© Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 Spring 2010	 11
In t r o d u c t i o n
Politics of Citizenship and
Transnational Gendered Migration
in East and Southeast Asia
Apichai W. Shipper1
E
ven in this age of globalization when people, ideas and goods readily
move across national borders on an unprecedented scale, political
rhetoric in support of prevailing notions of the static boundaries of
citizenship remain pervasive. In particular, the increasing frequency, intensity
and scale of transnational migrations—combined with innovations in
transportation and communications technologies—have generated new
challenges to the concept of citizenship. In the twenty-first century, it is
crucial to understand the transnational and increasingly fluid definitions of
collective consciousness and individual identity that cannot be understood
in the context of exiting conceptions of race and territorially bounded
political community. Political communities across nations and historical
epochs have included or excluded groups according to different and often
shifting criteria. Treating citizenship and a sense of belonging as unfixed
and subjected to changes over time, this special issue examines the politics
of citizenship in selected East and Southeast Asian countries in the ages of
transnational gendered migration.
The special issue explores how transnational gendered—including both
female and male—migration has affected citizenship or a sense of belonging
from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Transnational gendered
migration poses a challenge to the notion of citizenship and has been an
important instigator of legal and social reforms.2
Japan, South Korea, the
__________________
1
	 Most papers in this volume were prepared for delivery at the 2009 annual meeting of the
Association for Asian Studies in Chicago and/or the 2009 Yonsei University workshop on “Immigration
and Identities in East and Southeast Asia” in Seoul, Korea. We are grateful for the insightful comments
from all discussants and participants of these meetings. I thank Sara Friedman, Pierrette HondagneuSotelo,
David Gartner, Wang-bae Kim, Timothy Lim, Johan Lindquist, Hyung Gu Lynn, Nadejda
Marinova, Nobue Suzuki, J. Ann Tickner and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments on this introduction. My research was assisted by a grant from the Abe Fellowship Program
administered by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies
in cooperation with and with funds provided by the Japan Foundation Center for Global
Partnership.
2
	 Nicola Piper and Mina Roces, eds. Wife or Worker? Asian Women and Migration (Boulder: Rowan
& Littlefield, 2003).
12
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
Republic of China (hereafter Taiwan), the People’s Republic of China
(hereafter PRC or Mainland China) and Indonesia are selected in this volume
because they vary in their levels of homogeneity. For example, South Korea
has long been considered among the most ethnically homogeneous nation–
states in the world. Its ethnic minority population accounted for a little over
1 percent of the total population. Ethnic minorities in South Korea include
Chinese, Japanese, “Amerasian” (children of United States soldiers and South
Korean women), a small number of “Lai Daihan” (children of South Korean
fathers and Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War) who recently
immigrated to South Korea, and a growing population of Kosian (children
of South Korean fathers and Asian mothers from China and Vietnam).3
In
Taiwan, approximately 98 percent of the population consider themselves as
Han Chinese, while the other 2 percent are Taiwanese aborigines. Similarly
in Japan, the Japanese also view themselves as a racially distinct and
homogeneous people, despite the historical presence of Koreans, Chinese,
Ainu, and Okinawans. The number of foreigners in Japan is less than 2
percent of its total population. At the other end of this spectrum, the ethnic
composition of Indonesia is only 42 percent Javanese, while the remaining
population encompasses over 300 ethnicities. The People’s Republic of China
(PRC) is similarly composed of a patchwork of ethnicities with some 55 staterecognized
minority groups, which account for over 9 percent of the overall
population or a total of 123 million people. Given the diversity of these
countries, the country case studies of East and Southeast Asia can offer
variation on the impact of transnational gendered migration on discourses
of citizenship and belonging.
In the last decade or so, scholarship on immigration and citizenship has
witnessed a growing focus on the role of gender in (im)migration trends
and outcomes, especially as women assume greater representation worldwide
among those on the move.4
This work has revealed important interrelationships
between women’s family and work statuses, especially in the
Asian context where decisions to migrate for employment and marriage/
family reasons often are linked.5
In light of this recent scholarship on
citizenship and gender, this special issue systematically treats migration as a
gendered system and highlights the role of politics in understanding the
__________________
3
	 On the situation of Kosian children in South Korea, see The New York Times, 29 November
2009, A6.
4
	 See Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcon and Minoo Moallem, eds., Between Woman and Nation:
Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); Rhacel
Salazar Parrenas, Servants of Globalization: Women Migration, and Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2001); Nicole Constable, Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and
“Mail Order” Marriages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Nicole Constable, ed., CrossBorder
Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2005); Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik, eds., Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and
Gender (New York: New York University Press, 2009).
5
	 Piper and Roces, eds. Wife or Worker?
13
Introduction
variation in the type of transnational gendered migration within East and
Southeast Asia, the socio-political actors involved in (im)migration politics,
the debates between these political actors, and policy outcomes, particularly
on laws related to citizenship or nationality.
This special issue seeks to understand the politics of citizenship and its
mechanism for policy change under conditions of increasing pluralism
brought by the transnational gendered migration. Based exclusively on the
empirical essays in this volume from selected cases in East and Southeast
Asia, I have constructed a theoretical framework on the politics of citizenship
and transnational gendered migration. This framework, which treats the
concept of citizenship as fluid and constructed, features the important role
of state actors (both host and sending states), societal actors, and courts.
