Chosŏnjok migrant brides are Korean Chinese women who married South Korean men (hereafter Korean men). The number of Chosŏnjok migrant brides increased rapidly until recently due to the attempts of the central and local governments of Korea to resolve bride shortages in rural areas in the early 1990s and the Koreans' preference for ethnic Korean brides over non-Korean foreign brides. Currently there are more than 26,000 Chosŏnjok migrant brides in Korea. Due to the drastic changes to their post-migration lives in their ethnic homeland of Korea, most Chosŏnjok migrant brides experience changes in their ethno-national identity(ies). This paper investigates this process and the underlying reasons for these post-ethnic return migration identity changes. It also looks at the types of identity changes that occur through in-depth interviews with 22 Chosŏnjok migrant brides in Korea.
This small research project investigated whether it was feasible and beneficial to use voice recognition software to transcribe tape recordings of multiple voices. Two methods of use were trialed and it rapidly became clear that the ‘listen and repeat’ method was the leading contender. Through an iterative process, we developed guidelines to increase the usefulness of the software for research purposes, the main points of which are incorporated in this report. Our results suggest that voice recognition software has many advantages, and few disadvantages. It is of particular use for researchers for whom prolonged keyboard work is difficult or unsafe and for researchers with slow typing speeds, but any researcher may find it advantageous.
In our research with d/Deaf people in five families in the North and South Islands of New Zealand, we found that some of the challenges that we as researchers faced in our encounters with participants and within our mixed hearing and d/Deaf research group paralleled broader issues for this community. We use the details of our field research processes to explore the conundrum of d/Deafness, which may or may not be a disability, and use this exploration to reflect on approaches to d/Deafness as revealed in our research findings. We argue that d/Deafness creates a predicament, but not only for the d/Deaf. We propose that practical solutions to this predicament may be thought of as services that enable citizenship, participation, communication, and care, rather than disability services, and this rethinking would ease the cognitive and cultural dissonance experienced by perfectly able d/Deaf people who have to access disability services in their everyday life.