이주노동자와 선주민의 조우와 내적 갈등: 한국 이주노동자의 구술생애사를 통하여

Abstract

This article typifies the lives of transnational migration through the oral life history of the Pakistani male migrant worker in South Korea, and examines the encounters and internal tensions between migrant workers and local residents by analyzing the researcher’s biases of migrant workers. Life history is a construction created by the interactions between the individual and the society living in a particular society at a certain time by the history and trace of the individual’s life. And a study on the oral life history is to analyze the movement and development process of the society and the change of individual’s agency orientation through the specific lives of individuals, and to typify a case. When the life of Mr. Kumile, the narrator of this study, is typified, he was born in a poor family, carried out transnational migrant labor and got married internationally. He makes strategic decision of nationality and practices his life as a Muslim simultaneously. The encounter with the migrant worker Mr. Kumile discloses the spatiotemporal backwardness of the Korean researcher who has been bound by narrow national experiences and perspectives. This article explores how ignorance arising from differences in perceptions of other societies, namely, Islamic culture and religion, is causing conflicts in the encounters with migrants. In addition, it also criticizes the limitations of solid national identity of local residents through the life of Mr. Kumile who maintains his own identity in strategic migration and nationality choices living.