Does Embeddedness Equal Integration? The Phenomenon of Vietnamese Bride Migration in South Korea

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. RGC, Immigration, and Relationships

Abstract

Between 2004 and 2009, over 40,000 South Korean men married Vietnamese women. The vast majority of these women were brought to South Korea specifically for the purpose of marriage -- part of the growing phenomenon of foreign bride migration in the economically developed countries of East Asia, where women from poorer, primarily Southeast Asian countries are matched, legally or illegally, with men from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Foreign bride migration poses an interesting challenge for theories of immigrant integration. They are embedded in host country society in ways that no other immigrant group can hope to be: indeed, the rationale for foreign bride migration is the literal reproduction of the host society. Yet that embeddedness can also isolate them from the ethnic networks, the legal structures, and the transnational ties that research has shown to be essential in immigrant integration. Based on in-depth fieldwork in South Korea and Vietnam, our paper argues that the embeddedness of Vietnamese brides in South Korean families actually functions as a type of isolation that impedes genuine integration, both into South Korean society and into the Vietnamese immigrant community in South Korea. In particular, the commodification of a traditional gender and family dynamic, overlaid with ethnic stereotypes; the wider Korean community's understanding of foreign brides; Vietnamese and Korean laws on marriage, domestic violence, and citizenship; and multi-cultural support programs for foreign brides and their families all function to keep Vietnamese brides as perennial sojourners in South Korea.

Authors

• Ann Chih Lin, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Cynthia Bohm-Eh Yoon, Oxford University