Formal, Substantive, and Differentiated Citizenship
Citizenship has been largely under-conceptualized and under-theorized in
the immigration scholarship on Asia and politically ignored by policy makers
in many East and Southeast Asian countries. This special issue aims to rectify
these theoretical shortcomings and begins by reviewing the conceptual
differences between formal, substantive, and differentiated citizenship.6
Formal
citizenship is membership in a nation–state or political community. Persons
with formal citizenship can be regarded as nationals but they may or may
not possess citizenship rights. Substantive citizenship, in contrast, entails the
possession of a body of civil, political and social rights. Often, it also imposes
obligations as well as engendered lived experiences. In most East and
Southeast Asian countries, laws that grant formal citizenship are based on
jus sanguinis (blood); that is, nationality is granted to a person whose father
or mother is, at the time of birth, a national of that country. In heterogeneous
societies, like the PRC and many Southeast Asian countries, formal citizenship
also includes some form of modified jus soli where citizenship is ascribed to
all persons born in the territory.
However, a person who possesses formal citizenship may lack substantive
citizenship. For example, in Taiwan, formal citizenship is provided to all
overseas Chinese as recognition to acknowledge the support that overseas
Chinese had given historically to the Kuomintang regime during the 1911
Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty. Moreover, Taiwan’s official
borders include all of the territories of the PRC and Mongolia; therefore,
persons of their territories are legally Taiwanese nationals. However, the
exercise of substantive citizenship, such as suffrage, labour rights, and access
to national health insurance, requires possession of a Taiwan National
__________________
6
	 On formal and substantive citizenship, see Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France
and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, particularly pp. 40-43); T. H. Marshall,
Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).
14
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
Identification Card, which is only issued to persons with household
registration in the Taiwan Area. Those Taiwanese who do not hold this ID
card do not have substantive citizenship rights. Moreover, Article 20 of its
Constitution restricts certain citizens from holding public offices. Similarly,
in South Korea, the government considers its territory to encompass the
entire Korean peninsula. Therefore, North Koreans are Korean nationals.
However, they must meet the same residency requirement as other foreigners
before acquiring substantive citizenship. In December 2009, the South
Korean government decided to granted dual (formal) citizenship to Koreans
who have acquired another nationality, as well as foreigners who are born
in Korea or have married a Korean and lived there for more than 20 years.7
These dual citizens, however, will not be granted suffrage (or substantive
citizenship) until they have met a minimum year of residency requirement.
In the context of both formal and substantive citizenship, it is important
to note that identifications, such as race, gender, class, legality of status and
place of origin, have often qualified citizenship, if not explicitly defined it.8
In particular, attention to the restrictions women face as migrants and
potential citizens illuminates hierarchies of citizenship that grant only partial
or limited rights to specific categories of people.9
Scholars have exposed the
gendered nature of citizenship and migration processes and have shown
how immigration policies construct women specifically as dependents,
denying them full rights to initiate migrations or make citizenship claims
independent of male kin or employers.10
Recent research underscores the
unevenness and contradictory nature of the regulatory practices that
comprise citizenship and shape immigration trends. Scholars point to ways
in which women struggle within and against these contradictory practices,
in their diverse roles as labour migrants, transnational care workers, members
of families, and sponsors of new immigrants.
In heterogeneous societies, like the PRC and Malaysia, a form of
“differentiated citizenship” has been installed. Differentiated citizenship
takes into account the different positions, interests, and identities of citizens
that emerge from gender, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. In
multi-ethnic societies with differentiated citizenship, the state acknowledges
the different histories, needs and goals of the various communities that
__________________
7
	 22 December 2009, available at http/www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/12/
116_57741,html, last accessed on 14 January 2010.
8
	 Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2000).
9
	 See Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, “Transgressing the Nation–State: Partial Citizenship and ‘Imagined
(Global) Community’ of Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society, vol. 26, no. 4 (2001): 1129-1154; Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Migrants
and Globalization (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner,
eds., Women, Citizenship, and Difference (London: Zed Books, 1999).
10
	 Benhabib and Resnik, eds., Migrations and Mobilities.
15
Introduction
constitute its nation–state and grants privileges or rights to certain ethnic
groups.11
Differentiated citizenship demands that equal respect justifies
differential treatment and the recognition of special minority rights. For
instance, the PRC’s policies toward ethnic minorities entail the establishment
of several autonomous areas for minority groups where, at least officially,
they are free to study their languages, preserve their cultures, maintain their
customs and practice their religious beliefs.12
As Wang-bae Kim illustrates,
minority groups are granted autonomy in running their cultural and
educational institutions. In principle, autonomous areas are supposed to
enjoy more power than other areas; in reality, they do not and “no significant
autonomy legislation has actually been passed.”13
However, embracing multicultural and minority rights can mean that
citizens lose their sense of collective belonging. This may then affect their
willingness to compromise and make sacrifices for each other. It may weaken
the levels of trust and loyalty between citizens, who may then develop a purely
strategic attitude towards those of different ethnic and social backgrounds.
