Project News and Activities

7 December 2012 | Ann H. Kim, Sung Hyun Yun, Wansoo Park and Samuel Noh are authors of “Explaining the Migration Strategy: Comparing Transnational and Intact Migrant Families from South Korea to Canada”, a book chapter recently published in Koreans in North America: Their Twenty-First Century Experiences, edited by Pyong Gap Min and published by Lexington Books.

This is the only anthology that covers several different topics related to Koreans' experiences in the U.S. and Canada. The topics covered are Koreans' immigration and settlement patterns, changes in Korean immigrants' business patterns, Korean immigrant churches' social functions, differences between Korean immigrant intact families and geese families, transnational ties, second-generation Koreans' identity issues, and Korean international students' gender issues.  

24 November 2012 | Ann H. Kim presented at the Bridging the Knowledge Gap on Korean Immigrants. KOWIN Bridge the Gap Conference, Ryerson University.  

27-28 September 2012 | The research team organized a workshop to disseminate the project findings and to hear from international scholars who also research family and eudcation migration. The workshop, Outward and Upward Mobilities: Families from South Korea in a Transnational Era, was held at York University on 27-28 September 2012.

6 September 2013 | Samuel Noh, Ann H. Kim and Marianne S. Noh’s edited volume, Korean Immigrants in Canada: Perspectives on Migration, Integration and the Family, was published by University of Toronto Press.
Koreans are one of the fastest-growing visible minority groups in Canada today. However, very few studies of their experiences in Canada or their paths of integration are available to public and academic communities. Korean Immigrants in Canada provides the first scholarly collection of papers on Korean immigrants and their offspring from interdisciplinary, social scientific perspectives.

The contributors explore the historical, psychological, social, and economic dimensions of Korean migration, settlement, and integration across the country. A variety of important topics are covered, including the demographic profile of Korean-Canadians, immigrant entrepreneurship, mental health and stress, elder care, language maintenance, and the experiences of students and the second generation. Readers will find interconnecting themes and synthesized findings throughout the chapters. Most importantly, this collection serves as a platform for future research on Koreans in Canada.

19 April 2012 | Ann H. Kim presented “Research with Immigrants: Building Knowledge and Partnerships”. This was a special presentation to South Korean Gyeonggi Provincial Government Delegation to CERIS –The Ontario Metropolis Centre at York University.

1 March 2012 | Min-Jung Kwak and Ann H. Kim presented “Transnationalism, Integration and Implications of Citizenship among the Highly Mobile” at the 14th National Metropolis
Conference, held in Toronto.

27 February 2012 | Min-Jung Kwak and Ann H. Kim presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, held in New York. Their presentation was titled, “Patterns and Implications of Citizenship among the Highly Mobile”.  

8 December 2011 | Ann Kim was invited by the Collaborative Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Relations Speakers Series, University of Western Ontario, to speak on her project research in a talk titled, “Understanding the Link Between Transnationalism and Integration: Immigrant Ties to South Korea and Canada.”  

12 November 2011 | The TKFS project partnered with the Korean Canadian University Professors Forum, the Korean Canadian Cultural Association, and the Korea Times, held a community forum dedicated to sharing insights from the study and to providing advice on survival skills in university. Speakers from TKFS included Samuel Noh, Min-Jung Kwak, Sung Hyun Yun, Eunjung Lee and Ann Kim. The forum, titled “Understanding our Community and Higher Education," was held at OISE. For more information, click here.

Fall 2011 | The team expects to host a community information night in Fall 2011. During this community session, they will report on survey findings and present a panel discussion on “Succeeding in University.” For more information contact Young-Ah at tkfs@yorku.ca.

2011 | Project Co-investigator Eunjung Lee (University of Toronto) was awarded SSHRC funding (2011-2014) for ‘An Analysis of Public and Private Discourses of Education Migration in Canadian Schools: A Case Study of South Korean families.’  The project is a complement to the TKFS project and will be conducted by the same Canadian research team on the same population, South Korean migrants. More specifically, the project lead by Lee aims to understand how foreign students, their parents, and school personnel (i.e., teachers and administrators) experience, interpret, and negotiate the multiple (often conflicting) discourses of education migration, focusing on students in primary and secondary school systems.  The focus is on discourses of education migration and gaps between policies and families' experiences.

14 September 2011 | Ann Kim presented “Understanding the Link Between Transnationalism and Integration in Canada: The Case of Migrant Families from South Korea” at the Metropolis International Conference in Ponta Delgada, Portugal.

