Examining Other Diplomacies of Sri Lankan Migrant Workers in South Korea: A Human-Centric Approach to Diplomatic Studies

Abstract

The academic field of Diplomatic Studies has long been insulated from critical interventions in the broader discipline of International Relations. While critical discussions surrounding gender, race, and class have been in ascendance in International Relations, Diplomatic Studies has managed to police its traditional disciplinary boundaries by centring scholarship around states and their accredited agents. The state-centric focus of the field has resulted in scholarship privileging the interests of states, which are abstract entities, over those of actual living communities; therefore, engage with issues primarily important to masculine, Eurocentric, and elite actors. This dissertation intervenes in the academic field of Diplomatic Studies to decentre the state and reorient the field’s focus towards human-centric issues. It argues that societal non-state actors engage in Other Diplomacies as they interact with each other across boundaries of perceived differences. Thereby the dissertation contributes to the literature on Other Diplomacies by showing how Sri Lankan migrant workers engage in Other Diplomacies as they interact with their interlocutors in South Korea. It shows how Sri Lankan migrant workers utilise diplomatic skills to understand and navigate their gendered, racialised, and classist identities. This dissertation also contributes to the literature on consular affairs by arguing that it constitutes a part of Diplomatic Studies rather than a separate field of study. I sustain the human-centric focus of Other Diplomacies and shows that societal non-state actors provide and receive consular assistance from each other due to inadequate levels of assistance from their state. I propose that Other Diplomacies scholarship sustain a human-centric focus to uncover the gendered, racialised, and classist power hierarchies that societal actors must negotiate across as they interact with other actors, both state and non-state. Thereby this dissertation contributes to the critically inclined scholarship of Diplomatic Studies in particular and International Relations in general.