Layered Narrative Agency and the Politics of Masculine Respectability: Ghanaian Migrant Marriages in South Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the lived experiences of Ghanaian migrant men, who face difficulties finding marital partners due to racial hostility, blocked overseas travel and the scarcity of co-ethnic women in South Korea. We draw on 2 years of ethnographic data collected in a large African migrant community and 30 interviews with Ghanaian migrant husbands in Korea to investigate how migrant men construct alternative narratives of masculine respectability amid precarious circumstances. By framing migration as a “project of masculinity” driven by gendered yearnings to become “good men,” we compare how migrant husbands navigate gendered conflicts across three types of marriages: (1) transnational proxy marriages with women in Ghana, (2) local interracial marriages with Korean women, and (3) local African marriages within the migrant community. Our findings reveal how marginalized migrant men strategically emphasize certain benefits of their marital arrangements over others. While all migrant husbands struggled with feelings of powerlessness, those in transnational proxy marriages constructed narratives of symbolic empowerment, those in local interracial marriages constructed narratives of institutional empowerment, and those in local African marriages constructed narratives of emotional empowerment. Ultimately, our paper highlights how migrant men’s “narrative agency” in crafting reputations as respectable and honorable men depended not on their material circumstances, but on the layered gaze of their wives in domestic spaces, their families and kin in their countries of origin, and their male peers in the migrant community. We argue that narratives of masculine worth are intersubjectively constructed within these multiple layers of interaction.