Regulating membership and movement at the meso-level: citizen-making and the household registration system in East Asia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes how East Asian states have regulated membership and migration through meso-level institutions. Specifically, we examine how states have used the household registration system (China’s hukou system, South Korea’s hoju/hojeok system, and Japan’s koseki system) in the process of nation-state building in the early post-World War Two period, as a security measure to control movement throughout the Cold War, and as a tool to build or sever trans-border kinship ties in the contemporary era. Drawing on the literature on multi-level citizenship, the article contributes to the growing scholarship that unpacks the civic-ethnic divide in comparative citizenship studies by examining how meso-level institutions shape national-level membership in countries that are commonly characterized as having ‘ethnic’ citizenship regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• meso
• East Asia
• Japan
• China
• Korea

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants at the Workshop on Exit Restrictions at the University of Toronto in October 2018, the Academy of Korean Studies Workshop at Monash University in February 2019, and the International Studies Association 2019 Annual Meeting panel on ‘Comparative Migration Regimes in Asia’ in Toronto. We are especially grateful to Gil-Soo Han, Jaeeun Kim, Nora Kim, Matthew Light, Willem Maas, Darshan Vigneswaran, and two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Vink (2017, 222) defines citizenship regimes as ‘institutionalized systems of formal and informal norms that define access to membership, as well as rights and duties associated with membership, within a polity.’

2. For an opposing view based on recent developments, see Guo and Liang 2017.

3. The burakumin are descendants of historical outcasts who have been discriminated against since the Tokugawa Period (1600–1868).

4. Uehara Etsujirō, "Alien Registration Order," Imperial Order. No. 207 of Showa Year 22 (May 2nd, 1947). | Uehara Etsujirō, Gaikokujin tōroku rei, Shōwa 22 Shokurei dai 207 gō.

5. Hukou in Chinese refers specifically to an individual family’s record, whereas huji refers to the institution as a whole.

6. The modern huji system is often traced as far back as several millennia, but these claims should be evaluated with caution due to significant differences in function, intentions, and execution.

7. Household Registration Ordinance of the People’s Republic of China, 91st Session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (1958). (Zhonghua renmin gonghe guo hukou dengji tiaolie, Quanguo renmin daibiao dahui changwu weiyuan hui di jiu shi yi ci hui yi (1958)).

8. The distinction between agricultural (rural) and non-agricultural (urban) hukou was abolished as parts of national reform initiatives in Shanghai in April 2016 and in Beijing in January 2018. See: http://house.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0112/c164220-29762360.html and http://www.xinhuanet.com/local/2016-04/26/c_128933711.htm.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was funded by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-LAB-2250001).

Notes on contributors

Erin Aeran Chung

Erin Aeran Chung is the Charles D. Miller Associate Professor of East Asian Politics in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Immigration and Citizenship in Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2010; 2014) and Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020).

Darcie Draudt

Darcie Draudt is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and in 2019 was a Korea Foundation Field Research Fellow in Seoul.

Yunchen Tian

Yunchen Tian is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, and a 2019-2020 Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellow as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science.