Therefore, the state must develop a genuinely shared culture. The Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), for example, propagates an ideological union of
all ethnic groups (zhonghua minzu) to create a more unified nation. It insists
that its goals embody those of a nation that depends on the cultural, political
and sometimes territorial centrality of a dominant Han Chinese ethnic
group.14
This has worked with certain ethnic minorities, such as the Tujia,
Manchus, Zhuang, Hui, Kazakhs and Koreans, who are satisfied to remain
a part of China.15
Others, such as Tibetans and Uighurs, however, do not
identify themselves as “Chinese,” and have demanded ethnic preservation
or even independence. In early July 2009, the PRC experienced one of its
worst ethnic unrests in recent decades when a group of Uighurs protested
against the CCP for trying to erase their language and culture by encouraging
the migration of Han Chinese into the Xinjiang region, where approximately
nine million Uighurs live. As a result of this ethnic unrest, 197 people died
while 1,600 were injured.16
Clearly, the growth of localized, ethnic
nationalism—a potential incubator for aspirations of independence—has
__________________
11
	 See Joseph Carens, Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Explanation of Justice as
Evenhandedness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Melissa S. Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized
Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
12
	 Colin Mackerras, China’s Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation (London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2003).
13
	 Yash Ghai and Sophia Woodman, “Unused powers: contestation over autonomy legislation in
the PRC,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 82, no. 1 (2009), pp. 29-46.
14
	 Anthony Smith, Theories on Nationalism (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
15
	 Nimrod Baranovitch, “Between Alterity and Identity: New Voices of Minority People in China.”
Modern China, vol. 27, no. 3 (2001), pp. 359-401.
16
	 New York Times, 15 July 2009, available online at http//www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/world/
asia/10xinjiang.html, last accessed on 14 January 2010.
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Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
become a source of concern for the central government. Party leaders, who
see the nation as a territorial unit irrespective of ethnicity and seek political
identity involving a “national people” and strong multi-ethnic state while
attempting to promote their view of state nationalism, regard this divergence
as a serious challenge to national unity.17
In Malaysia, the government established an asymmetrically differentiated
citizenship, which accorded basic citizenship rights to Chinese and Indians
in exchange for special legal, political and economic rights for Malays.18
In
a constitutional agreement that was worked out in 1957, resident Chinese
and Indians were given citizenship rights in exchange for accepting Malay
dominance in politics and culture. Thereafter, major Chinese and Indian
political parties were incorporated into the National Alliance (BN), which
was led by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). When the
Chinese (non-BN) opposition party challenged this agreement during the
national election in May 1969, race riots erupted, resulting in the death of
almost 200 Chinese. The government further instituted the New Economic
Policy (NEP) in 1971, which lasted until 1990, in its efforts to tackle the
economicimbalancebetweenMalaysandChinese. The NEP was an affirmation
action to assist/facilitate the economic interests of the bumiputera (indigenous
Malays) in the form of government subsidies and contracts while
discriminating against Chinese (and Indians). Such discrimination, which
can hinder formal equality, constituted an important component of Malaysia’s
asymmetrically differentiated citizenship. In Indonesia, a debate on whether
citizenship rights (and duties) should be differentiated by religion was raised
among the framers of the constitution. Leading nationalists, however, decided
against such distinction.
In sum, formal citizenship implies equality of members of the polity, while
substantive and differentiated citizenships do not necessarily require that
rights be uniform between citizens. Deciding who enjoys which of these
rights has often been as contentious among political elites as establishing
the boundaries of the rights themselves. Women, who are typically associated
with reproduction and relegated to the domestic sphere, are historically
denied substantive citizenship.19
As this special issue illustrates, these
decisions have been a central area of contention in much of Asia with an
increase in transnational gendered migration.
__________________
17
	 Gardner Bovingdon, The Uvghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land (New York: Columbia University
Press, forthcoming 2010).
18
	 Robert Hefner, “Introduction: Multiculturalism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and
Indonesia,” in Robert Hefner, ed., The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia,
Singapore, and Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001).
19
	 Susan Okin, “Women, Equality, and Citizenship,” Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 99, no. 1 (1992), pp.
57-72.
17
Introduction
Political Construction of Transnational Gendered Migration
The recent and dramatic increases in foreign migrant workers and spouses
in East and Southeast Asia during the past three decades have become areas
of contention for formal, substantive and differentiated citizenship. Before
I discuss these areas of contention, it is useful to briefly review the
international migration in these regions. Foreign migrants in East and
Southeast Asia include Nikkei (Japanese descent) Brazilian manufacturing
workers in Japan, Choso˘njok (Korean–Chinese) domestic workers in South
Korea, Filipino entertainers in Japan and South Korea, Southeast Asian
domestic workers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Indonesian
domestic workers and plantation workers in Malaysia, and Burmese
manufacturing and sex workers in Thailand, among others. Mainland China
is also experiencing an increase in international migration during the last
few decades, particularly from North Korea. The steady influx of North
Korean economic and political refugees and other foreigners into China
further challenges its notions of nationalism, ethnic relations and social
control.20
North Koreans have been illegally crossing the border in search
of refuge since the 1990s, when an estimated three million people died of
starvation and hunger-related illnesses during the North Korean famine.21
Approximately 100,000-300,000 North Koreans live in hiding in northeast
China, mainly in the province of Jilin, intermingling with the pre-existing
ethnic Korean community.
Of particular interest in this international migration is the fact that many
of these transnational migrants are women, albeit the percentage of foreign
women migrants differs from one country to another. For example, about
75 percent of the North Korean refugees in China are women.22
In Indonesia,
about 80 percent of the migrants (mostly domestic workers) who left the
country to work in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia are women. In addition,
transnational marriages involving foreign women have increased dramatically
in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, particularly in the rural areas. In Japan,
the ratio of international marriages to the total number of marriages reached
5.2 percent in 2001, 80 percent of which involved a foreign wife. By 2007,
Japanese men had married about 150,000 Filipina women alone. In South
Korea, for example, 40 percent of all rural official marriages that occurred
in 2006 were transnational, the majority of which were between Korean men
__________________
20
	 Meanwhile in North Korea, increasing migration in the form of a steady outflow of these
refugees has eroded the power of state ideology to maintain social control.
