J J Chun
Biographic Data
| ID | 17836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J J Chun |
| GIVEN NAMES | J J |
| FAMILY NAME | Chun |
| SIGNATURE | CHUN J J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0216-6376 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Building caring cities: From disaster relief to community-based infrastructure for unauthorized and low-paid immigrant workers
This paper asks "who cares" in the precarious city when the state fails. In Los Angeles, one of the largest immigrant-based economies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerability of low-paid immigrant workers who were unable to do paid work during government-mandated shutdown periods. Unauthorized workers and immigrants in mixed-status households, who are the focus of our study, faced additional challenges, conten…
Confronting Servitude: Asian Immigrant Women Workers in State-Funded Homecare
This article utilizes a multilevel intersectional framework to analyze how Asian immigrant women workers in state-funded care provisioning make sense of and contest the relations of servitude that have long plagued low-paid domestic work. Our research, which draws on in-depth interviews with Chinese, Korean, and Filipina/o/x women in California’s In-Home Supportive Services program, shows that workers across all three groups face coercive labor c…
Protesting Precarity: South Korean Workers and the Labor of Refusal
This essay examines the crisis of solidarity affecting workers who protest labor precarity under South Korea's capitalist democracy. Once considered foundational to the struggle for national democratization, the dramatic protests of aggrieved workers are frequently depicted as out of place and out of sync. Drawing upon ethnographic research on workers' protest repertoires, this essay challenges prevailing explanations and instead argues that heig…
Building worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry
This article examines how unions build worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry in the context of widespread informality. Drawing upon regional case studies of the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU), we find that construction day laborers experience poor working conditions and rampant employment violations under multiple layers of subcontracting that enable capital to bypass existing labor laws and regulations. D…
L'intersectionnalité comme stratégie de mobilisation sociale: Les défenseures des immigrées asiatiques aux États-Unis
L'histoire des Asian Immigrant Women Advocates ( aiwa ou Défenseures des immigrées asiatiques) à Oakland et à San Jose en Californie, sur près de trois décennies, offre un exemple éloquent de l'intersectionnalité mise en œuvre dans un mouvement social et de son utilité pour révéler la dimension diffuse et différentielle des formes imbriquées d'oppression. L'article revient sur les origines du concept d'intersectionnalité, à la fois dans les milie…
Care Work in Transition: Transnational Circuits of Gender, Migration, and Care
This article presents a broad overview of the emerging field of scholarship on gender, migration and care work. The first section provides a rationale for linking the embodied intimate labor of sex workers and surrogate mothers to more traditional caregiving among nannies, nurses and eldercare aids. Through an intersectional optic on power and domination in care workers' everyday lives, we highlight the ways in which love's labor is lost and deva…
Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women and the Changing Worlds of Work, Care and Unionism
This article examines how the intersectional dynamics of gender, migration, and labor shape the trajectories of immigrant women into home-based elder care and how unions and community organizations mediate its conditions. Our analysis, which uses interviews with In-Home Supportive Services workers in California's Oakland Chinatown, shows that the growth of publicly-subsidized homecare jobs has created an occupational opportunity for workers who f…
Organizing across divides: Union challenges to precarious work in Vancouver’s privatized health care sector
The outsourcing of housekeeping, laundry and food services in Vancouver’s health care sector has created a new tier of low-paid, precariously employed workers in the private sector, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of colour. Through an in-depth case study of the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), this article examines how movement-oriented union strategies, such as living wage campaigns (LWCs), enable unions to challenge the nexus betw…
Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea's Democracy Movement, 1970-1979
Building political agency and movement leadership: The grassroots organizing model of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
Drawing upon a qualitative case study of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), which organizes Chinese immigrant women working in low-paid, precarious jobs, this study examines how one worker center contends with multiple dimensions of precarity to build political agency and movement leadership. By encouraging participation in collective trainings, promoting involvement in collective action campaigns, and creating organizational leadership role…
Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea by Hwa-Jen Liu
Reviewed by: Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea by Hwa-Jen Liu Jennifer Jihye Chun Hwa-Jen Liu, Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2015) Leverage of the Weak begins with a provocative puzzle. Despite their many similarities in terms of size, population density, and emphasis on export-led industrialization in th…
