The purpose of this paper is to extend the space of social reproduction of female marital migrants who are Multicultural Instructors or students of the Multicultural Instructors Vocational Programs by using the concept of precarity. The women’s experiences are predicated on crafting a felicitous but fictitious work-family balance based on a cost-benefit calculus, but differences between expectations and actual practices produce their precarity. I analyze the ways in which the governance of the women that asks them to be social reproductive labor workers at their homes is slipped over, so the women decide to be income earners beyond their homes. First, despite female marital migrants’ desire to be engaged in professional and high-wage work, they voluntarily choose insecure, low-paid, and temporary work positions due to social reproductive work at their homes. Second, their labor beyond their homes enables these women to exercise their abilities and avoid others’ disrespect, but also gives them a more vulnerable status; the women’s reproduction activities at their homes cannot help but force them to choose flexible occupations, which in turn entrenches them on the margins of Korean society. Based on these results, I argue that social reproduction of female marital migrants is situated in the continuum from wife to worker experiencing various precarities, and that the women are situated in a marginalized social position in Korean society.
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