Exclusionary Labor and Partially Inclusionary Marriage Immigration Incorporation

The Cases of Japan and Korea

Globalization has brought about significant human mobility, along with developments in IT and transportation since the early 1990s, the case of East Asia is no exception. While a huge number of workers in developing countries have been migrating to work abroad, a growing number of women have been migrating, specifically seeking to marry men in East Asia. This paper aims to elucidate which migration theories illustrate labor and/or marriage migration and incorporation in East Asia, particularly in the cases of Japan and Korea, while also examining their overall migration and incorporation patterns. In turn it investigates which factors significantly and differentially affect each type of migration at multiple levels: the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. Labor migrants are usually excluded from incorporation in their host countries, especially even the case of ethnic Korean from the former Soviet Union countries, Koryŏins, as labor migrants have been excluded in such integration with the reality of the forgotten and disconnected history. On the other hand, marriage migrants have been occasionally included in such integration. Although there has been a significant transition in the migration system theory of labor migration, there is still room to develop the better and more supportive systems. At present taking into consideration the multi-level structures, the migration network theory seems better in explaining marriage migration into the host countries of East Asia. Overall, the differentiated migratory incorporation theory which I suggest could best account for the cases in Japan and Korea when we consider international migration and the extent of social integration. So as to systematically manage labor migration problems and address the problems of commercialized matchmaking business, it requires sharing ideas with grassroots organizations and making concerted efforts to implement anti-discrimination laws and develop policies between the local governments in Japan and Korea. At the same time, education and media can be utilized strategically to enhance the attitudes toward international migrants.