The mountain at night was pitch dark. The twin beams from the - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The mountain at night was pitch dark. The twin beams from the headlamps would advance a few feet and be annihilated, and only the motion of the bus striving upward indicated that you were not at sea, and only the dispersion of stars in the sky marked off what lay around you as a mass and not an infinite void. His first time up this road from Nashville the bus had put him off in the middle of nowhere and nothing and its tail lights winked out around a bend before the driver thought twice and backed up. The small lights reappeared. When the bus was alongside again the door swung open and the driver pointed into the featureless blackness. "That way," he said. Chuck had still been standing at the side of the road with his suitcase hanging from one hand and his overcoat over one arm, and this was the petrified figure that Mrs. Reston, the vice chancellor's housekeeper, found at the door to the vice chancellor's house forty-five minutes later. You would not have known that the motionless person had just walked two miles straight uphill with a steady and terrified step and only the slight paleness of the gravel reflecting the stars to direct him. To Mrs. Reston he seemed to have dropped into the pool of porch light from outer space. She showed him inside and unclamped the hand from the suitcase's handle and unbent the arm from beneath the drape of the overcoat, and gave him some tea in the kitchen.

Encountering Auckland and Seoul Youth, travel and the micro-politics of Korea-New Zealand relations

Guest workers International migration Backpacking OE Volunteering Seasonal work Student exchange International study Working Holiday Geographical and social mobility ‘cultural capital’ (Waters 2006) Individual and family positions ‘experience’ Global livelihoods ‘biographical construction’ (Beck 1992) Income Development of self

“… groups of different backgrounds, ethnic and otherwise, cannot help but enter into relations with each other, no matter how great the desire for separateness and the attempt to maintain cultural purity.” (Ang 2001: 89-90) Mobility and encounter ‘other diplomacies’ (Young and Henders 2012) Migrants and trade diplomacy People-to-people links (Ley 2010; Larner 1998) ‘contact perspective’ (Yeoh and Willis 2005)

Mobility between South Korea and New Zealand Total passenger flows 1979-2012

- South Korean international students - New Zealand English teachers

Why New Zealand? Why South Korea?

“In the case of border crossings, corporeality plays a major role in the ways in which people make these journeys and the roles they are inscribed within these travels.” (Gogia 2006: 373) How do practices of mobility and location generate different identities and are these leading to a reification or pluralisation of existing conditions and roles?

Expectations and experiences…

International students and the transformation of Auckland’s inner city

New Zealand is too healthy. It’s like a huge Firstly environment, that’s very broccoli~! Of course I like NZ and NZ life. But, better than Korea. When I arrived sometimes I miss Seoul. Seoul is so crowded, here for the first time I said “oh polluted, and busy, Seoul is very different from very good stuff”, admired, admired Auckland. about things in the landscape’ I can see the stars in Auckland at night, but I can’t see the stars in Seoul. It’s so moving watching the stars in the sky in Auckland. ♥ _ ♥ But, watching the stars through the sky scrapers ‘Auckland is not like a city’ and between the high buildings in Seoul is more romantic to me. ‘My homestay mother was so kind’ ‘When we walk around here we feel afraid’ ‘We were walking near St Lukes and some kiwi threw mud at us. I don’t know why’ ‘I want to have more kiwi friends’

Reaching beyond… Korean V Volu lunte teer Te Team In conclusion, I guess that while we were doing this volunteering, there were some changes in native people's mind about Asian international students. It was a marvelous opportunity to international students who did not have any activity in the weekend. Sadly, after I came back to Korea, there is not the Korean Volunteer Team any longer. I am so sorry for that. In my personal opinion people should make these kinds of activity groups because there are many chances to meet different people and help society, which is the place we live in.

Expectations and experiences…

English teachers, migrant workers and urban life in Seoul

‘There were so many buildings’ ‘And then, what I did, was I went, I sat on the deck and I cried. I cried for about half an hour. I was hot, I was, as I said, tired, disorientated, not in the zone at all for being here.’ ‘Everything looked the same, I felt so confused’ ‘I didn’t know where I was’ ‘The kids would just yell it out to me all the time "I love you", "You're so pretty", "You're ‘I have got good relationships with my co- so beautiful" and I'm like 'What do I say?', teachers and I've 2 or 3 Korean friends also from but they made me feel so good’ school. … Sometimes that feels like superifical friendship cos' they don't actually know us.’ ‘Koreans always stick to themselves’

Reaching beyond… hospitality and opportunity “I came in contact with a group of five Korean women who are very affluent, very wealthy upper-class women who are educated, world- knowledgable, speak very well in English through the swimming pool - I was just swimming one day and one of the ladies just came up to me and said "Ah, are you an English teacher?", and I said "Yes", and she said "Well, I'm a member of a free-talking group, would you like to come and join us?", and so I said "Sure". I'd just come to Korea, only been here maybe a month, and so now ever since then we've been meeting once a week, and we go everywhere - we do with all kinds of people on the weekends, also but we meet every Thursday, and we always do something interesting on the side of our... or discuss or talk about something fun. So through them, I've been able to go... they've taken me to the monastaries, they've taken me to the museums, they've taken me to the parks, they've taken me to the mountains, they've taken me... just spend one full day to go down with my free-talk group. So yeah, I feel like I've a good social network with people like Lydia and Sam, but also with my Korea friends.”

Micro-politics of constrained encounters International students and English teachers are both engaging in forms of middle-class mobility that circulate around notions of travel, experience and self-development Differentiated mobilities: purpose, occupation, embodiment, language, state regulation, identity Both experience relatively constrained opportunities for encounter… Those opportunities that do emerge need to be built on if we are to make more of the micro-politics of everyday encounter in a transnational world

We e are f e frogs in t the w e wel ell… for fr frog, g, [ [the] in insid ide of [t [the] ] well i ll is a a world ld…. ( 우무랑 개구리 )… b bec ecause t e they don’t know a abou out t the ou outside w wor orld… in K Kor orea… Auckland is better than an K Korea… a… In A n Auckland nd, many peo eople a e are e liv iv[in ing her ere] e], we ca can f fin ind dif ifferent cu culture. I I ca can’t s say whic ich one is is b better or w whic ich one e is w worse b e but its totally d differ eren ent so i its v ver ery inter eres esting fo for m me…