Language Travels and Global Aspirations of Korean Youth
The so-called English fever and the international mobility of South Korean youth are linked to the popular pursuit of English-language education in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. From the perspective of young overseas travelers, these are short-term, semistructured “international experiences” beyond mere language training, and they are widely perceived as necessary for enhancing one's value and career pros…
Intersectionality as a Social Movement Strategy: Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
The history of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) in Oakland and San Jose, California, over nearly three decades provides a vivid illustration of social movement intersectionality in action and illuminates the relationships that link social theory to social movements. Serving the interests and aspirations of low-wage immigrant women workers with limited English-language skills, AIWA confronts diffuse and differential forms of interlocking opp…
Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States
The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea …
Legal Liminality: The gender and labour politics of organising South Korea's irregular workforce
Irregular employment (bij[ocheck]nggyujik) has become the dominant form of employment in South Korea, with upwards of 70% of women employed in this sector. This transformation has not only affected the demographics of the labour market, but it has also fundamentally reshaped how unions can organise workers and build collective power. In particular, irregular workers are faced with a state of legal liminality in which workers are neither fully pro…
The Limits of Labor Exclusion: Redefining the Politics of Split Labor Markets under Globalization
Although exclusion has defined union politics for much of the 20th century, its limits are clear today. Union membership and capacity is declining, and historically disadvantaged workers such as racialized immigrants and women with whom unions have weak linkages are employed in expanding sectors of the low-paid, service economy. By conducting a comparative historical analysis of the US and South Korean labor movements, this article argues that sh…
Public Dramas and the Politics of Justice: Comparison of Janitors’ Union Struggles in South Korea and the United States
Low-wage, nonstandard service work is an expanding sector of employment in today's global economy. Although scholars document its effects on increasing poverty and inequality, few studies examine how peripherally employed workers respond to the erosion of their living and working conditions under new forms of employment-centered poverty. Through comparative ethno-graphic case studies of university janitors in South Korea and the United States, th…
Public Dramas and the Politics of Justice: Comparison of Janitors’ Union Struggles in South Korea and the United States
Low-wage, nonstandard service work is an expanding sector of employment in today's global economy. Although scholars document its effects on increasing poverty and inequality, few studies examine how peripherally employed workers respond to the erosion of their living and working conditions under new forms of employment-centered poverty. Through comparative ethno-graphic case studies of university janitors in South Korea and the United States, th…
Language Travels and Global Aspirations of Korean Youth
The so-called English fever and the international mobility of South Korean youth are linked to the popular pursuit of English-language education in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. From the perspective of young overseas travelers, these are short-term, semistructured “international experiences” beyond mere language training, and they are widely perceived as necessary for enhancing one's value and career pros…
Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea's Democracy Movement, 1970-1979
Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women and the Changing Worlds of Work, Care and Unionism
This article examines how the intersectional dynamics of gender, migration, and labor shape the trajectories of immigrant women into home-based elder care and how unions and community organizations mediate its conditions. Our analysis, which uses interviews with In-Home Supportive Services workers in California's Oakland Chinatown, shows that the growth of publicly-subsidized homecare jobs has created an occupational opportunity for workers who f…
Building political agency and movement leadership: The grassroots organizing model of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
Drawing upon a qualitative case study of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), which organizes Chinese immigrant women working in low-paid, precarious jobs, this study examines how one worker center contends with multiple dimensions of precarity to build political agency and movement leadership. By encouraging participation in collective trainings, promoting involvement in collective action campaigns, and creating organizational leadership role…
Legal Liminality: The gender and labour politics of organising South Korea's irregular workforce
Irregular employment (bij[ocheck]nggyujik) has become the dominant form of employment in South Korea, with upwards of 70% of women employed in this sector. This transformation has not only affected the demographics of the labour market, but it has also fundamentally reshaped how unions can organise workers and build collective power. In particular, irregular workers are faced with a state of legal liminality in which workers are neither fully pro…
