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The Politics of Immigration Policy in East Asia

Sun, September 1, 10:00 to 11:30am, Marriott, Washington 6

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

For the past few decades, immigration has been one of the most controversial political issues around the world. East Asia is not an exception. East Asian developed countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, have suffered a rapid population decline and demographic aging, which leads to a severe labor shortage and “local extinctions” in rural areas. To cope with the political, economic, and social challenges coming from these demographic changes, countries in the region have developed more open immigration policies both at the national and local levels. However, immigration policies, like other policies, involve many trade-offs. On the one hand, governments expect that immigration will play an important role in boosting their economies, not just by placing more labor in factories, but by creating new layers of consumers. On the other hand, however, governments also concern about immense political and social challenges coming from the influx of hundreds of millions of immigrants, such as a high level of anti-immigrant sentiment and high costs of assimilation, social stability, and social welfare provision.

Despite its importance and impacts, and in contrast to a long-standing interest in the politics of migration in the West, relatively less attention has been paid to East Asia in the study of immigration policy-making. However, there are still many substantive questions left unanswered, e.g. How do East Asian countries deal with trade-offs they face over immigration and immigrants? What kind of policies do they make dealing with different types of migrants, e.g. care workers, marriage immigrants, diaspora communities, asylum seekers, and labor immigrants? How do they prevent and reduce social instability and uncertainty coming from having immigrants to their societies? How do they placate domestic workers and constituents’ discontents and hostility toward immigrants? This panel is designed to answer some of these important questions by exploring how governments manage migration at the national and local levels in East Asia.

More specifically, the four papers in this panel, focusing on China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan respectively, offer interesting theories and empirical observations on the causes and consequences of migration policies in East Asia. In particular, Yichun Chien’s study explores how the Taiwanese local political contexts—including civil society and political parties—have shaped migrant care worker policies in Taiwan. YeonKyung Jeong’s paper examines the dynamics of central policy coercion and local strategic defection in immigrant policy-making in South Korea. Michael Sharpe elucidates why the Japanese government continues to engage the Japanese diaspora. Yujeong Yang explains the recent changes in Chinese immigration policy focusing on the Chinese government’s attempt to balance the deepening labor market inequality between the Chinese inland provinces and coastal provinces.

From a comparative perspective, we expect that the studies in this panel will give us great opportunities both to understand implications of immigration policy-making in the context of East Asia as a whole and to compare with and learn from each others. Furthermore, from a more comprehensive perspective, we believe that the four papers in the panel will broaden our understanding of how ethnically, politically, and socially homogeneous countries cope with demographic, cultural, and political challenges in the new era of mobility.

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