September 2011 | Workshop Co-Organizer, 'Transnational Attachments and Experiences of Settlement and Integration', Metropolis International Conference, Ponta Delgada, Portugal.

August 2011 | The project and its researchers were featured in a front page story of the Korea Times.

March 2011 | Ann H. Kim presented “Transnational Ties Across the Pacific: Families from South Korea in Canada” at a plenary session on ‘Ties across the Pacific’ at the National Metropolis Conference in Vancouver, B.C.

January 2011 | Ann H. Kim gave a workshop as part of the Critical Sociology Series at the Department of Sociology, York University on “Weaving the Strands: Finding Coherence in a Program of Research”.  

2011.2012 | In the third year of the project, the group plans to complete data collection and data entry and preparation, and to begin analyzing the data for dissemination in academic journals and conferences. In Summer 2011, the members of the team will be organizing an international workshop on transnationalism and Korean families to take place in Fall 2012.

1 December 2010 | Ann Kim presented her research in a talk titled 'Expectedly Mobile? Korean Entrepreneurship and Immigrant Generations' on 1 December 2010 at York University

8 October 2010 | Ann Kim was invited to present her research at the First International Conference on Korean Diasporic and Immigrant Communities’ Transnational Ties to the Homeland. Research Center on Korean Community, Queen's College, CUNY. Her talk was titled 'Explaining the Migration Strategy: Transnational and Intact Family Migrants from South Korea to Canada'.

October 2010 | Wansoo Park presented “Global Engagement of Korean Scholars Across World Regions” at the 56th Annual Program Meeting, Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) in Portland, Oregon. 

21-23 June 2010 | Wansoo Park, Sung Hyun Yun, Ann H. Kim, Samuel Noh and Min-Jung Kwak presented their research at the Global Studies Conference in Busan, South Korea, in a panel titled 'Korean Mothers in Flight: A Study on Toronto Korean Families' as well as presenting research at a colloquium on 'The Impact of Globalization on Women’s lives: The Case of Transnational Canadians.'

June 2010 | Wansoo Park was invited to give a presentation at the Korean Population and Urban Planning Annual Meeting, Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul.

Yun, Sung Hyun Yun was invited to speak at the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul on the topic of “Global Migration in Canada: Gaps and Barriers of Service Provision for Female Refugees who have Survived Politically Motivated Torture”.  

Ann H. Kim was invited by the Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University, Seoul to speak at the Insitute. She chose the topic “Development, Migration Strategies and Prospects for Integration: Understanding Contemporary Transnationalism among South Korean Families”.  

May 2010 | “The Research Community and Community Research: Building Knowledge and Partnerships among Koreans” was the title of Ann H. Kim’s presentation at a plenary session of the Korean Canadian University Professors Forum (KCUPF) Annual Meeting, held at the University of Toronto.

21 April 2010 | Korea Times published an articleabout the project | http://www.koreatimes.net/57139

20 April 2010 | Ann Kim discussed the pilot findings for the project in a talk at the York Centre for Asian Research, York University. A PDF of this presentation is available here. The talk was titled 'Surveying Korean Transnationalism: Pilot Test Findings from the Study on Toronto Korean Families'.

2010.2011 | Early in the second year of the project, Professors Wansoo Park and Sung Hyun Yun pilot tested the survey instrument in Windsor using focus groups. Based on the feedback from the pre-test, we modified the survey questionnaire and then recruited 14 bilingual interviewers in May 2010. The interviewers were then trained by members of the research team: Min-Jung Kwak, Eunjung Lee, Sung Hyun Yun, Samuel Noh and Ann H. Kim. Once trained, the interviewers conducted over 400 surveys during the year.

To promote the project and to aid with recruitment, Ann Kim had interviews with the Korean language media, including Arirang TV, The Korea Times and the Korea Central Daily newspapers. Recruitment of survey participants began in May 2010 and was conducted through postings in local Korean language newspapers, and through visits and presentations to community and religious groups. Young-Ah Kim, the Research Coordinator, was responsible for recruitment and for coordinating and managing interviews, and Choong Ho Park, a Research Assistant, was responsible for data entry and creating a codebook to accompany the survey data.

March 2010 | Co-Investigator Eunjung Lee received a University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work SSHRC Institutional Research Grant on “Education Migration and its Impact on Children, Parents and Schools: A Pilot Study on Korean Migrant Children in Toronto, Canada.”

September 2009 | An introduction to the project was presented to the Korean Canadian Community Research Enhancement Network (KCCREN)

June 2009 | An initial team meeting and community consultation took place in Toronto

2009.2010 | The first year of this project was directed towards the development of a survey questionnaire for the two types of families to be studied.

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