The Limits of Labor Exclusion: Redefining the Politics of Split Labor Markets under Globalization
Although exclusion has defined union politics for much of the 20th century, its limits are clear today. Union membership and capacity is declining, and historically disadvantaged workers such as racialized immigrants and women with whom unions have weak linkages are employed in expanding sectors of the low-paid, service economy. By conducting a comparative historical analysis of the US and South Korean labor movements, this article argues that sh…
Building caring cities: From disaster relief to community-based infrastructure for unauthorized and low-paid immigrant workers
This paper asks "who cares" in the precarious city when the state fails. In Los Angeles, one of the largest immigrant-based economies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerability of low-paid immigrant workers who were unable to do paid work during government-mandated shutdown periods. Unauthorized workers and immigrants in mixed-status households, who are the focus of our study, faced additional challenges, conten…
Organizing across divides: Union challenges to precarious work in Vancouver’s privatized health care sector
The outsourcing of housekeeping, laundry and food services in Vancouver’s health care sector has created a new tier of low-paid, precariously employed workers in the private sector, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of colour. Through an in-depth case study of the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), this article examines how movement-oriented union strategies, such as living wage campaigns (LWCs), enable unions to challenge the nexus betw…
Protesting Precarity: South Korean Workers and the Labor of Refusal
This essay examines the crisis of solidarity affecting workers who protest labor precarity under South Korea's capitalist democracy. Once considered foundational to the struggle for national democratization, the dramatic protests of aggrieved workers are frequently depicted as out of place and out of sync. Drawing upon ethnographic research on workers' protest repertoires, this essay challenges prevailing explanations and instead argues that heig…
Building worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry
This article examines how unions build worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry in the context of widespread informality. Drawing upon regional case studies of the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU), we find that construction day laborers experience poor working conditions and rampant employment violations under multiple layers of subcontracting that enable capital to bypass existing labor laws and regulations. D…
Public Dramas and the Politics of Justice: Comparison of Janitors’ Union Struggles in South Korea and the United States
Low-wage, nonstandard service work is an expanding sector of employment in today's global economy. Although scholars document its effects on increasing poverty and inequality, few studies examine how peripherally employed workers respond to the erosion of their living and working conditions under new forms of employment-centered poverty. Through comparative ethno-graphic case studies of university janitors in South Korea and the United States, th…
The Limits of Labor Exclusion: Redefining the Politics of Split Labor Markets under Globalization
Although exclusion has defined union politics for much of the 20th century, its limits are clear today. Union membership and capacity is declining, and historically disadvantaged workers such as racialized immigrants and women with whom unions have weak linkages are employed in expanding sectors of the low-paid, service economy. By conducting a comparative historical analysis of the US and South Korean labor movements, this article argues that sh…
Legal Liminality: The gender and labour politics of organising South Korea's irregular workforce
Irregular employment (bij[ocheck]nggyujik) has become the dominant form of employment in South Korea, with upwards of 70% of women employed in this sector. This transformation has not only affected the demographics of the labour market, but it has also fundamentally reshaped how unions can organise workers and build collective power. In particular, irregular workers are faced with a state of legal liminality in which workers are neither fully pro…
Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States
The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea …
Intersectionality as a Social Movement Strategy: Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
The history of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) in Oakland and San Jose, California, over nearly three decades provides a vivid illustration of social movement intersectionality in action and illuminates the relationships that link social theory to social movements. Serving the interests and aspirations of low-wage immigrant women workers with limited English-language skills, AIWA confronts diffuse and differential forms of interlocking opp…
Language Travels and Global Aspirations of Korean Youth
The so-called English fever and the international mobility of South Korean youth are linked to the popular pursuit of English-language education in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. From the perspective of young overseas travelers, these are short-term, semistructured “international experiences” beyond mere language training, and they are widely perceived as necessary for enhancing one's value and career pros…
