Teaching English in South Korea: mobility norms and higher education outcomes in youth migration Francis L. Collins * School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand In many Western contexts, travel has a long historical association with youth, young adults and coming of age, an association that often connects temporary mobility with the lives of the educated middle classes and elite. Indeed, from the colonial adventure and the ‘grand tour’, to contemporary ideas of the ‘gap year ’ or ‘overseas experience’, the mobility of Western youth and young adults is often considered voluntary and based on a desire to explore places and develop positive personal attributes, marking a stark contrast to depictions of migration from the developing world as directly or indirectly forced and driven primarily by economic considerations. This paper questions this depiction of developed world mobility in the context of the changing economic conditions that face young graduates in many Western countries. Drawing on survey and interview data I focus on the profiles and biographies of young adults from English-speaking countries working as foreign language instructors in South Korea. Although the personal narrative of travel and exploration amongst these individuals remains significant, findings from this research also suggest that many of these young graduates are also driven by economic circumstances: unemployment or underemployment and high levels of debt usually associated with tertiary studies. This tension between the opportunities available to young people and the constraints imposed by their own circumstances raises important questions about the multiple layers of social and economic differentiation operating through higher education and international mobility in the lives of young people. Keywords: youth; higher education; migration; mobility; South Korea Introduction Research on the lives and aspirations of young people has identified a shift away from linear tran- sitions to adulthood and a diversification of lifecourse trajectories. There are multiple, often con- tradictory, social and economic processes involved in this shift. On the one hand, a prolonged period of youth transition is associated with new lifestyles and an increased emphasis on individ- ual identity construction (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). This focus on the individualisation of identity suggests that traditional markers like class are becoming less prominent than lifestyle choices around education, work, family, travel and other opportunities that contribute to the con- struction of future adult selves. At the same time, other research emphasises the continued sal- ience of socio-economic differences (Valentine 2003) and that more than just providing new lifestyle choices recent transformations have ‘undermined young people’ s efforts to obtain social goods associated with “adulthood”, such as a stable job, valuable skills, and secure © 2013 Taylor & Francis *Email: f.collins@auckland.ac.nz Children’ s Geographies, 2014 Vol. 12, No. 1, 40–55, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2013.851064 Downloaded by [Korea University] at 18:24 08 April 2015