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Narrativizing Relocation, Depression, and Affective Labor in Korean Trailing Wife Vlogs: “I'm Not a Stay-at-Home Mom!”
Abstract
This chapter examines YouTube vlogs as a form of Asian diaspora digital history, documenting the lived experiences of so-called trailing wives—Korean women who have relocated to North America for their spouses' careers. It explores how these women use digital storytelling on the democratized new media to navigate their migration and the profound shift in identity from employed individuals to full-time homemakers. By analyzing their affect-laden vlogs, this chapter highlights two key functions of these vernacular testimonies: first, they enable women to reclaim agency by narrativizing their experiences. Second, they foster a supportive virtual community among diaspora women facing similar emotional hardships of dislocation. Lastly, this chapter interrogates the neoliberal constraints embedded in both their domestic and digital labor, revealing the tensions between empowerment and economic precarity. While YouTube offers agency and solidarity, these vloggers' digital labor ultimately reveals the structured gendered inequalities of biocapitalist affective labor imposed to women.
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