21
	 Andrei Lankov, “North Korean Refugees in Northeast China,” Asian Survey, vol. 44, no. 6
(2004), pp. 856-873.
22
	 Rhoda Margesson, Emma Chanlett-Avery and Andorra Bruno, “North Korean Refugees in
China and Human Rights Issues: International Response and US Policy Options” (Washington DC:
CRS Report RL34189, 2007), p. 4.
18
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
and non-Korean women.23
In Taiwan, about 10 percent of Taiwanese men
annually marry mainland Chinese women. Women and children—mostly in
the form of “entertainers” (and prostitutes)—migrated (as well as being
trafficked) into Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also accounts for a portion
of the female foreign migrant population. In this sense, international
migration is gendered.
Geography plays an important role in the transnational gendered
migration, for it carries symbolic meaning of places and the gendered
messages which they transmit.24
The two essays by Wang-bae Kim and Timothy
Lim depict clear differences between Choso˘njok women in the PRC and
South Korea. In the PRC, young Choso˘njok couples prefer to migrate
together as couples and equal partners to and from major Chinese cities,
leaving their children behind in the care of their elderly parents. In South
Korea, Choso˘njok women tend to migrate alone as domestic workers or
future wives to Korean men. Such international migration confines them to
the domestic sphere and relegates them to the household, thereby reinforcing
long-held South Korean patriarchal values.
Government policies and actions are responsible for much of this
transnational gendered migration. During the late 1980s, for example, over
half of Japan’s municipalities reported a shortage of Japanese women willing
to marry local farmers, who remained single into their forties. Some
municipal governments (for example, Akita) responded by inviting foreign
women to arranged meetings (miai) while others (for example, Yamagata)
actively sponsored miai tours to East Asian countries, seeking wives for their
local farmers.25
In South Korea, international marriages with Choso˘njok also
have their origins in the intervention of government officials. In December
1990, the first example of such a marriage was arranged by a former
assemblyman and professor in order to unite Korea and its diaspora in
China.26
After this, some local governments, assemblies, and related
agricultural associations arranged marriage meetings between their local
farmers and Choso˘njok women.27
In Taiwan, international marriages with
mainland Chinese occurred after the Taiwanese government relaxed a ban
on travel to the PRC in the late 1980s. War veterans then began to visit their
hometowns on mainland China and found partners there. Then in 1992,
__________________
23
	 Yean-Ju Lee, Dong-Hoon Seol and Sung-Nam Cho, “International Marriages in South Korea:
the Significance of Ethnicity and Nationality,” Journal of Population Research, vol. 23, no. 2 (2006), pp.
165-182.
24
	 Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
25
	 Yamazaki Hiromi, “Japan Imports Brides from the Philippines: Can Isolated Farmers Buy
Consolation?” in The Migrant Women Worker’s Research and Action Committee, ed., NGOs’ Report
on the Situation of Foreign Migrant Women in Japan and Strategies for Improvement (Tokyo: mimeograph,
1995), pp. 33-35.
26
	 Chosun Ilbo, 16 December 1990.
27
	 Hye-Kyung Lee, “International Marriage and the State in South Korea: Focusing on
Governmental Policy,” Citizenship Studies, vol. 12, no. 1 (Feb. 2008), pp. 107-123.
19
Introduction
the Taiwanese government allowed Chinese wives to reunite with their new
families in Taiwan.
Government actions in sending countries also affect transnational
gendered migration.28
In the PRC, the Yanbian local government in Northeast
China has been encouraging Choso˘njok to find work in South Korea and
even maintains a service centre in Seoul to assist them in adjusting to their
lives in South Korea and transferring money back home.29
Similarly, the 2006
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Indonesia and Malaysia
promoted and regulated the migration of Indonesian female domestic
workers to Malaysia. The importation of domestic maids figures in the
Malaysian “modernity project” (releasing Malay women from the bonds of
patriarchy and freeing them from domestic work); the policy nurtures a
modern Malay family with little regard for the rights and conditions of these
foreign women.30
As a result, there has been a drop in undocumented and
rise in documented migration from Indonesia to Malaysia. According to
Johan Lindquist (in this volume), this trend highlights a process whereby
the mobility of migrants has become increasingly regulated, as government,
market and civil society actors are largely in agreement regarding the form
that emigration should take, namely regulated contracts in which return is
guaranteed. Lindquist observes that debt-bondage transnational labour has
become increasingly gendered as a result of market deregulation and
government regulation of emigration. He details how agencies and
moneylenders engage in gendered strategies. Moreover, while men usually
have to pay prior to departure—often borrowing at 100 percent interest—
women have to pay off their debt through salary deductions upon arrival.
