Claims from the Bottom: Dual Citizenship Claims of Marriage Immigrants in South Korea

• In Event: 1552 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 3: Family and Marriage in Korea

Abstract

Two decades of marriage migration has changed not only demographic reality of East Asian countries, but also brought significant shift in the concept of citizenship. While Asian countries tend to uphold traditions of following the bloodline (jus sanguinis) in distributing citizenship, marriage migration has pushed the limits toward more lenient provisions. With the increasing number of marriage immigrants acquiring their second citizenship and children born from parents with nonidentical citizenships, countries in East Asia are also witnessing increasing presence of citizens with dual citizenship. Although studies on dual citizenship have taken state-centered ‘top-down’ approaches and associated dual citizenship with privileged socioeconomic status within the context of Western immigrant countries, this study takes ‘bottom-up’ approach to examine dual citizenship claims and practices based on in-depth interviews with marriage immigrant women from the Philippines and Vietnam in South Korea.

Author

• Ilju Kim, Waseda University