From Mono to Dual Nationality: Reshaping the Legal Boundaries of Citizenship in Korea and Japan

• In Event: 510 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. The Politics of Immigration and Citizenship

Abstract

Many scholars have noted that citizenship policies converge toward similar forms in liberal democratic states. However, discussions on citizenship often do not explicate the exact scope and mechanisms of such convergence in legal citizenship policies. In this study, I use dual citizenship as an analytical lens to compare the divergent paths that two countries, Korea and Japan, have taken to realign their monoethnic nationality with the rapidly changing demographics of the state. By expanding the scope of analysis to non-Western countries, I attempt to test out whether convergence toward an international mean occurs in citizenship policies, specifically for dual nationality. Dual citizenship propels us to look at both sides of the migration process, out-migration and in-migration, a distinction often overlooked in the previous literature. Through archival research and interviews with government officials and immigration experts, I find that the preexisting theories of globalists and liberal-democratic accounts fail to provide adequate explanations on the sudden launch of a partial dual citizenship system in Korea in 2010 and the lack of political interest on dual nationality in Japan. I argue that it is crucial to focus on the role of emigrants as well as immigrants in restructuring the legal boundaries of citizenship. I call for a closer look at the state’s relationship with overseas diasporic communities, the state’s self-perceived national boundaries, the presence of interested political elites and the capacity of bureaucrats as key factors in inducing legal reforms in the citizenship laws.

Author

• Naeyun Lee, University of Chicago