His findings reinforce the notion that men and women employ different
strategies when migrating and that their migration has different consequences
for the community as a whole.31
In addition to further complicating ethnic composition and gender
balance, the recent demographic shift also raises concerns regarding class
issues in Asian countries. Female migrant workers, whether they are
entertainers in Japan or domestic workers in Malaysia, usually occupy the
lowest class among foreign workers. The migrants’ expectation that
international migration offers greater social mobility and empowerment
when they emigrate to wealthier and more democratic societies is not always
realized. In fact, their situation can also worsen as they encounter new
__________________
28
	 Nana Oishi, Women on the Move (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
29
	 Outi Luova, “Transnational Linkages and Development Initiatives in Ethnic Korean Yanbian,
Northeast China: ‘Sweet and Sour’ Capital Transfers,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 82, no. 3 (2009), pp. 427-
446.
30
	 Christine Chin, In Service and Servitude: Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian ‘Modernity
Project’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
31
	 Sarah J. Mahler and Patricia R. Pessar, “Gender Matters: Ethnographers bring gender from
the periphery toward the core of migration studies,” International Migration Review, vol. 40, no. 1 (2006),
pp. 27-63.
20
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
injustices in their host societies where they must live under confinement
with restrictive movement.32
Moreover, they often receive lower wages and
fewer benefits than their male counterparts who are working in factories or
plantations. In Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, the governments even
monitor them for untimely pregnancy.33
Moreover, many of the transnational
couples in South Korea and Japan end up in divorce after foreign brides
encountered harsh conditions of the farm life and social discipline of their
in-laws and community. Subsequently, they live in poverty and must find a
new source of income to support their children (and possibly their parents
in their homeland). In short, the political construction of transnational
gendered migration reinforces unequal conceptions of citizenship.
Contentions of Transnational Gendered Migration to Citizenship
As political boundaries and ethnic composition increasingly shift with ever
larger populations on the move, assumptions about how political communities
are defined must also change. Women are central instigators of this change,
because of their critical roles as care workers who sustain national families
and reproduce citizens and non-citizens alike. While reinforcing traditional
symbolic meaning of places and gendered mores, transnational gendered
migration also challenges the traditional notion that confine women to
domestic sphere as foreign female migrants actively engage in their own and
other people’s history. More importantly, it also challenges the notion of
“temporary migration,” which dominates the migration policy landscape in
much of Asia.
In the case of East and Southeast Asia, the transnational gendered
migration has created a fundamentally different structure to the racialized
and gendered social hierarchy of citizenship than the one that previously
existed. Social and class distinctions exist not only between native and foreign
women but also within different groups of foreign women from various
ethnicity/nationality.34
Sara Friedman clearly shows that foreign wives are
not all the same. Women from the PRC are preferred by Taiwanese men, yet
political elites, most of whom are men, impose greater legal restrictions on
them than other ethnic groups. She notes that the precarious legal situation
of marital immigrants from mainland China into Taiwan exemplifies how
the Taiwanese government’s attempts to regulate immigrants challenge
existing definitions and boundaries of national and ethnic identity. She
__________________
32
	 See Keiko Yamanaka and Nicola Piper, “Feminised Migration in Southeast and East Asia:
Policies, Actions and Empowerment,” UNRISD Occasional Paper, no. 11, (Geneva: UN Research Institute
for Social Development, 2006).
33
	 Brenda Yeoh and T. C. Chang, “Globalising Singapore: Debating transnational flows in the
city,” Urban Studies, 38, no.7 (2001): 1025-1044.
34
	 Alison Murray, “Debt Bondage and Trafficking: Don’t Believe the Hype,” in Reina Lewis and
Sara Mills, eds., Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003).
21
Introduction
details the long waiting period that Taiwanese officials deemed necessary for
a mainland Chinese spouse to familiarize herself with a constitutional
democracy and to integrate into Taiwanese society before she can sponsor
her relatives. As a result, Friedman argues that the government is creating
a two-tiered citizenship structure by discriminating against a select group of
naturalized female citizens on the basis of national origin. This has become
one point of contention around citizenship in Taiwan.
Family reunification claims are another arena where the gendered nature
of immigration and citizenship features prominently. Whether these claims
involve applications for an immigrant spouse, a minor child left behind in
one’s home country, elderly parents or others, they bring to light a host of
gendered assumptions about how family units and kinship dependence are
defined, how “effective” family ties are maintained over time and distance,
and what constitutes “good” parenting. Moreover, family unification also
raises questions about national integrity and population quality, inspiring
both explicit and veiled debates about the racial composition of the nation
and the productive contributions of immigrants defined as racial or ethnic
others.
Nationality claims for children born out of wedlock to cross-border couples
pose another area of contention in citizenship debates. In Japan, Nobue
Suzuki shows that the sexual liaisons between Filipina women and Japanese
men have resulted in the births of children whose political membership as
well as various other entitlements have become another point of immigrant
resistance and a national concern. According to Japanese nationality law, in
effect since 1985, if the parents are not married at the time of birth and the
father has not acknowledged paternity while the child was still in the womb,
the child will not acquire Japanese nationality. In South Korea, as Timothy
Lim notes in his essay in this volume, the increasing number of transnational
marriages and the so-called “Kosian” (Korean-Asian) children as well as with
the inflow of North Korean refugees into South Korea will force redefinition
or serious reassessment of what it means to be “Korean” and how viable
ethnic nationalism can endure in an increasingly multicultural South Korea.
It is eroding the myth of ethnic homogeneity while challenging the belief
that South Korea is only for Koreans.
