Skip to main content

The Causes of Diasporic Return: A Comparative Perspective

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Diasporic Returns to the Ethnic Homeland

Abstract

This chapter begins with a historical and contemporary overview of the Korean diaspora with a focus on diasporic and ethnic return migration and compares it to other Asian diasporas covered in this book. The chapter then analyzes the various causes of return and ethnic return migration in these Asian diasporas, which are driven more by instrumental and practical motives rather than primordial ethnic attachments and affinities to the homeland. The role of homeland governments’ diasporic engagement policies is also examined, which reach out to diasporic populations as an asset and resource and encourages them to return home. These policies are based on instrumental concerns related to the role that diasporas can play in national economic development, but also on a strong sense of ethnocultural affinity between homeland governments and their diasporic peoples.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brubaker, Rogers. 2005. The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (1): 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Kim. 2001. Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10 (2): 189–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Yuk Wah, and Thi Le Thu Tran. 2011. Recycling Migration and Changing Nationalisms: The Vietnamese Return Diaspora and Reconstruction of Vietnamese Nationhood. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (7): 1101–1117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 302–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Consular Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam. n.d. Review of Vietnamese Migration Abroad. Hanoi: Consular Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conway, Dennis, and Robert Potter. 2009a. Return of the Next Generations: Transnational Migration and Development in the 21st Century. In Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility, ed. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, 1–16. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009b. Return of the Next Generations: Transnational Mobilities, Family Demographics and Experiences, Multi-local Spaces. In Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility, ed. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, 223–242. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowan, Sylvia. 2013. Cambodians Go ‘Home’: Forced Returns and Redisplacement Thirty Years After the American War in Indochina. In Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, ed. Biao Xiang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, and Mika Toyota, 100–121. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joppke, Christian. 2005. Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • King, Russell. 2017. Exploring the Multiple Complexities of the Return Migration—Psychosocial Wellbeing Nexus. In Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Discourses, Policy-Making and Outcomes for Migrants and Their Families, ed. Zana Vathi and Russell King, 257–273. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Helen. 2009. The Ambivalence of Return: Second-Generation Tongan Returnees. In Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility, ed. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, 41–58. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Sangmi. 2016. Between the Diaspora and the Nation-State: Transnational Continuity and Fragmentation Among Hmong in Laos and the United States. PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ley, David, and Audrey Kobayashi. 2009. Back to Hong Kong: Return Migration or Transnational Sojourn? In Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility, ed. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, 119–138. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macpherson, Cluny, and La’avasa Macpherson. 2009. ‘It Was Not Quite What I Had Expected’: Some Samoan Returnees’ Experiences in Samoa. In Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility, ed. Dennis Conway and Robert Potter, 10–39. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Douglas S., Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. 1993. Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal. Population and Development Review 19 (3): 431–466.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oxfeld, Ellen, and Lynellyn Long. 2004. Introduction: An Ethnography of Return. In Coming Home? Refugees, Migrants, and Those Who Stayed Behind, ed. Lynellyn Long and Ellen Oxfeld, 1–15. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Patterson, Wayne. 1988. The Korean Frontier in America: Immigrants to Hawaii, 1896–1910. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roth, Joshua. 2002. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Safran, William. 1991. Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1 (1): 83–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seol, Dong-Hoon, and John Skrentny. 2009. Ethnic Return Migration and Hierarchical Nationhood: Korean Chinese Foreign Workers in South Korea. Ethnicities 9 (2): 147–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Robert C. 2006. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Song, Changzoo. 2009. Brothers Only in Name: The Alienation and Identity Transformation of Korean Chinese Return Migrants in South Korea. In Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective, ed. Takeyuki Tsuda, 281–304. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2003. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009a. Global Inequities and Diasporic Return: Japanese American and Brazilian Encounters with the Ethnic Homeland. In Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective, ed. Takeyuki Tsuda, 227–259. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009b. Why Does the Diaspora Return Home? The Causes of Ethnic Return Migration. In Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective, ed. Takeyuki Tsuda, 21–43. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. Japanese American Ethnicity: In Search of Heritage and Homeland Across Generations. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Upadhya, Carol. 2013. Return of the Global Indian: Software Professionals and the Worlding of Bangalore. In Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, ed. Biao Xiang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, and Mika Toyota, 141–161. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vathi, Zana. 2017. Introduction: The Interface Between Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing. In Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Discourses, Policy-Making and Outcomes for Migrants and Their Families, ed. Zana Vathi and Russell King, 1–18. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Xiang, Biao. 2013a. Return and the Reordering of Transnational Mobility in Asia. In Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, ed. Biao Xiang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, and Mika Toyota, 1–20. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ________. 2013b. Transnational Encapsulation: Compulsory Return as Labor Migration Control in East Asia. In Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, ed. Biao Xiang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, and Mika Toyota, 83–99. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamashiro, Jane. 2017. Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland. Newark: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zilberg, Elana. 2011. Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis Between Los Angeles and San Salvador. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Tsuda, T., Song, C. (2019). The Causes of Diasporic Return: A Comparative Perspective. In: Tsuda, T., Song, C. (eds) Diasporic Returns to the Ethnic Homeland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90763-5_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics