Hansik, the “privileged” place of women of the Korean community in Buenos Aires

.

Jung Eun Lee, Romina Delmonte 

Encuentra la versión en español:

This paper proposes a reflection about Asian migrations in Latin American cities through the lens of gender relations and representations in the restaurant industry. The analysis focuses on the enclaves of the Korean community, both of them referred to as Barrio Coreano, in Bajo Flores and Floresta neighborhoods in Buenos Aires city. Our inquiry is guided by the questions: How do foodscapes relate to the transformation and redevelopment of urban spaces? How do migration processes transform cities and the ways in which they are inhabited? And, in which ways gender relations shape the restaurants –and the interactions that occur within them– run by an Asian migratory group in a South American metropolis, namely Korean restaurants in Buenos Aires?

By mapping the locations of Korean restaurants in the city, as well as ethnographic observation between 2014 and 2020, we reconstruct their territorial evolution. In addition to this, we examine “Gastro Corea” , a one-week event organized in October 2019 by a group of restaurant owners that aimed to attract more non Korean consumers. We conducted in-depth interviews with the event organizers and the owners of participant restaurants and also analysed the use of social media in the promotion of the event.

We found that the traditional gender representation that links women and hansik, meaning Korean traditional food, situates them in a privileged place as observed in the promotional pieces of “Gastro Corea”. In this process of commodification of culture, Korean women’s cultural capital related to hansik becomes more valued in the market, allowing them potential incomes and impacting on how they inhabit the city and how they are perceived by others. The effect on each generation of Korean-Argentinian women has its peculiarities, but in all cases it allows them to access and reshape certain spaces -both material and symbolic- that were often restricted for them.

Dessin Corée