3 - Civic Legacies and Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies

Summary

This chapter examines how divergent immigrant incorporation patterns emerged out of convergent immigration and citizenship policies in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Intra-national gaps between exclusionary policies and inclusionary outcomes as well as cross-national variations between three seemingly similar systems reflect distinct civic legacies that shape which civil-society actors choose to advocate for which migrants and why as well as the strategies and ideas that they employ to make claims to the state. Migrant advocacy in Korea built on the civic legacies of the country’s recent democratization movement and, especially, the strong tradition of labor and civil-society activism, to push for structural change. In Japan, grassroots movements led by generations of Korean residents set the foundation for decentralized, community-based strategies for incorporating new immigrants but posed barriers to restructuring migrant labor policies. The civic legacies of Taiwan’s recent democratization movement, meanwhile, hampered migrant advocacy as the latter proved to be a poor fit for indigenization campaigns and became ensnared in cross-Strait politics.