Transnational migration and gender capital: South Korean women’s guesthouse business in the Philippines

This study explores the lives of the South Korean women crossing the Philippine border with their husbands to elaborate the ways in which women’s gender capital shapes both opportunity and obstacle in the transnational context. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork, this research revealed that South Korean wives became breadwinners by turning some of the rooms in their homes into guestrooms to accommodate teenage South Korean English learners. Drawing on the concept of gender capital, this article elaborates how migrant women utilize motherly disposition as cultural capital for financial stability yet at the same time how such business devastates their selfhood.