APMRN Report

US- Mexico Immigration Policy

Korean Citizens' Reponse to the Inflow of Foreign Worker (Seol, Dong Hoon)

In this paper, I discuss Korean society’s response to foreign migrant workers. The employers, workers, trade unions, civil organizations and individual citizens have met and known them as employees, fellow workers, and neighbors since 1987. The Employment Permit Program for foreigners, the government’s new foreign labor policy since 2004 is understood as a product achieved by a decade of interaction between Korean citizens and foreign migrant workers. This paper examines the Korean citizen’s responses’ impacts on the government’s foreign labor policy from 1987 to 2005.The whole article can be found HERE.

Some Excerpts:

The government designated the period of June 10ㅡJuly 31, 1992 as “voluntary

self-report period for illegal overstayers” and accepted applications to find out the

situation of undocumented migrant workers in Korea. The number of undocumented

migrant workers self-reported during this period was 61,126 and the employers were

10,796. The government extended the permitted overstay period till the end of that year;

in addition in September 1992, the government imported trainees and placed them for

companies also with no foreign investment records.(Seol 2005:2)

Before the launch of the Employment Permit Program (EPP) for foreigners in

August 17, 2004, ITTP was known as the key foreign labor policy of Korea. “Trainees”

under the ITTP are not in most cases being trained for anything and are only filling menial

jobs that Koreans refuse to take. Since they are not classified as workers, they are denied

the rights of regular workers in Korea, including unionizing, collective bargaining and

collective action. Therefore, they are regarded as “disguised workers” (Seol 2000).

ITTP is stigmatized as the program to institutionalize and legalize the “coyote” (Seol 2003:3)

Although the formal foreign labor policy of Korea was ITTP, actually speaking,

the Korean employers utilized undocumented workers much more than trainees (Seol

2000; Seol and Skrentny 2004a). Before the regularization of undocumented workers in

September 2003, only 16 percent of foreign workers residing in Korea were industrial

technical trainees and post-training workers,1 while 78 percent were undocumented

migrant workers (Seol and Han 2004: 45).2 Undocumented migrant workers, although

resolved Korea’s labor shortage and contributed to its economic development, suffered

from unpaid or delayed wages, industrial accidents, occupational illnesses, and

unreasonable lay-off/dismissal because of their illegal status (JCMK 2000, 2001;

HRSWM 2002).(ibid)

The government’s such foreign labor policy resulted in uncontrolled illegal

overstays of migrant workers, human rights abuses, and corruptions in recruiting trainees

(Seol, Choi and Han 2002).

Nevertheless, there also were individuals who took care of the migrant workers

when they became victims of such human rights violations. These people organized

social groups to assist migrant workers in need. Thanks to these organizations and

individuals, Korea with its foreign labor policy often seen as “contemporary forms of

slavery” (JCMK 2000, 2001; HRSWM 2002), at least had a hope to be saved.

It is generally understood in the public that discrimination against foreign

migrant workers is worst of all kinds of discrimination that exist in today’s Korean

society. According to a public poll of Jeonbuk Province residents (Seol, Kim and Chung

2004: 40), the percentages of people answered each category as discrimination is “very

serious” is in following order: foreign migrant workers (37%), education level (31%),

handicaps (29%), name of higher education institution one graduated from (28%,)

irregular workers (23%), hometown (16%), outward appearance (15%), gender (11%),  group.

Migrant workers’ pitiful image in Korean citizens’ mind is raised by mass

media (see Han 2003, 2004). The print media give the plight of foreign workers frontpage

treatment, and television coverage frequently includes disturbing videos on

because its exploits foreign workers, allowsㅡif not encouragesㅡtheir abuse, and leads

to massive numbers of undocumented workers. The public is not friendly to rounding up

and deporting “pitiful” undocumented workers.

In reality in Korea, discrimination against migrant workers still prevails. The

major cause is in its policy (Seol 2004b). The main reason causing human rights

problem is pointed out as uncontrolled number of illegal migrant workers, whose

number maximum 78% of the total migrant worker population in 2003. EPP started in

2004, however, as far as ITTP remains in parallel, improvement of foreign labor policy

still remain as matters unresolved. ( ibid:13).

