Rapidly developing East Asian economies have experienced stunted growth due to an accelerating aging crisis in recent years. In South Korea, government statistics project that nearly half of the population will be elderly in 50 years. As the number of elderly relying on government pensions quickly outpaces the tax-paying working population, the government has increasingly turned to migration to fill deficits in fertility and labor. Policymakers, recognizing the importance of integrating migrants to sustain economic growth, have liberalized migration policies and poured state funding into developing Multicultural Support Centers nationwide. But, at the same time, state actors have also opportunistically mobilized anti-immigrant sentiment to deflect plummeting disapproval ratings triggered by surging inflation, housing shortages, and job insecurity. Today, migration continues to be the source of much political strife, as evidenced by the rise of nativist hate speech, extremist violence, and political polarization in South Korea.
Our proposed panel features five papers that employ different theoretical and methodological approaches in examining migrant experiences of exclusion and inclusion in South Korea from a comparative perspective. In highlighting the rise of nativism, Park compares anti-refugee government policies in South Korea and Belgium, while Yi and Yuk use a multiscalar approach to examine the proliferation of Islamophobic discourse following the construction of the Daruleeman Mosque in Daegu. Udor and Yoon shift the focus to civil society actors, demonstrating how faith-based organizations, which provide the lion’s share of social welfare resources to non-citizens, can surprisingly stunt the integration of undocumented African migrants in Korea. Finally, Kim and Chung study how documented migrants navigate state discourses of belonging. Kim shows how marriage migrants in South Korea and Japan navigate citizenship norms, highlighting differing emphases on women's reproductive duties as they negotiate their inclusion in each country. By contrast, Chung examines how state policies hierarchically categorize Korean “return” migrants according to their countries of origin, granting only a select few with privileged legal statuses and expedited pathways to citizenship. Piper will close the panel by facilitating a discussion of best practices for how state and civil society actors can coordinate efforts to integrate migrants of diverse ethnic and gendered backgrounds.