Disaggregating Labor Migration Policies to Understand Aggregate Migration Realities: Insights from South Korea and Japan as Negative Cases of Immigration
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DISAGGREGATING LABOR MIGRATION
POLICIES TO UNDERSTAND AGGREGATE
MIGRATION REALITIES: INSIGHTS FROM
SOUTH KOREA AND JAPAN AS NEGATIVE CASES
OF IMMIGRATION
Erin Aeran Chungt and Ralph I. Hosokitt
I. INTRODUCTION
Despite the unavoidable, continuing growth of foreign populations in
each country, South Korea (hereafter ''Korea) and Japan maintain restrictive
immigration policies that discourage or prohibit immigrant permanent
settlement. Both countries adhere to a highly exclusionary model of
immigrant incorporation in regards to legal status. Lacking specific
provisions to ease the citizenship acquisition process for either co-ethnic
immigrants or native-born immigrant descendants, foreign nationals in both
countries range from recent immigrants to native-born populations who are
multiple generations removed from their immigrant ancestry. Native-born
generations of foreign residents in Korea and Japan do not automatically
acquire citizenship upon birth unless one of their parents is a Korean or
Japanese national respectively. Most recent immigrants face even higher
barriers to gaining permanent residency status in either country as the
continuous residency requirements outpace those for the naturalization
procedure.
The foreign populations in Korea and Japan have grown significantly
over the past few decades, from slightly over 210,000 in 2000 to almost 1.9
million in 2015 in Korea and from approximately 850,000 in 1985 to over
2.2 million in 2015 in Japan.' Compared to their North American, European,
and Australian counterparts, however, foreign residents make up a relatively
small percentage of the total population in both countries, at a little over 3%
t Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
tt Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
1. KOREA IMMIGRATION SERVICE, Korea Immigration Service (KIS) Statistics 2016 (2016);
MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, JAPAN, Heisei 27 Nenmatsu Genzaini Okeru Gaikokujintorokusha Toukeini Tsuite
[Report on Current Foreign Resident Statistics at the End of 2015] (2016).
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