas,” recruited for sex and sexualized service industry jobs, female migrant workers enter South Korea in search of factory or other service jobs in restaurants or sales.
