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Citizenship and Migration in South Korea. In the Forefront of Democracies?

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Abstract

As other Asian democracies, Korea has been characterized by many migration experts as a state with an ethno-nationalist understanding of citizenship and restrictive migration policies. In this paper we illustrate how far democratization has pushed migration and citizenship policy. We devote special attention to a 2005 reform that enfranchised all foreign residents, which places Korea in the vanguard of a best practice of political integration across democracies. In this chapter Pedroza and Mosler show that such process empowered civil society actors and migrant organizations through a framing of universal “human rights” and democratization, instead of a restrictive frame based on reciprocity which was the original one and had been preferred by political elites.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

    Luicy Pedroza

  2. Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany

    Hannes B. Mosler

Authors
  1. Luicy Pedroza
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  2. Hannes B. Mosler
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Correspondence to Luicy Pedroza .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Youngmi Kim

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Pedroza, L., Mosler, H.B. (2018). Citizenship and Migration in South Korea. In the Forefront of Democracies?. In: Kim, Y. (eds) Korea’s Quest for Economic Democratization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57066-2_9

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