Sonya Sunyoung Park

// DISSERTATION PROJECT

Migrant sense of belonging and social integration in the digital society

Digitalisation expands migrants’ capability to interact with diverse people with similar interests and thoughts in the destination society. It has contributed to improving conventional social integration issues with migrants, such as migrants being socially isolated amongst closed communities or unequal accessibility to socio-economic capital. In this context, preceding relevant studies have focused on the digital divide and its implications for accessibility to abundant information as migration opportunities. More recently, many studies have demonstrated that digitalisation affects migrants’ sense of belonging in a way they engage in the digital world for socialisation. This doctoral project will explore migrants’ sense of belonging and identity, with particular attention to the different digitalised environments that crucially affect their formation. The project will engage with different dimensions of the relevant political issues, including the new paradigm of integration policy to the digitalisation of the institutional environment for the up-to-date generation of migrants. While the notion of migrants encompasses extensive types of migration, this project will zoom in on voluntary migrants with high-skill/high-educational backgrounds. In fact, such migrants are often not the centre of the migration discussion in theory and practice, treated as a group of favoured people from the destination countries’ points of view, therefore, less problematised. However, given the type of migration in modern society is significantly diversified, those high-skilled migrants – who are very much welcomed but little concerned – are a significant part of the migrants. More importantly, a better understanding of those migrant groups contributes to the comprehensive approach to social integration, as individuals’ social and spatial status keeps constantly changing, especially in this contemporary society.

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// RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

• Field Research in Rotterdam, the Netherlands Oct. ~ Dec. 2021, Conducting interviews as part of the dissertation project “Digitalization of Public Service Delivery and Migrants’ Sense of Belonging”
• Park, S., Gerrits, L. (2021): How migrants manifest their transnational identity through online social networks: comparative findings from a case of Koreans in Germany. CMS 9, 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-020-00218-w
• Park, S. (2024/Forthcoming): “‘Who are Us and Them today?’ Dynamics of Korean Migrants’ Identity in Their Online Social Movement in Germany”, ASIEN (The German Journal on Contemporary Asia)
• Park, S. Keimel, V. (2024/Forthcoming): “Mit Diversitaet Studierenden in einer Diversitaet Gesellschaft Ueber Diversitaet sprechen (Talking about Diversity with Diverse Students in a Heterogeneous Society”, In Sammelband Miteinander leben, miteinander lernen – Heterogenitaet und Inklusion in Gesellschaft und Lehrkrueftebildung,University of Bamberg Press.

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// ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

2014 - 2015
Master's degree (M.Sc.) in Development and Planning at the University College London, United Kingdom
Thesis: “Migrants’ Socio-Economic Settlement and Transnationalism in Network Society.”

2014 - 2010
Bachelor's degree (B.A.) in Russian Studies at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Seoul, Republic of Korea

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// EXPERIENCE

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

since April 2022
Teaching Diversity and Social integration for Master’s and Bachelor's seminars at Lehrstuhl für Soziologie, insbes. Sozialstrukturanalyse, Department of Sociology, University of Bamberg

NON ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

08/2010 - 12/2017
Senoir Global Business Development Manager at the Korea Televom Corporation, Seoul, Korea
 

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

04/2009 - 07/2009
Environmental Conservation Volunteer at the International Workcamp Organisation

Image Credits: © Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences