The Peculiar Consensus and Racial Unconscious in Migration Scholarship on Korea

This paper argues that race must be a central consideration in understanding migration in Korea, where international migrants are rapidly reshaping the national landscape. While migration scholarship on Korea has analyzed various policy trajectories, it has predominantly focused on three aspects—lib...

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Veröffentlicht in:Critical sociology 2024-03
Hauptverfasser: Lee, Yeon-Hwa, Kim, Jae Kyun
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:This paper argues that race must be a central consideration in understanding migration in Korea, where international migrants are rapidly reshaping the national landscape. While migration scholarship on Korea has analyzed various policy trajectories, it has predominantly focused on three aspects—liberal democracy, ethnicity, and gender—largely overlooking the significance of race. First, it assumes that liberal democracy will eventually supersede xenophobia without critically examining its assumptions that are both racialized and teleological in nature. Second, by prioritizing ethnicity, it interprets discrimination against migrants through the notion of uni-ethnicity and a fear of foreignness without delving into Korea’s deeply rooted fixation on race. Third, it overemphasizes gendered migration, regarding Korea’s demographic crisis as a primary reason for accepting migrant women as biological reproducers. This paper contends that all three aspects are intricately connected to race, including Korea’s aspiration for whiteness and abjection of blackness, which significantly shape migration dynamics.
ISSN:0896-9205
1569-1632
DOI:10.1177/08969205241236867