Making homes here and away: Korean German nurses and practices of diasporic belonging

Drawing on oral histories of first generation Korean guestworker women who were nurses in Germany, this article provides addresses the little discussed Korean guestworker women and their everyday constructions of belonging. This article addresses how these everyday constructions of belonging are built through the making of home in new places. The article highlights these constructions as important set of diasporic resources that these Korean women cultivated that helped them find new communities and connections in ways that grounded and sustained them. The article offers up a different account of difference and diaspora that challenge mainstream models of integration and assimilation as the only means through which diasporic peoples navigate belonging in Germany.