Exploring Lived Citizenship of Korean Immigrant Women in Sweden

Sammanfattning: The thesis is a study of citizenship as lived experience. The study is devoted to “from below” understanding of lived citizenship of immigrant women. Particularly, this research aims to explore how immigrant women get included in their host society through both theoretical framework and empirical case of Korean women in Sweden. In the theoretical part, I shed light on how citizenship theory explains inclusion and exclusion of immigrant women. I also reformulate citizenship from a feminist perspective as well as theorize relevant analytical concepts, such as gender, intersectionality and agency. In the empirical section, I illustrate how immigrant women act to be included in the host society. With regards to their lived citizenship, I discuss paid work in the public sphere that can be one of the most crucial elements for their substantive citizenship. It is followed by the discussion of unpaid work in the private sphere that has often been overlooked in “malestream” citizenship analysis. I also analyze how immigrant women construct and perform their cultural identity. It is shown that immigrant women´s individual agency, such as their capacity to shape socioeconomic positions and cultural identities, is mediated with social context in Sweden.