In Borderland Dreams June Hee Kwon explores the trajectory of the “Korean dream” that has fueled the massive migration of Korean Chinese workers in northeast China to South Korea since the early 1990s. Kwon analyzes the persistent desire of Korean Chinese to “leave to live better” at the intersection between the neoliberalizing regimes of post-socialist China and post–Cold War South Korea. Scrutinizing the tensions and affinities among the Korean Chinese, North and South Koreans, and Han Chinese, Kwon captures the aspirations of Korean Chinese workers caught between the ascendant Chinese dream and the waning Korean dream.

June Hee Kwon is a cultural anthropologist teaching as associate professor in the Asian Studies Program at California State University Sacramento. She has focused on migration and displacement, borderlands and political ecology, materiality and affect, gendered labor and class formation, and human suffering and memories. Her area of expertise spans contemporary Korea (North and South), China, and Japan and includes postcolonial and post-Cold War culture and political economy across East Asia.