[특강소식] Nail Salons as Transnational Body Labor: Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship, Labor Rights and Diasporic Politics
주제: Nail Salons as Transnational Body Labor: Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship, Labor Rights and Diasporic Politics
강연자: Miliann
Kang, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
일시: 12/11(수) 3:30 pm
In the summer of 2015, the New York Times (Times) published an
explosive front page series by Sara Maslin Nir on the “The Price of Nice Nails”
and “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers.”
This series shined much-needed light on labor rights violations, toxic
chemical exposures, and occupational health risk in New York City nail salons.
Nir’s language and arguments, however, particularly her focus on a “rigid
racial and ethnic caste system,” placed most of the blame on Korean immigrant
small business owners for labor conditions they alone did not create and by
themselves cannot fix. This framing of the story not only oversimplified a
sense of Korean owners as villains, but it presented Latina and other Asian
workers as victims, ignoring their active participation in efforts to reform
the industry. Substandard working conditions in nail salons are widespread, and
nail salon owners must be held responsible for unfair and discriminatory labor
practices and labor rights violations. But by focusing on ethnic relations
within the salons, this coverage neglected to give sufficient attention to the
systemic economic, social and political forces outside of the salons.
Bio: Miliann Kang is Associate Professor in
Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Sociology and
Asian/Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar
affiliated with Ewha Womans University, where she is researching work and
family issues for Asian and Asian American women in a transnational context.
Her book, The Managed Hand: Race, Gender
and the Body in Beauty Service Work (2010, University of California Press)
addresses gendered processes and relations in immigrant women’s work focusing
on Asian-owned nail salons. It won four awards from the American Sociological
Association (Sections on Racial and Ethnic Minorities; Sex and Gender; Race,
Gender, and Class; and Asia/Asian America) and the Sara Whaley book prize from
the National Women’s Studies Association. Her second book, Mother Other: Race and Reproductive Politics in Asian America is
under contract with the University of California Press. Her writing has been
published in Gender and Society,
Contexts, Newsweek, Women’s Review of Books, Huffington
Post, Daily
Hampshire Gazette and Korea
Times.
장소: 국제교육관(IEB) 902호
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