Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all have a history of restrictive immigration control regimes. However, as Erin Chung argues in her recent book, Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies, in recent years each of those three democracies have developed distinction immigrant incorporation regimes. Chung argues, persuasively, that this is related to the different “civic legacies” (p. 4)—“existing ideas, networks, and strategies previously applied to incorporate historically marginalized populations”—of each country (p. 7).
More specifically, in South Korea, because “the question of immigrant incorporation is embedded in a larger national struggle for democratization” (p. 31; emphasis in original) the advocates of migrants’ rights were able to win stronger allies and larger victories than one would expect given the size of migrant populations. In Japan, however, “when immigrant incorporation is embedded in ongoing grassroots movements for democratic inclusion” (ibid.; emphasis in original) migrants’ rights advocacy tends to be organized around the interests of the “vanguard group”—made up primarily of noncitizen Zainichi Koreans who have been in Japan for generations—instead of those who have arrived more recently. In Taiwan, “when immigrant incorporation does not ‘fit’ into existing civil legacies or threatens the status quo within civil society… migrant advocacy will likely be stalled, highly contentious, and/or uneven” (ibid.; emphasis in original).
This is an extremely carefully research and compelling book. Despite the very good reasons for comparing these three countries (they are all democracies in the same region with many similar international security and economic concerns) it is rare to see a book that so effectively employs a variety of useful (but labor intensive!) research techniques to study them together in 31 months of archival research divided among each country to paint an extremely rich picture of the politics of immigration incorporation in each country (p. 9). She has also, commendably, made much of this qualitative data publicly available through the Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies (IIEAD) Project, hosted by Johns Hopkins University.
After the introductory chapter, the book proceeds through five empirical chapters, followed by a short epilogue. Chapter 2 uses Alexander Gerschenkron’s (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, 1962) scholarship on the unique circumstances that face late-developing states to identify the socioeconomic reasons for some of the patterns that we observe in late-developing states’ citizenship and immigration policies. Chapter 3 provides a detailed picture of the politics of the three countries’ convergence on relatively restrictive immigration control regimes as well as their increasing divergence in immigrant incorporation in recent years. Chapter 4 draws on extremely impressive focus groups data to examine the way that various groups of migrants in each country understand their own identities vis-à-vis their home and host countries. Chapter 5 considers marriage migration in particular, and it includes discussion of the gendered, blood-based notions of national identity and citizenship. And in Chapter 6, Chung looks at the different uses of the concept of “multiculturalism” in each country.
This is an extremely well-researched book that teaches us a great deal about the politics of immigration in East Asian democracies and beyond. Although each empirical chapter could stand on its own as a thoughtful essay about an aspect of immigrant incorporation, the chapters hang together very nicely in support of Chung’s central claim about the role of civic legacies in shaping incorporation regimes. While each has its own strengths, I think that the two strongest contributions are chapter 5 (regarding gender and citizenship) and chapter 6 (regarding the concept of multiculturalism). In chapter 5, Chung’s careful analysis of the different ways that each country has considered gender and marriage migration is a compelling portrait of the contingent and historically varied answers to the question of “what makes a citizen” even in countries with blood-based citizenship policies, where the answer to that question is often thought to be straightforward. Her discussion of the South Korean case—in which a combination of policy makers’ desire to promote integration of foreign spouses and the goal of “civil-society activists to protect the legal status and human rights of migrant women” led to the 2011 policy that permitted foreign spouses to hold dual citizenship (p. 155)—was particularly compelling reading.
In chapter 6, Chung discusses the ways that South Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese governing elites attempted to bring the notion of multiculturalism into domestic politics in a way that addresses what those elites saw as “the failures of multiculturalism—and, more broadly, diversity—in traditional countries of immigration” (p. 164). She notes that each country ultimately developed a “multiculturalism” that was consistent with its civic legacy, and she also notes that “although multicultural discourses and programs ostensibly attempt to promote greater diversity and openness in each society, they are more notable for the ways in which specific categories of migrants are included and excluded” (p. 164). One of the most compelling insights in this chapter is her argument that:
the development of noncitizen hierarchies that have emerged from relatively restrictive immigration policies has been the source of a backlash by native citizens against the perceived “special privileges” of specific migrant groups, such as alleged educational opportunities, tax breaks, or social welfare benefits that some claim are out of reach for native citizens. They are not the product of liberalized immigration policies. (p. 201)
This is an important insight because it suggests that the argument that the emergence of xenophobic populism all over the world is caused by too much liberalism is misguided. Xenophobic populists can build resentment among native populations with their rhetoric even when there is little of substance to “resent.”
Chung’s theory of civic legacies is extremely compelling, but I would have liked to read a bit more specific discussion of how these legacies are transmitted. So, for example, Chung notes that activists who challenged the proposed Overseas Korean Act in South Korea in 1999 relied on “public campaigns, demonstrations, and hunger strikes” as well as litigation (p. 175). How did they decide on these particular activities, which, as Chung notes, resonated with South Korea’s civic legacy? Was it that activists from earlier campaigns for democratization were involved with this new campaign? Did activists make a conscious effort to learn the histories of previous movements to figure out what works in the sociopolitical context where they reside? Or do they learn these legacies through a process of trial and error?
Another set of questions that this book left me with relate to how and why countries choose to emulate one another. So, for example, Chung notes that both South Korea and Japan initially adopted a similar combination of foreign trainee admissions and favorable admission of coethnics as sources of foreign manual labor in the 1990s (p. 55). And similarly, Chung discusses the way in which, in 1992, Taiwan emulated the household registry system that existed in both Japan and South Korea to restrict access to citizenship (p. 184). I would have liked to read a bit more about how these and other policy ideas diffused across borders.
Those concerns, however, are minor. This is an ambitious book that more than succeeds at what it sets out to accomplish, making major theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of comparative immigration and citizenship. I recommend it to scholars interested in migration in East Asia and beyond, and it would be useful for undergraduate or graduate courses on comparative politics, the politics of immigration, and the politics of East Asia.
