Migrant racialization in South Korea: class and nationality as the central narrative

ABSTRACT

This article examines the significance of class and nationality in relation to South Korea’s migrant integration policy and the racialization of migrant groups within everyday policy practices. As an emergent destination country for regional migration, South Korea offers an interesting case to look at the specific mechanisms through which different migrant groups are received by the “native” ethnic majority, relative to shifting demographic circumstances and the politics of national belonging. Drawing on ethnographic data from state-sponsored migrant integration centers and in-depth interviews with migrants and Korean staff, this article shows how a hierarchy of different ethnic/national migrant groups is established through a logic of class and conferred cultural values, determined largely by conceptions about the economic status of the migrants’ country of origin. The intersection of class and nationality in everyday narratives generates the racialized framing of migrant “others” and crucially informs migrants’ diverging experience of integration in Korea.

KEYWORDS:

• Racialization
• racism
• Korea
• intersectionality
• immigration
• immigration policy

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethics statement

This study is approved by the IRB (#843783-2). Informed written consent was obtained and all the names of the participants are anonymized.

Notes

1 “Multicultural Family” in Korea refers to a family based on a marriage between a Korean and a foreign national, a term used in the establishment of the legal policy documents. (http://www.law.go.kr/lsInfoP.do?lsiSeq=85988&chrClsCd=010203&urlMode=engLsInfoR&viewCls=engLsInfoR#0000). This definition of multicultural family, limited to the unison between a Korean citizen and a foreigner while excluding other forms of families such as those of two foreign partners, has been considered as de facto discriminatory and hampering migrants’ integration in society by the UN’s committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) (UN CERD 2012).