This study investigates how foreign nationals of special ability from Myanmar construct and negotiate experiences of precarity and precariousness through narratives of in/security and in/justice in regard to their living conditions in South Korea. Six semistructured interviews with male Myanmar working migrants are analyzed, adapting Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis framework to examine how structural and social conditions shape their linguistic repertoire and rhetoric of precarity. The analytical lens is formed by Judith Butler's conceptualization of precarity and precariousness and Sara Ahmed’s cultural-political analysis of emotion and affective economies. The findings reveal that participants describe in/security and in/justice as context-dependent and relational, shaped by intersectional factors including visa and legal constraints, health care access, work discipline, pay inequality, and supportive networks. Linguistic markers such as modality, metaphors, pronoun shifts, as well as re/definitions of in/justice, expose how un/certainty is normalized, agency remains constrained, and value is conditionalized through performance. The narratives demonstrate that, whilst formal institutions and labor regimes often reinforce precarity, informal networks, religious communities, and self-reliance strategies serve as partial buffers. Accordingly, these accounts not only highlight structural constraints and notions of precarity within South Korea’s labor and migration regimes, but also actively re/produce the very notions of in/justice, belonging, and in/security they reciprocate. The aim of this study is thus to highlight how language both reflects and materializes structuralized precariousness by linking individual affective experiences of migrant workers to broader structural and institutional dynamics in South Korea.

Authors:
Vanessa Sonta, Pusan National University, South Korea
Kum Za Lian, Pusan National University, South Korea

About the Presenter(s)
Vanessa Sonta is a PhD Candidate in International Area Studies at Pusan National University, South Korea, specializing in identity studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies and emotion studies in East Asia and ASEAN.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

Bookmark