Transnational gendered migration also poses a challenge to the
maintaining of differentiated citizenship and its accompanying preferential
treatment among the Choso˘njok in the PRC. Wang-bae Kim observes that
the exodus of Choso˘njok to urban centres in China and South Korea is
reorganizing the pre-existing social hierarchy. Surprisingly, circular migration
actually lowers the social status of this ethnic group. Speaking Chinese with
their regional accent in cosmopolitan cities of China, other Chinese view
them as country bumpkins. As a result, young Choso˘njok prefer to emphasize
their “Chinese-ness” and increasingly marry Han Chinese, which then allows
them to leave behind their ethnic minority status and its accompanying
22
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
marginalization. Meanwhile, their traditional regions, such as Yanbian, may
soon lose their autonomous status as the population of Choso˘njok rapidly
declines.
Politics of (Reconstructing) Citizenship
The dramatic increase in transnational gendered migration creates such
new challenges to citizenship and forces its reconceptualization. Such a
reconceptualization is necessary in order for state actors to reassert social
and political control as well as to prevent a decline in levels of trust and
loyalty between citizens.35
Meanwhile, prolonged marginalization or
exploitation of foreign migrants can lead to social and/or political unrest,
such as the 2002 riots involving hundreds of Indonesian textile workers near
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the 2005 riots involving hundreds of Thai
workers in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. During this process of reconstructing formal
and substantive citizenship, state actors together with societal actors may
redefine or reinforce state interests, thereby creating a new social contract
with their citizens. Figure 1 provides an illustration of how state and societal
actors mediate conflict or contradiction when it arises as a result of
transnational gendered migration and the different channels that
democracies, semi-democracies, and communist China use in reconstructing
formal and substantive citizenship.
This analytical framework follows a sociological perspective in international
relations that stresses the importance of world political culture and
ideationality (that is, international patterns of amity/enmity).36
It emphasizes
the effects that the external cultural environment may have on state identities
and national security interests and policies. This is demonstrated most clearly,
for instance, with the transformation of Japan’s national identity from a
multi-ethnic nation prior to World War II to one of a uni-ethnic nation after
the war due to the negative images of the multiethnic state that was associated
with aggression and expansion. After Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895 and
annexed Korea in 1910, colonialism generated a massive influx of colonial
labour and created ethnic diversity within Japan, transforming the country
into a multi-ethnic society. Japan’s colonial leaders began to embrace a theory
that the Japanese people were a mixture of a continental people, Malay, and
indigenous Ainu. This “mixed nation theory” conveniently served to justify
Japan’s further expansion into Asia. After having lost Korea and Taiwan in
which the size of the non-Japanese population had plummeted, postwar
__________________
35
	 On trust and loyalty between citizens, see David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
36
	 See inter alia Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity,
and Culture in National Security,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms
and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
23
Introduction
intellectuals and political elites argued for a peace-loving “homogeneous”
state to replace the prewar military multi-ethnic empire, which they began
to view negatively.37
The recent influx of foreigners is, once again, forcing a
reframing of state identity for Japan as a multi-cultural but peaceful society.
As Hedley Bull demonstrates, the adherence to norms is a condition of
participation in a society or the international system.38
Sidney Tarrow has
provided a mechanism he called “internalization” to explain how international
pressures/norms can migrate into domestic politics.39
The elimination of
gender discrimination in the jus sanguinis of the nationality laws in Japan
(1985), South Korea (1997) and Taiwan (2000) reflect this new positive
image of a multicultural society as these East Asian democracies aspired to
join other Western advanced industrialized countries by following the
international norms. Similarly, the influx of refugees from North Korea has
had a significant effect on China’s national identity. The PRC does not
welcome their arrival, as it does not want to damage its relations with its
communist brother or trigger the collapse of its friendly neighbour, North
Figure 1
Transnational Gendered Migration and the Politics of Citizenship
Courts
in homogeneous
countries
Sending State
in heterogeneous
countries
Conflict or
Contradiction
Note: Block arrows signify assertive pressure while straight arrows signify
less assertive/spontaneous pressure.
__________________
37
	 Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of “Japanese” Self-images (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002).
38
	 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977).
39
	 Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
24
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
Korea.40
At the same time, the PRC government wants to be certain that the
increased interaction between North Koreans and Choso˘njok will not lead
to an ethnic nationalism and separatist movements.41
More importantly, J. Ann Tickner reminds us that gender matters even in
national security.42
She advocates for a more inclusive version of global
security that eliminates unjust social relations, including unequal gender
relations.43
In her study of military camp prostitution of Korean women,
Katharine Moon eloquently shows how interracial sexual relations de facto
buttress United States–South Korean security relations.44
She demonstrates
how state security can be built on the insecurity of the weak and exploited,
as the South Korean officials tried to instill the idea in these women that
what they were doing was a patriotic act.
The empirical essays in this volume add to the literature on citizenship
and gender in international relations a mechanism to explain policy changes
that emerged from the social struggle of civil societal actors through the
courts and/or foreigners’ home government. In various ways, most of the
essays feature the roles of state actors, civil society actors, the courts (in East Asia)
and the sending country’s state (in Southeast Asia and the PRC). Absent in their
analysis is the role of political parties (although the CCP may be synonymous
with the Chinese state) and international non-governmental organizations
(INGOs). The former is expected in Asia with strong states but the latter is
surprising, given the amount of attention that has been given by international
relations scholars to the role of transnational networks and NGOs in
promoting policy changes.45
Role of State Actors
On matters concerning nationality, state actors play a central role as they
ultimately determine the criteria for citizenship. In setting such criteria, they
are concerned with domestic and international security (that is, any political
or military threat to their effective rule). For those who they want to
standardize, they formally define the populations subject to the rule of their
political community in such a way of creating some unity among them. They
monitor certain activities of residents while extracting resources from them
__________________
40
	 Margesson, Chanlett-Avery and Bruno, “North Korean Refugees in China and Human Rights
Issues.”
