Citizenship, Immigration, and Late Development in East Asian Democracies

• In Event: Migration and Citizenship in Contemporary East Asia: Policies, Practices, and Struggles

Abstract

What factors determine the assimilability of a particular group at a given historical moment? Building on Alexander Gerschenkron’s theory of late development, this paper explores how the timing and context of political economic development among “late developers” shaped the evolution of their citizenship regimes and, later, their immigration policies. Among late developers, the linkage between the citizen and institutionalized rights was not as clear as T.H. Marshall describes in regards to British political development. Late developers needed citizens who would not only serve as a key part of the developmental mission in the work force but who would give up, rather than claim, the rights of liberal democratic citizenship for the nation. Rather than a type of universal citizenship that mobilized the citizenry around principles of democracy and equality, late developers relied on a more particularistic vision of citizenship that brought the citizenry closer to the developmental mission of “us” versus “them” in the process of catching up. Based on in-depth interviews, government publications, and media reports from 1990 to 2010, this paper analyzes how state and non-state actors in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan apply the discourse and symbols of national identity to exclude specific categories of immigrants as permanent foreigners while incorporating others as potential citizens.

Author

• Erin Aeran Chung, Johns Hopkins University