The struggle over class, identity, and language: A case study of South Korean transnational families 1

Globalization, while deterritorializing identity and culture, generates new practices and subjectivities that must be understood with reference to relationships between identity, language, and class in multiple markets. Through interviews and ethnographic observations focusing on children's language learning practices, this article examines how transnational South Korean families locate themselves in relation to the phenomenon of jogi yuhak , ‘early study abroad.’ It focuses on two graduate student families’ struggle over securing their social position by portraying themselves as different from other transnational Korean families through investing in alternate forms of linguistic capital. This reflects their contradictory and shifting subjectivities as they negotiate between foregrounding their roles as moral and intellectual elites vs. acting as materialistic parents. These transnational families’ struggles and conflicts underline how globalization in general, and jogi yuhak as a transnational strategy in particular, affects individuals’ subjectivities at the intersection of class, language, and transnationalism. , , , . . . , , . , , . [Korean]