Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xvi, 261 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$34.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-61696-7.
Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea face similar demographic challenges, with aging populations, fertility decline, and labour shortages. In addition, these East Asian countries are more ethnically homogeneous than other parts of the world, and have until recently maintained rigid regulations concerning immigration and naturalization. Nevertheless, these three countries have adopted divergent approaches to managing the inflows of labour and marriage migration in recent decades. Erin Aeran Chung’s new book offers a systematic comparison that unpacks their structural similarities and explains how convergent and divergent patterns of immigrant incorporation take shape across the three countries.
The scope of research in this book is ambitious and impressive. It draws on archival research, interviews with migrants, activists, and government officials, and focus groups with migrants in each country. There are six substantial chapters, with chapters 1 and 2 laying out the conceptual frameworks. While the existing literature draws on the factors of citizenship regimes, international norms, and domestic political elites to explain the formation of immigration policies, Chung prioritizes the role played by civil society organizations in immigrant incorporation. She raises the concept of “civil legacies” to describe “the ideas, networks, and strategies applied in past struggles for democratic inclusion that differentially shape the direction of immigrant incorporation and the potential for structural reform” (11). Especially in the late-comer democracies in East Asia, citizenship is a contested institution negotiated by state and civil society and the incorporation of non-citizens is tied to the historical trajectories of development and democratization.
Chapter 3 features the book’s core argument: the identification of civil legacies in the three countries and examination of the impacts on immigrant policies. In South Korea, human rights activists, labour unions, and citizen groups have applied tools from the earlier democratization movement to make claims for migrant worker rights, leading to major reforms in immigration policies. In Japan, immigration incorporation has occurred in a decentralized, community-based approach; new immigrants are incorporated into existing services and programs that have been established primarily for multigenerational Zainichi Koreans. Finally, Taiwan is described as a stalled case because migrant advocacy has been in tension with the political agendas of indigenization, indicated by the examples of discrimination against mainland Chinese spouses and labour movement leaders’ lack of solidarity with migrant workers.
Chapter 4 draws on focus-group data to demonstrate how migrants in each country understand and respond to immigrant incorporation. Chapter 5 focuses on marriage migration, especially the reform of nationality laws and naturalization procedures for foreign spouses or their children. Chapter 6 looks into the convergent policies of multiculturalism across the three countries, which include immigrants but also stratify them by visa categories or ethnicity.
This book is, to my knowledge, the first monograph to comprehensively compare immigrant incorporation in East Asia. It offers rich data and a timely analysis, especially useful for those who are not familiar with the region. It also makes an important theoretical contribution: the insightful concept of civil legacies will have a long-lasting impact and can be applied to other migration regimes beyond East Asia.
The ambitious scope of the book, however, leads to some shortcomings in terms of analytical and comparative rigour. First, the book makes a general argument about immigrant incorporation in each country at the risk of overlooking variations across migrant groups. Most importantly, guest workers and marriage migrants are treated very differently in host countries, as the latter usually become permanent residents or naturalized citizens. At the same time, in chapter 4, the focus group data covers a wide range of migrants in terms of nationality and visa status. A more limited empirical focus could improve comparative precision across host countries and migrant groups.
Second, the data on Taiwan is weaker than that provided for Japan and South Korea; the number of interviewees and focus group participants was much lower (96). As a result, the arguments about Taiwan’s immigrant incorporation are sometimes partial or reductive, overlooking policy transformation over time. For example, some interviewed activists or cited scholars refer to earlier discriminatory policies which have been abolished due to successful civil activism (197). It is true that Taiwan’s labour unions have shown little support for migrant workers, but non-government organizations working with marriage migrants have mushroomed in the last couple of decades; the number is no less significant than those found in Japan or South Korea considering Taiwan’s smaller population (77). Chapter 5 actually states that Taiwan’s migrant advocacy has concentrated on organizing and empowering marriage migrants rather than characterizing them as victims as in the case of South Korea (160). Southeast Asian spouses and their children (so-called “new second generation”) even occupy a symbolic central status in the 2016 New Southbound Policy, a development and geopolitical policy that celebrates Taiwan’s multicultural connections to balance out its trade and social ties with China. All of the above contradicts the gloomy conclusion in the book and indicates more complexities about the uneven incorporation of immigrant subgroups in Taiwan.
Finally, I find the portrait of immigrant incorporation in Japan brighter than what I have myself observed. Non-citizen permanent residents in Japan are entitled to civil rights and even local voting rights largely because of the unique existence of Zainichi Koreans, who were born in Japan and speak fluent Japanese. By contrast, Japan’s government continues to deny the existence of de facto labour migration and maintain the trainee program that is vulnerable to exploitation. I wonder to what extent local community organizations can incorporate marginal migrant groups and have a voice in the policy-making process. An in-depth analysis of Japan’s multiple tracks of labour migration, including students and trainees, is needed to complete the picture of immigrant incorporation.
Pei-Chia Lan
National Taiwan University, Taipei