41
	 Summer J. LaCroix, Michael Plummer and Keun Lee, eds., Emerging Patterns of East Asian
Investment in China: From Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).
42
	 J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
43
	 Tickner, Gender in International Relations, p. 128.
44
	 Katharine Moon, Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in US–Korean Relations (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997).
45
	 See inter alia Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
25
Introduction
for the common good. They aim to cultivate loyalty among members to the
state or primary allegiance over any other political entity/sovereignty. Given
their interests in internal social order and external security, the existence of
ethnic minorities and/or the influx of international migration pose
challenges to the state’s efforts to standardize its population. Friedman’s
essay in this volume illustrates clearly how foreign wives from the PRC can
impact the security environment, because the marginalization of these
populations might lead to social and political unrest and an increased
economic burden. In Taiwan, she argues, government officials view marital
immigrants from the PRC as a potential threat to national integrity and
sovereignty, although their unions are considered as mono-racial sexual
relations. This is because they fear a demographic and ideological invasion
from the PRC. Taiwanese officials see potential security risks from mainland
Chinese women, yet they accept their necessity. Therefore, officials impose
more onerous requirements for residency and citizenship on mainland
Chinese than any other ethnic category of foreign spouse.
Northeast Asian government officials’ desire for social order and national
security come in conflict with their economic concerns during the period
of demographic shift involving an aging society, urbanization of unmarried
women and increasing demand for cheap labourers. This shift affects
economic productivity and tax revenue amidst labour shortages and rising
welfare spending. It also affects the social fabric of homogeneous societies
where men in rural areas increasingly find themselves without local partners.
In homogeneous, developed Asian democracies like Japan, South Korea and
Taiwan, government officials have decided to bring foreign workers,
entertainers and wives into their countries but within a restrictive immigration
framework and without adequate welfare provisions. In heterogeneous,
developing Asian countries such as the PRC (and Malaysia), government
officials responded to recent demographic shifts with some forms of statesponsored
nationalism as a way to consolidate national unity under increasing
ethnic diversity.
In order to preserve their national identity, government officials prefer
to have these foreigners looking like them. Hence, Japanese officials have a
preference for Nikkeijin (foreigners of Japanese descendants), Korean officials
for Choso˘njok, and Malay officials for Indonesians. Officials provide these
foreigners with preferential treatment, allowing them to live and work in the
country for a limited number of years. They passed immigration laws
guaranteeing preferential treatment such as the 1990 Revision of the
Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in Japan, the 1992
normalization of relations between South Korea and the PRC, and the 2006
MOU between Malaysia and Indonesia.
However, these countries differ in their strategies for integration of these
ethnic groups into their societies. For instance, Japanese officials currently
limit their integration policy only to Nikkeijin. In South Korea, the Ministry
26
Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
of Gender Equality devised a “grand plan” in 2006 for the promotion of
social integration of foreign wives, most of whom are Choso˘njok, and an
attainment of a multicultural society. Meanwhile, Taiwanese officials have
imposed greater restrictions on mainland Chinese spouses and have
constructed policies that limit their full integration into Taiwanese society
while, at the same time, providing similar social welfare resources to Chinese
and other foreign spouses. In Malaysia, not only is there an absence of any
integration policy for foreigners, the Malaysian government prohibits foreign
workers from marrying and has considered a new legislation that would
restrict migrants to their workplace or living quarters.46
In the PRC, Wang-bae Kim finds that the circular migration of Choso˘njok
to and from major Chinese and South Korean cities has reinforced Han/
capitalist values; this in turn has accelerated the assimilation of younger
choso˘njok into mainstream Chinese society, and the concomitant dilution of
choso˘njok ethnic identity as well as a generational division within the
Choso˘njok community. Ironically, the dilution of Choso˘njok identity and
the weakening of “differentiated citizenship” appear to be a result of their
international and internal migration rather than the state’s efforts to unite
or integrate ethnic minority migrants with mainstream Chinese society. In
effect, such migration is helping the Chinese state to solidify its national
unity and to maintain its social order.
Role of Civil Society Actors
This volume also highlights the role of civil society actors in challenging the
political rhetoric of homogeneity and/or territorial bounded identity, in
influencing (im)migration/nationality policies, and in creating/advancing
new norms on international migration governance. In considering
transnational gendered migration, a clear contrast exists on the types of
issues that civil societal actors engage. Activism for transnational migrants is
gendered.47
For male workers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
typically engage in issues concerning workers’ rights and human rights. Issues
concerning citizenship mostly involve foreign women. This is simply because
foreign women play critical roles as care workers who sustain national families
and reproduce citizens and non-citizens alike. State actors wish to maintain
certain level of normalization of this reproduction by placing restriction on
the types of foreign mothers. Societal actors find this practice unfair and
discriminatory and fight to change the existing citizenship laws.
__________________
46
	 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/02/20/indonesia-malaysia-overhaul-labor-agreementdomestic-workers,
last accessed 7 August 2009.
