AAS-in-Asia, Seoul

Beyond Citizenship for Undocumented Migrant and Non-Nationality Children : A Focus on a Movement for a Universal Birth Registration system in South Korea

• In Event: Tethered Subjectivities and Human Trafficking in These Migratory Times

Abstract

In the era of globalization the number of migrant labor and marriage migrant women has been on the increase in South Korea resulting in many new arguments about citizenship. These arguments relate to redefining the concepts of citizenship that have dominated thinking about South Korean society in the past century, in particular notions of ethnic-national citizenship and homogeneity that exclude migrant people. Some keywords that my paper will addresses are post-national, post-ethnical and post-jus sanguinis citizenship.
Substantially this discourse impacts to South Korean society’s ability to overcome the limitations regarding the status of migrants, however, its application pertains to rights for legal or “illegal” migrant adults. These discourses remained to resolve problems experienced by undocumented and un-nationality children in areas of health, education, job training and marriage. This tends to be the case not only for migrant children, including children of migrant labors or refugees and marriage migrants, but also extends to children born in South Korea whose parents are citizens (to include when one parent’s country of origin is not Korea and has been naturalized, or one parent is a Korean citizen). Currently 13 NGO groups in South Korea are engaged in a campaign to change the social welfare system and social rights for these children. Specifically, I will talk about a movement for ‘Universal Birth Registration Law’ without relation to visa status and nationality. This movement aims to extend and overcomes limitation in the current model of citizenship based on nationality and premised on rights of adults.

Author

• Hyesil Jung, Hanyang University