Organizing across divides: Union challenges to precarious work in Vancouver’s privatized health care sector
The outsourcing of housekeeping, laundry and food services in Vancouver’s health care sector has created a new tier of low-paid, precariously employed workers in the private sector, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of colour. Through an in-depth case study of the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), this article examines how movement-oriented union strategies, such as living wage campaigns (LWCs), enable unions to challenge the nexus betw…
Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea's Democracy Movement, 1970-1979
Building political agency and movement leadership: The grassroots organizing model of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
Drawing upon a qualitative case study of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), which organizes Chinese immigrant women working in low-paid, precarious jobs, this study examines how one worker center contends with multiple dimensions of precarity to build political agency and movement leadership. By encouraging participation in collective trainings, promoting involvement in collective action campaigns, and creating organizational leadership role…
Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea by Hwa-Jen Liu
Reviewed by: Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea by Hwa-Jen Liu Jennifer Jihye Chun Hwa-Jen Liu, Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2015) Leverage of the Weak begins with a provocative puzzle. Despite their many similarities in terms of size, population density, and emphasis on export-led industrialization in th…
Care Work in Transition: Transnational Circuits of Gender, Migration, and Care
This article presents a broad overview of the emerging field of scholarship on gender, migration and care work. The first section provides a rationale for linking the embodied intimate labor of sex workers and surrogate mothers to more traditional caregiving among nannies, nurses and eldercare aids. Through an intersectional optic on power and domination in care workers' everyday lives, we highlight the ways in which love's labor is lost and deva…
Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women and the Changing Worlds of Work, Care and Unionism
This article examines how the intersectional dynamics of gender, migration, and labor shape the trajectories of immigrant women into home-based elder care and how unions and community organizations mediate its conditions. Our analysis, which uses interviews with In-Home Supportive Services workers in California's Oakland Chinatown, shows that the growth of publicly-subsidized homecare jobs has created an occupational opportunity for workers who f…
Building worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry
This article examines how unions build worker power for day laborers in South Korea’s construction industry in the context of widespread informality. Drawing upon regional case studies of the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU), we find that construction day laborers experience poor working conditions and rampant employment violations under multiple layers of subcontracting that enable capital to bypass existing labor laws and regulations. D…
L'intersectionnalité comme stratégie de mobilisation sociale: Les défenseures des immigrées asiatiques aux États-Unis
L'histoire des Asian Immigrant Women Advocates ( aiwa ou Défenseures des immigrées asiatiques) à Oakland et à San Jose en Californie, sur près de trois décennies, offre un exemple éloquent de l'intersectionnalité mise en œuvre dans un mouvement social et de son utilité pour révéler la dimension diffuse et différentielle des formes imbriquées d'oppression. L'article revient sur les origines du concept d'intersectionnalité, à la fois dans les milie…
Protesting Precarity: South Korean Workers and the Labor of Refusal
This essay examines the crisis of solidarity affecting workers who protest labor precarity under South Korea's capitalist democracy. Once considered foundational to the struggle for national democratization, the dramatic protests of aggrieved workers are frequently depicted as out of place and out of sync. Drawing upon ethnographic research on workers' protest repertoires, this essay challenges prevailing explanations and instead argues that heig…
Confronting Servitude: Asian Immigrant Women Workers in State-Funded Homecare
This article utilizes a multilevel intersectional framework to analyze how Asian immigrant women workers in state-funded care provisioning make sense of and contest the relations of servitude that have long plagued low-paid domestic work. Our research, which draws on in-depth interviews with Chinese, Korean, and Filipina/o/x women in California’s In-Home Supportive Services program, shows that workers across all three groups face coercive labor c…
Building caring cities: From disaster relief to community-based infrastructure for unauthorized and low-paid immigrant workers
This paper asks "who cares" in the precarious city when the state fails. In Los Angeles, one of the largest immigrant-based economies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerability of low-paid immigrant workers who were unable to do paid work during government-mandated shutdown periods. Unauthorized workers and immigrants in mixed-status households, who are the focus of our study, faced additional challenges, conten…
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Politics (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Immigration (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Economic growth (6 works)