“I Want to Be Trafficked so I Can Migrate!”: Cross-Border Movement of North Koreans into China through Brokerage and Smuggling Networks

Author:

Kook Kyunghee

Abstract

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with forty North Korean escapees involved in smuggling and brokerage networks and explores North Korean escapees’ cross-border mobility to China. It addresses the complexities of smuggling, showing how the category spans a continuum of actions that might be described as saving or rescuing at one pole, and the kind of exploitation generally termed trafficking at the other. By focusing on the multiple and varied interests and motivations of different actors who assist with North Korean women’s migration, I argue that differences among trafficking, smuggling, and migration are constructed rather than essential, and reflect a continued tendency among policy-makers to imagine human mobility through the lens of a fictional opposition between actions that are forced and those that are voluntary. The North Korean women’s migratory processes demonstrate the complexities of brokerage and smuggling networks, revealing how they can, but do not necessarily, entail the kind of exploitation generally termed trafficking.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

General Social Sciences,Sociology and Political Science

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3