Dahui KANG, Seoul National University, Korea (Republic of)
Minkyung KOH, Kyungpook National University, Korea (Republic of)
This study aims to examine the placeness of Jeju Global Education City (JGEC) formed by educational migration mobility and discuss its social and spatial implications. JGEC was established to provide world-class private educational services on Jeju Island by absorbing domestic and international educational demands instead of studying abroad. Most students and their families outside Jeju move to, and attend international schools in JGEC, attracting educational migration to the island. Considering the socio-spatial changes in the JGEC after the opening of international schools as the placeness produced by educational migration mobility, this study analyzes its placeness using a mobility lens (Urry, 2007). Following Cresswell (2006) and Adey (2009), we deploy mobility, a system of diverse meaning production of places, as an analytical focus. To this end, this study raises the following two research questions: 1) how do features and landscapes of JGEC, formed by educational migration mobility from outside Jeju, appear differently from the rest of the Island?; 2) how is educational migration mobility to Jeju represented as a temporary space-time mechanism? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the JGEC 2019-2020, this study explores how the placeness of JGEC is produced by the complex and contradictory relationships between mobility and immobility of educational migrants. By studying the placeness of JGEC through educational migrants, this study highlights the accidental encounter of place in the process of migrant settlement. By doing so, it suggests that temporary settlement of migrants produces not only new mobility to other places but also a sense of place - a passage that channels the JGEC and other places.
Keywords: Jeju Global Education City|educational migration mobility|mobility lens|placeness
A102939DK