This is a brief report from Joohyun (Justine) Park about the 1st fieldwork in South Korea. She conducted her interviews and film interviews for 7 weeks (20 Sep-5 Nov 2021). This report aims to present the preparation and process of her fieldwork and to introduce the plan for data analysis and the next round of fieldwork.
[Preparation]
To find potential participants and schedule interviews before starting her fieldwork, she advertised her research through Facebook page and LinkedIn. This research targets skilled migrants who a) identify themselves as Asian, b) have a university degree or higher, and c) have been working in Korea at the time of interview.
[Fieldwork in Korea]
At the beginning stage of the fieldwork, she prepared a zoom meet-up session with help from Ah-Hyun Angela Lee (Research assistant, Goethe University Frankfurt). During this online meeting, after a short introductory session of her research project, they shared their life and work experiences during the COVID.
Also, she visited the Migration Training and Research Centre, one of the external partner institutions of the QuaMaFA project. She talked with Dr. Chang Won Lee about skilled migration research and discussed potential collaborative work in the future.
During the fieldwork, she interviewed a total of 28 Asian skilled migrants (and 2 non-Asians). Thanks to the various socio-demographic characteristics of the interviewees (nationality/ethnicity, occupation, age, gender, highest academic qualification and major, period of working in Korea, visa status, and Korean fluency), she was able to hear and gather different dimensions of the work and life experiences of Asian professionals in Korea. She also filmed four interviews which will be a part of a documentary of the QuaMaFA project.
[What comes next]
She is currently analyzing the data and is writing a preliminary report. By adopting a positive psychological perspective, she will focus on identifying the characteristics and patterns of skilled migrants with high job and life satisfaction. In particular, she will focus on identifying the patterns of their responses to challenging situations and underlying factors that made them respond in that way. In addition, short video clips from film interviews will be uploaded to this website and QuaMaFA social media.
Meanwhile, she is planning to conduct the 2nd fieldwork in Korea from 1 April to 27 May 2022. If you know anyone who might be interested in this research, please let them know about this research project.
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