Disclosing racism, awareness-raising and seeking support: Korean women migrants’ use of online cafés

In recent years, Korean migrants to Australia have turned increasingly to digital culture as a space of information exchange, support, and belonging. The need for a space in which the ‘politics of listening’ [Dreher, T., 2009. Listening across Difference: Media and Multiculturalism Beyond the Politics of Voice. Continuum (Mount Lawley, W.A.), 23 (4), 445–458] is made possible becomes even more crucial in face of continued exclusions and everyday practices of racism in contemporary multicultural Australia. This article discusses the use of popular online ‘cafés’ by Korean women migrants to Australia as means of negotiating experiences of racism and alienation. Analysing participation in three Korean online cafés, Missy Hoju, Missy Melbourne and Hoju Melbourne Gongdong Gumae, racism can be understood as holding a significant place in shaping in Korean women’s identities. As a profoundly affective experience, racism, both indirectly encountered and directly experienced, leaves longlasting affective impacts, shaping women’s sense of safety and belonging. We suggest the gendered intimacy of these cafés as online ‘intimate publics’ [Berlant, L. G., 2008. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, Durham. Durham: Duke University Press] allows for such painful experiences to be witnessed and heard, producing possibilities and practices of solidarity between Korean women migrants.