장기불황 시대 청년 부동산 임장 실천

This study analyzes the real estate site visit practices (imjang) of young adults in South Korea under conditions of prolonged recession and an asset economy regime, drawing on participant observation data collected in Seoul and the metropolitan area. Real estate site visits function as an everyday practice through which young people imagine their futures and manage anxieties amid precarious socioeconomic conditions. These practices serve as both a collective learning process for cultivating discernment of “desirable” real estate and a field that enables imaginaries of class mobility. “Imjang” provide participants with an affective reward structure that temporarily transforms anxiety into a sense of “reassurance,” becoming a key mechanism that induces repeated participation. Through this process, participants make profound affective investments in asset economy norms, sharing hopes that their invested time and effort will yield future returns. However, this reassurance takes the form of “cruel optimism,” which deepens young people's subjection to the disciplinary logic of the asset economy by reinforcing attachments to unattainable futures. By analyzing young adults’ “Imjang” practices as affective and class-based practices formed within recession culture, this study critically illuminates the intersections of inequality and urban middle-class culture in the era of asset economy. It reveals how the everyday lives and future imaginaries of the younger generation are constituted within political dynamics that combine structural precarity with optimistic affects.