Nationalizing the Global:The Public Discourse on Migrant Workers in South Korea

By: Byoung-ha Lee

It was in 1987 that foreign workers came into Korean society for the first time as domestic helpers in the wealthiest area of Seoul. After that, the numbers of migrant workers have sharply increased.

Though the number decreased due to the Asian Financial Crisis, the flow of migrant workers increased again since the fall of 1999. According to a 2002 report published by the Office of the Prime Minister, there were

an estimated 337,000 foreign workers in South Korea. These workers fill up the empty holes of so-called 3 D jobs (difficult, dangerous or dirty jobs) such as small factories, construction sites, heat-treat, fishery, dyeing, restaurants, farms and so on. Thus, they are essential parts of the Korean economy, especially, unskilled production, at which native Koreans no longer want to work.

Read the whole article HERE.

Multi-cited Ethnography

The whole article can be found  here

Open Research Online

A lot of reading material and research papers can be found on HERE.

Hope this helps!

Prof. Devesh Kapur

Prof. Devesh Kapur [CHE 83] publishes book on "DIASPORA, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMOCRACY: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India"

Prof. Devesh Kapur, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, USA [ITBHU Chemical Engineering, 1983 B.Tech batch] has published a book titled "DIASPORA, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMOCRACY: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India". Summary from the official book site:

What happens to a country when its skilled workers emigrate? The first book to examine the complex economic, social, and political effects of emigration on India, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy provides a conceptual framework for understanding the repercussions of international migration on migrants' home countries.
Devesh Kapur finds that migration has influenced India far beyond a simplistic "brain drain"--migration's impact greatly depends on who leaves and why. The book offers new methods and empirical evidence for measuring these traits and shows how data about these characteristics link to specific outcomes. For instance, the positive selection of Indian migrants through education has strengthened India's democracy by creating a political space for previously excluded social groups. Because older Indian elites have an exit option, they are less likely to resist the loss of political power at home. Education and training abroad has played an important role in facilitating the flow of expertise to India, integrating the country into the world economy, positively shaping how India is perceived, and changing traditional conceptions of citizenship. The book highlights a paradox--while international migration is a cause and consequence of globalization, its effects on countries of origin depend largely on factors internal to those countries.
A rich portrait of the Indian migrant community, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy explores the complex political and economic consequences of migration for the countries migrants leave behind.

Prof. Kapur's bio can be accessed here.
The book's review also appeared in the Indian Express here.

Frédéric Docquier's Home page..

Some of Docquier's Articles include:

1.Brain drain and economic growth: theory and evidence (510 citations), co-authored with Michel Beine and Hillel Rapoport.

2. International migration by education attainment - Versions 1.0 and 1.1 (499 citations, 370+129), co-authored with Abdeslam Marfouk.

3. Brain drain and LDCs' growth: winners and losers (321 citations, 170+151), co-authored with Michel Beine and Hillel Rapoport

4. The economics of migrants' remittances (314 citations), co-authored with Hillel Rapoport
5. Skilled migration: the perspective of developing countries (144 citations), co-authored with Hillel Rapoport

More information can be foun don his homepage here.

Steven Castles: Diaspora Effect in International Migration

This paper reviews the existing literature on the impact of migrants
networks on the patterns of international migration. It covers the theo-
retical channels at stake in the global effect of the networks. It identifies
the key issues, namely the impact on size, selection and concentration of
the migration flows. The paper also reviews the empirical hurdles that
the researchers face in assessing the importance of networks. The key
issues concern the choice of micro vs a macro approach, the definition of
a network, the access to suitable data and the adoption of econometric
methods accounting for the main features of those data. Finally, the pa-
per reports a set of estimation outcomes reflecting the main findings of
the macro approach.

Narrative Analysis

Researching 'Race' and Ethnicity: Methods, Knowledge and Power.

Gunaratnam, Y. (2003) Researching 'Race' and Ethnicity: Methods, Knowledge and Power.

Text submitted by Laura Cockburn. More on the book here.

Part 1

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book as it sounded as if it might be a difficult read from the subject matter.

In the introduction, the author begins by positioning her self in the subject as having a Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Scottish, Tamil mixed ethnicity, with an interest in the relationship between social and individual history. She describes her relationship with race, culture and ethnicity and her early experience with the concept of racism. This felt reassuring as the author’s personality was very much evident in her writing, and was not lost in theory.

The introduction sets the structure of the book clearly: methodology, production of knowledge, politics of doing research on race and ethnicity, interrelations with social differences eg gender, class, disability and dilemmas.

The author’s style of writing makes this book accessible and a very valuable read. The combination of her interest and enthusiasm for the subject and her logical style of presentation means that the ideas are easily understood and leads the reader to progress in their thinking about race and ethnicity in research.

Some of the central themes addressed are: looking at how we produce knowledge about difference; how what we know is caught up with histories and relations of power; and how to develop a critical theoretically informed approach to qualitative research methods.

Research on race and ethnicity is contextualised, putting it into historical context. Race is defined as a biological difference, and ethnicity as cultural difference and kinship.

I found the Post colonial context and how this defines the meaning of “p.c.” very interesting as the idea of contextualising my ideas of race and ethnicity is not something I had considered before reading this book.

The complexities of the treacherous bind -working with and against racial categories is another aspect which stimulated further thoughts. How to challenge the existing categories of race and ethnicity and yet these categories are needed to provide the structure/information for research. In my limited experience of research, doubled research- the idea of questioning and reviewing the very structure within which the research ideas may be created sounds extremely challenging and yet necessary.

In addition to this, the author also looks at how to work with inadequate race and ethnicity categories whilst not getting stuck in reinforcing and reproducing racial thinking. She challenges researchers to look at the relationship between the theoretical recognition of race and ethnicity as social categories and the lived experience.

It does mean there is a great responsibility for new researchers to challenge established patterns whilst also trying to carry out research within the traditional structures. If this is carried out for coursework as part of training or within an organisation, it will pose another level of complexity and challenge for the researcher.

Overall the first part of the book sets the scene by setting the context of challenging all current ideas about race and ethnicity in research, and recognising that it a difficult role to take on but necessary if research is to reflect the political and social changes in ideas, definitions and categorisation of race and ethnicity.

In part 2 Gunaratnum presents many thought provoking ideas around the theme of epistemological, ethical and methodological issues in research into race and culture or ‘interracial’ research as she phrases this. Her insistence that race and ethnicity are a significant part of all research, and not just the specialist concerns of those whose work is focused upon race provokes some rethinking of current methodological debates. How can we work ethically across difference and how does identity affect both the researcher and research participants and research?

Gunaratnum highlights the point that institutionally there are an increasing number of academics coming from ethnic minority groups but that the numbers are still relatively small. This group of academics undoubtedly are often employed in working on research linked to research and culture which in turn impacts research, careers and opportunities. I valued one of her conclusions which was that seeking to recognise how ‘race’ ethnicity and social differences are produced and have effects in qualitative interviews is undoubtedly difficult and ‘messy’ work but that this needs to be acknowledged alongside valuing the complexity and richness that comes with the mess.

In part 3 of this book Gunaratnam talks about the researching the ‘lived experience’ of ‘race’.   She describes her research in which she has interviewed minoritized hospice users, and her struggle to analyse interviews in which participants have not referenced their race and ethnicity, which has left her feeling distanced.  I loved her use of Althuser’s notion of ‘calling’ through non-neutral questions her interviewees to particular racialised identifications, for example through talking of their experiences of racism.  I found helpful too the use of Knowles’ idea of ‘disassembling’ ‘race’ into the smaller concepts that give it meaning, and Higginbotham’s idea of theorising race as a  mythical, overdetermining ‘metalanguage’, that can function to obscure the meanings of other social differences.  She describes how these concepts have been helpful to her in analysing her interviews with Patricia, a Caribbean nurse who has had her larynx removed and who talks about race only as linked to her positive approaches to life, linked to her family background and Christian beliefs. She points out how in such descriptions race was being referred to but only indirectly, and that this Patricia's particular way of talking about her identity.

