The border-crossing of habitus: media consumption, motives, and reading strategies among Asian immigrant women in South Korea

Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus, this study investigates media consumption, motives of media use, and reading strategies among Asian immigrant women in South Korea. The interview data from this study reveal that the total sum of media consumption among Asian immigrant informants tends to increase after immigration and that their media consumption can be regarded as omnivorous in style. Acquiring the host cultural capital and maintaining the home cultural capital are the major drives for their media use, resulting in three motives: the need for adaptation, the need for ethnic affirmation, and the need for relaxation. In response to the multicultural representation of the host media, the immigrant informants employ various reading strategies, such as empathetic reading, critical reading, distantiated reading, and avoidance of reading. The findings are discussed in light of the dialectic of habitus, the possibilities of multicultural capital, and the necessity for media education.