Abstract
This research examines how migrant workers in South Korea navigate their lives amidst structural marginalisation in the host country and physical separation from their countries of origin. Employing the concept of everyday peace as its theoretical framework, this study seeks to enhance understanding of migrant workers as agents actively addressing their challenges and to elucidate the forms of peace they pursue in informal spaces through diverse practices. To this end, this research explores their perceptions of everyday peace, their everyday peacebuilding practices, and the effects of these practices on fostering peace. These investigations are grounded in the narratives of lived experiences collected through in-depth interviews with 12 migrant workers in South Korea.
The findings reveal that the everyday inhabited by migrant workers is shaped by multi-scalar spaces, encompassing both the host country and their homeland. Their sense of everyday peace is closely tied to the maintenance of physical, financial, and relational stability, namely securing occupational safety, earning a decent income, fostering dignified relationships with members of Korean society, and sustaining transnational family connections. In addressing these issues, they contextually and subtly employ both self-protective and reciprocal strategies, while fulfilling their familial obligations as breadwinners, sons, daughters, spouses, and parents across geographical borders.
The everyday peacebuilding enacted by migrant workers inherently entails the ongoing negotiation of various relationships and encompasses a broad spectrum of impacts, ranging from sustaining secure coexistence with dominant Korean groups to forming interdependent relationships and disrupting power dynamics. At the same time, it involves transnational activities, including the enhancement of families’ well-being and the movement of family members, resources, and practices. Their flexibility enables a diverse range of peacebuilding practices, representing a central form of agency through which they navigate everyday life, despite significant constraints on their autonomy imposed by structural factors.