The hidden injury of class in Korean-American language brokers’ lives

Abstract

Moving beyond the cultural clash model that treats intergenerational relationships as unidirectional, this study, based on in-depth interviews with working-class bilingual Korean children from Los Angeles, finds that they actively assume class-specific language brokering work to ensure family survival. However, because class remains as the invisible social force in America, children who learned about parental financial and legal problems through language brokering work maintained the hidden injury of class. The findings indicate that normative notions of carefree childhood, racialized class, and essentialized Korean culture, which uniformly uphold quintessential middle-class values, can impart a buried sense of inadequacy and desire among socially excluded working-class children.

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