The effects of colourism on migrant adaptation in Asia: the racial exclusion of African migrants in South Korea’s “multicultural” society

ABSTRACT

While high rates of intra-Asian migration have rendered foreign migrants physically “invisible” in the past, migrants of increasingly racially diverse backgrounds have started to enter South Korea in the past decade. Through in-depth interviews with sub-Saharan African migrants, this article examines the effects of colourism on three levels of migrant adaptation: (1) host government legal policies, (2) host societal reception, and (3) resources within the migrant community. Findings reveal that African migrants, compared to their lighter skinned Asian counterparts, are more vulnerable to precarious living conditions regardless of their legal, educational, or occupational backgrounds. In addition, Africans also lack resources in South Korean civil society as well as within the African migrant community, and thus face formidable barriers in collective resistance. Harsh discrimination in everyday life causes many to adopt maladaptive behaviours – resisting linguistic acquisition and adopting a sojourner orientation – triggering a negative feedback loop that exacerbates their oppression.

KEYWORDS:

• African diaspora
• Africans in Asia
• migrant adaptation
• racial discrimination
• colorism
• multicultural society

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank four anonymous reviewers for their feedback. This is an equally co-authored article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “Container business” refers to situations where participants buy used items such as cars, clothing, bags. and household items and ship them to their home country to be sold.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by grants from the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and the Global Policy Initiative in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.