In another chapter she writes about ‘insecurities of meaning’ – moments when the meaning of particular words, phrases or gestures are particularly unclear and wide open to different interpretations.  She argues against the idea that anthropology should be about establishing a shared meaning in that this will lead to the obscuring of difference, and that it will lead to the researcher ‘speaking as’ rather than ‘speaking with’ the research participant.  Paying careful attention to and interpreting such ‘juddering’ moments can be a rich source of understanding about difference.  This reminded me very much of my experience of working with interpreters and the usefulness of pausing when a particular word or concept is difficult to translate, bringing forth rich and interesting information about underlying differences of viewpoints, but it is also true of interactions in therapy without the medium of an interpreter: there are juddering moments in therapy when somehow we are using the same word as our clients but with very different meanings.       

In her final chapter she argues for a ‘multisided’ research, which is reflexively aware of how the research relationship is situated within a broader social context, using the notion of ‘complicity’ to refer to how she sees both researcher and research participant being ‘curious and anxious’ about how their local narratives might be related to ‘great and little events happening elsewhere’.  Her exemplar of such practice is a study by Lather and Smithies of the experience of 25 women living with AIDS, where pages are split in half with the womens’ accounts of their lives at the top and the researchers’ narratives (in which they connect with these accounts) at the bottom. This seems to me a model also for a postmodern therapeutic relationship, and for the kind of accounts of such practice that we should be writing. Indeed throughout the book I found myself translating Gunaratnam’s arguments into the world of therapy across difference and felt that they provided some extremely rich potential avenues of exploration and development for us in our field.      

Posted on 01/21/2008 at 01:00 PM | Permalink

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Professor Shekhar Mukherji

Migration studies expert.
More on him here.

Overseas Migration and its Impact on Families Left Behing in...

Thesis submitted by Izhar Ahmad Khan Azhar for the fulfilment of PhD requirement at the Univesity of Kassel, Germany

Read here.

New Visa Rules for Korea

The Justice Ministry will ease visa regulations for South Asian visitors, who have become a major group for the Korean tourist industry, according to officials Tuesday.

Under regulations to come into effect next week, nationals from 11 major South Asian countries will be issued a double-entry visa, which allows them to freely revisit Korea within six months, in between or after transits to other countries.

This measure came in response to the growing reputation of Incheon International Airport as a flight transit spot, according to the ministry.

Tourists will also be required to submit fewer documents to prove their financial credit and employment status, officials said.

Also, a multiple-entry visa, which enables the holder to freely reenter the country for three consecutive years, will be issued to those who have a Korean university graduate degree and families of immigrants married to a Korean spouse.

The beneficiary states include India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, Laos, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar, according to the ministry.

Marriage Migrants in Korea to et Jobs..

One foreign woman married to a Korean man will be hired by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family this week, making her the first female marriage immigrant to work for the central government, an official said Tuesday, amid the country's efforts to embrace the growing number of such citizens.

South Korea has seen a rapid increase in the number of marriage immigrants in recent years, with their total number exceeding 141,000 last year, according to Justice Ministry data. Of that number, females account for nearly 90 percent, or more than 123,000.

Many of these women, who usually come from Southeast Asian nations to marry South Korean men in rural areas, struggle to adjust here as they face cultural differences and difficulties in their marriages, often due to careless matchmaking by professional brokers. Their growing numbers have prompted the government to draw up various policies to protect and promote their well-being.

In line with that trend, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has decided to hire one marriage immigrant this week for a job that involves translating, gathering opinions from the foreign community, giving talks on multicultural society and counseling other marriage immigrants, the ministry official said.

"We decided to hire a marriage immigrant to motivate them toward work and independence, and to provide a practical support policy that reflects the position of multicultural families," the official said, adding that he hopes other government ministries will do the same.

"We asked some other ministries, and none of them appeared to have employed a female marriage immigrant so far," he said.