47
	 Glenda S. Roberts, “NGO support for migrant labor in Japan,” in Mike Douglass and Glenda
S. Roberts, eds., Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003); Piper and Roces, eds. Wife or Worker?
27
Introduction
In Japan, Nobue Suzuki illustrates that the transnational grassroots
movements, which have supported the children born out of wedlock and
without Japanese citizenship, have drawn on global discourses and various
United Nations conventions to allow their Filipina clients to exert their agency.
By doing so, civil society actors help to redefine Japan’s criteria for citizenship.
In South Korea, a strong social movement by migrant supporting NGOs and
foreign wives associations contributed to the change of the country’s
Nationality Law in 2006.48
Timothy Lim further observes that a change in the
conception of Korean identity and belongingness after transnational
migration has been due to a critical nexus between foreign migrant workers
and Korean civil society organizations. This nexus has not only created the
basis for concrete legal and institutional changes, but also more pervasive
and, perhaps more importantly, discursive changes. In Taiwan, Sara Friedman
notes that immigrant rights NGOs have been active in providing services for
Chinese spouses as well as pressuring the government to revise laws and
policies regulating Chinese spouses in their efforts to eliminate a two-tiered
citizenship structure. In December 2008, their efforts partially succeeded as
the government decided to revise its quota table for residency and citizenship
of Mainland Chinese. By August 2009, the Act Governing Relations between
Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area was amended, giving
mainland Chinese spouses more rights.49
They will be eligible to apply for
citizenship after six (rather than eight) years of residence in Taiwan.
Role of the Courts in East Asia and Sending Governments in Southeast Asia
Societal actors in homogeneous and developed democracies of East Asia
typically operate through the courts in order to promote changes in laws
pertaining to nationality or citizenship. After their victories in the courts,
the national government then typically revises the law to comply with the
court’s decision. For example, the Citizens’ Network for Japanese-Filipino
Children (CNJFC) won its case for the ten children born out of wedlock to
Filipino mothers, when Japan’s Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that denying
nationality to children born out of wedlock to foreign mothers was
unconstitutional. Soon after, the Justice Ministry revised Japan’s Nationality
Law by lifting the marriage requirement. Similarly in South Korea, the courts
have been important in improving the rights of both male and female foreign
workers, which prompted the national government to pass the 2007 Act on
the Treatment of Foreigners in Korea.50
By contrast, court cases brought by
__________________
48
	 Hye-Kyung Lee, “Gender, Migration, and Civil Activism in South Korea,” Asian and Pacific
Migration Journal, vol. 12, no. 1-2 (2003), pp. 127-153.
49
	 Taiwan Today, 26 June 2009.
50
	 Timothy C. Lim, “NGOs, Transnational Migrants, and the Promotion of Rights in South Korea,”
in Takeyuki Tsuda, ed., Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective
(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006), pp. 235-272.
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Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 1 – Spring 2010
Chinese spouses in Taiwan have generally been unsuccessful and have not
led to the revision of unequal laws and policies, whereas NGO-sponsored
public protests have put greater pressure on the government.
In heterogeneous and less developed democracy of Malaysia, by contrast,
changes came about after numerous allegations of physical abuse of
Indonesian domestic workers were reported by local NGOs in the news media
and gained the attention of the Indonesian government. After a highly
publicized case involving an Indonesian maid who had been beaten and
scalded with hot water, the Indonesian government decided on June 2009
to suspend the official process for sending its domestic workers to Malaysia.51
This action reinforces the view that women embody national pride and
dignity.52
Soon after, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia announced
stern action against anyone abusing Indonesian maids and urged employers
to show greater interest in their welfare.53
Conclusion and Country Case Studies
Based on extensive ethnographic field research, this special issue focuses on
various forms of transnational gendered migration, including international
marriages and the migration of unskilled female workers and the implication
for ethnic identity and gender roles. It illustrates how the arrival of foreigners
can challenge collective self-consciousness and conceptions of citizenship,
which presupposes the existence of a territorial bounded political community.
This complex process of social transformation in the selected Asian countries
and the human consequences of transnational gendered migration spark
public debate over citizenship/nationality and political concern over
integration and distributive justice of foreign migrants. Civil society actors
play an important role in this public discussion and changing nationality
laws to accommodate the newly arrived foreigners. They have done it through
the courts and public protests in East Asia and through pressure from the
government of origin in Malaysia. In essence, the experiences in Asia and
elsewhere demonstrate that citizenship is neither fixed nor unchanging. A
sense of belonging and common identity is constantly being redefined over
time, especially during the present age of transnational gendered
migration.
The essays in this volume are organized as country case studies, sequenced
descending from countries in the northern to southern hemisphere with
increasingly more ethnic heterogeneity; hence, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
__________________
51
	 The Nation, 26 June 2009, available online at http//www.nationalmultimedia.com/search/
read/php?newsid=301061308, last accessed onn 14 January 2010.
52
	 On this point, see Oishi, Women on the Move.
53
	 The Straits Times, 27 June 2009, http//www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2NewsSE%2BAsia/
Story/STIStory_396144.html, last accessed on 14 January 2010.
29
Introduction
the People’s Republic of China and Indonesia/Malaysia. Such form of
organization allows for a convenient grouping of countries that not only
highlights variation within and between regions but also provides a systematic
analysis of emerging patterns on conceptions of citizenship, transnational
gendered migration, government policies/actions, societal responses,
channels of mediation and policy changes.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, December 2009