The South American population in South Korea (hereafter Korea) has historically been one of the smallest among foreign residents in the country. Reasons vary, but the geographic distance and the exorbitant cost to make the trip to Korea often limited the visibility of “South America” in Korea to 1.5ers or second-generation Korean South Americans, who, like myself, were in the country to rediscover their ethnic roots or to pursue higher degree education. Looking among the South American born residents in Korea, Brazilians have always been the largest of all; by comparison, the size of the Peruvian community—the main subject of Erica Vogel's research—has been so negligible that their presence in Korea could have gone unnoticed had it not been for someone like Vogel, who patiently explored their journey in Northeast Asia.
Migrant Conversions is an ethnographic study of Peruvians in Korea. Based on 24 months of fieldwork conducted in Korea and Peru between 2006 and 2011, Vogel analyzes “the changing significance of money, religion, and migration for migrants and their families” during their time in the country (p. 19). Accordingly, the Peruvian migration to Korea as an alternative destination to Japan started in the mid-1990s and lasted for about two decades. During this period, the migrants not only experienced two large financial crises—the local International Monetary Fund crisis of 1997–98 and the global financial crisis of 2007–09—but they also underwent many transformations occurring in diverse spheres of their lives, namely, monetary, religious, and cosmopolitan plans.
Vogel utilizes conversion as an analytical tool to better understand the Peruvians’ diverse aspirations and eventual transformations from mere economic migrants into the more important roles of transnational religious leaders or cosmopolitan travelers with much access to global networks (p. 5). An interesting feature of the Peruvian migrants in this work is their legal status, where many had already overstayed their visa but continued on with their lives in Korea. In what Melanie B. E. Griffith calls “temporal liminality” (p. 12), the migrants negotiated their legal instability while attributing further meanings to their lives with the hope to be recognized as worthy members of the transnational societies they live in and hopefully become documented one day.
In chapter 1, Vogel illustrates the development of the Peruvian migration to Korea, the Korean Employee Permit System, and how the migrants managed to create initial transnational ties through active participation in life in both countries. In the process, they succeeded in placing Korea in the mental map of many while changing the existing perception, significance and value of Korea in Peru. Chapter 2 explores the perils of monetary conversion in times of global financial crisis and the consequences of fluctuating rates in meeting the needs of their families back in Peru.
In chapter 3, Vogel describes the religious conversion that many migrants lived through since coming to Korea. In their attempt to add a further significance to their lives beyond monthly remittance senders, many Peruvians rediscovered, converted, or changed their religion to find “respuestas or signs from God that their migration were not about a search for money, but were in fact predestined” (p. 80). While their legal status accelerated their path to becoming established as religious leaders, their religious conversion also strained family relationships.
Chapter 4 is about the cosmopolitan conversion of the migrants and the changes in how they see the world and place themselves in the bigger picture of a globalized world. Influenced by the international community they interact with, the last type of conversion refers to “the plans and projects that Peruvians developed in Korea in the effort to help them change their lives and those of their families” (p. 8), something that cannot fail because it is a continually evolving process.
Migrant Conversions is a case study that focuses on the Peruvian migrants’ experience in Korea, in what Vogel considers as a snapshot of globalization (p. 14). In doing so, this is an excellent book to understand how the Peruvian migrants positioned themselves within the Korean society, stranded between the legal exclusion and religious/community inclusion. Yet an important reminder to the reader is that the Peruvian migrants in Korea were a minority within the minority population and that their experiences may not be fully representative of the larger foreign worker population in Korea, as experienced and acknowledged by Vogel herself (pp. 14–19). Having said that, the Peruvian experience is highly transferable and a valuable tool to understand the experience of other undocumented labor population in Korea.
My observations of this otherwise fascinating work are that, first, I would have liked to know about the relationship between the Peruvians and the Korean society from the latter's perspective. Admittedly, there are some mentions of some Korean bureaucrats, church people, and the Peruvians in Korea, but further exploration would have added to the depth of the research. Second, I would have appreciated the use of Korean materials on Latin American population in Korea. For instance, a report published in 2011 by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy observed a high proportion of undocumented Peruvian workers among the South American population in the country and provided very interesting data and analysis that, in my view, would have hugely benefited Vogel's work.Footnote 1
In a nutshell, Migrant Conversions is a valuable contribution to the growing list of works on South Americans in Northeast Asia and, as such, I would recommend this book especially for anthropologists and sociologists researching on wider migration studies.