The ministry has so far picked five candidates from a pool of applicants that fulfilled certain requirements for education, Korean-language ability and duration of stay. The five women include one Chinese, one Vietnamese and one Filipino, the official said. (Yonhap)
Korea Times (29-3-2011)

SOUTH KOREA: What can be done when National Institution itself tries to subordinate to administration? — Asian Human Rights Commission

SOUTH KOREA: What can be done when National Institution itself tries to subordinate to administration? — Asian Human Rights Commission

Korea and Global Migration Conference - 2004

Pastor Jones Galang: SEGYEHWA (“Globalization”) and ...

....SEGYEHWA (“Globalization”) and Korea: Worsening Crisis in Society, Worsening Conditions for Migrant Workers

“We realized that the common problems confronting the migrant workers are: exploitative

economic system operating in the sending and receiving countries, contract violation, harassment

and discrimination. Our response, thus far, is the on-going pastoral care for migrants affirmed by

the Generalate mandate. Both of these have challenged and emboldened us to continue committing

ourselves to work hand in hand with migrant workers for the realization of their struggle and

that of their home countries for food and freedom, jobs and justice, land and liberation.”

From the Unity Statement of the SVD-Justice & Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) conference on

migrant workers, September 15 - 19 2000, Hong Kong, SAR
Article here!

Timothy C. Lim: Rallying for migrant workers

Korea Herald: Feb. 2006

For more than a decade, foreign workers in South Korea have been struggling

to carve out a decent life. It has been a long struggle, but not a completely

empty one. Indeed, since the early 1990s - when "unskilled" foreign workers

first started to come to Korea in large numbers - some meaningful change has

occurred. Legally, at least, foreign workers in Korea have achieved several

important rights, including, with some exceptions, the same basic labor rights

as native Korean workers. This applies equally to "illegal" and legal workers.

One of the most recent changes occurred in August 2004 with the

implementation of a "guest worker" program known as the Employment

Permit System.

On the surface, the EPS was supposed to rectify the most egregious abuses of

foreign workers; indeed, the EPS, for the first time, provided the framework

for "unskilled" foreign workers to become legal workers in Korea, with all the

rights and "privileges" that it implies. Prior to the establishment of the EPS,

unskilled foreign workers could only legally enter Korea as "trainees." The

industrial trainee system, however, was a convenient, but obvious lie: it was

not designed to provide training, but was, instead, meant to institutionalize and

legitimize the systematic exploitation of foreign labor in the small- and

medium-sized business sector. This is one reason the trainee system failed to

achieve its goal. The majority of foreign workers simply left their "trainee"

positions after arriving in Korea, preferring to work "illegally" primarily

because it allowed them to receive much higher wages. To the government,

however, the illegal status of foreign workers (who at one point constituted

upwards of 80 percent of all foreign labor in Korea) did not necessarily

represent an urgent problem. After all, without legal status, these workers, too,

could be more easily exploited and abused.
Article in full here!

Political Economy of International Labor Migration

Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was celebrated earlier this month. Migrant workers and people from different walks of life talked about their experience in Korea and demanded the government and the Korean people change policies and perceptions discriminative against foreigners. ..for deatials read here.

John Duncan

John Duncan, director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies, doubts he would have become a scholar at all if it hadn’t been for his experiences along the Korean demilitarized zone in the late sixties. Stationed there as a 19-year-old American G.I., he remained after his military discharge and was admitted to Korea University in Seoul as the school’s first and — at that time — only U.S. student. He completed a degree in history at a historic time for South Korea: the height of student mobilization against military rule.

Duncan will be honored at the Korean Foundation Award ceremony for painstaking historical scholarship and for a range of activities he refers to as "field-building." He helped to found and he currently chairs the Worldwide Consortium of Korean Studies Centers, a key vehicle for global expansion of the field. In addition, the UCLA Center for Korean Studies is leading an effort to strengthen Korean studies in Latin America. And viewing Korea's past as part of East Asia’s, Duncan collaborates with historians of China, Japan and Vietnam on topics such as regional intellectuals' responses to Confucianism.

 

Read more at UCLA Today.