• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.676-694
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• 2012

This paper investigates the regional distribution of female transnational marriage migrants by nationalities in South Korea. In addition, this research explores the regional distribution by nationalities, migration processes, and socioeconomic characteristics of female transnational marriage migrants in Chungcheongbuk-do in South Korea. Regarding the regional distribution of female transnational marriage migrants in South Korea, using location quotient, this study seeks to categorizes cities and counties in South Korea into five groups. Furthermore, using Thomas method, this paper tries to stereotype cities and counties in Chungcheongbuk-do into six groups, in order to identify significant nationalities in each group. The concept of transnationalism refers to the recent phenomenon that transnational social networks are prominent, linking societies at the global scale, as international migration has been rapidly increasing due to the globalization. Transnationalism provides insight into the in-depth understanding of socio-spatial structure of international migrants, transnational social networks, transnational identities, cultural hybridization, and so on.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.393-408
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• 2009

The drastic growth of transnational marriage since the mid-1990s has been a new challenge to Korea. This article aims to provide a comprehension of new ethnicity by focusing on transnational marriage migration in Korea. A steep increase of foreign brides from China and Southeast countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines can be understood in terms of globalization from below. In this context, Korean trend is similar to Taiwan and Japanese ones. But, there are also some differences between them. The inflow of foreign brides has been gradually weakened since 2005 in Korea, as Taiwan has experienced since 2003. In the ratio of foreign brides among total marriage in Korea, rural area show in average two-fold higher than urban areas. However, most foreign brides have settled down in urban areas in aspect of absolute number. Korean Chinese wives most densely concentrate in urban area, followed by Chinese wives, Nevertheless, there are significant differences among foreign brides' residential areas with their nationalities. In this point, the geography of new ethnicity with foreign brides in Korea is likely to be a multi-dimensional space.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.616-634
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• 2009

Criticizing the existing social science approaches to transnational migration for their ignorance of spatial perspectives and the resultant limits in the understanding of the concrete processes of international migration and settlement, this paper aims to examine how spatial perspectives and geographical epistemology can positively contribute to the understanding and conceptualization of transnational migration. In particular, it emphasizes that the processes of transnational migration cannot be solely understood in terms of 1) global capitalist restructuring and economic rationality, 2) the impacts of deterritoralized transnational networks, or 3) the operation of immigration regimes constructed at the national scale. Alternatively, this paper argues that the conceptualization of 'transnational space', which is based on the understanding of the socio-spatial dimensions - that is, place, territory, scale and networks - that affect the processes of transnational migration, could significantly contribute to the understanding of the transnational migration.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.494-513
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• 2013

In this study, a transnational social space which emerges in a rural village of the northern Vietnam called 'Korean Village' is analyzed. The immigrant women of whom the spouses are Korean were forming transnational network with family members through which frequent and active communications took place. At the same time materialistic exchanges were occurring by means of remittance. Like most rural areas where up-to-date life patterns co-exist with outdated ones, the studied region was turning into a transnational social space under the influence of indigenous locallity, culture and other economic factors. Women were found to play a virtual role as resonator in practicing the transnational activity of migration. With the migration routes getting more and more solidified, the evolution of the transnational social space and the role of resonator, the form of transnational migration which makes involved young women look like a sacrifice is ceaselessly expanding around a specific region. This is noticeable because a rural village seemingly far away from internationalization is not only becoming the transnational social space but also a stage of its evolution.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.13-36
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• 2012

This paper is to reconsider comprehensively and systematically major issues on transnational immigrants, increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s, and their impacts on socio-spatial changes in S. Korea. Foreign immigrants who have moved on the contexts of unevenness of globalization and advancces in transport & telecommunication technology on the global level and of economic development and shortage of cheap and unskilled workers have been distributed unevenly, concentrating on the Capital region and local areas with industrial complexes. Foreign workers seems to have some negative influences on regional economies in the long-term, though positive in the short-term. Domestic people seem to have an ambivalent attitude which accepts necessity of multi-culture, while simultaneously continues to be self-confident on ethnic homogeneity. The Korean government has launched multicultural policies for foreign immigrants by the mid-2000, but still continues some policies with assimilationism and differential exclusionism, marginalizing them socio-spatially, while lacking local government's policy and programmes. In conclusion, in order to resolve these problems and to transfer multicultural societal space of Korea, a geography of transnational migration which promotes especially discourse and policy with authentic multiculturalism, extending roles of local government, and ensuring glocal citizenships.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.894-913
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• 2008

This study examines scale issues in the contemporary feminist migration literature. Scale appears as important, yet poorly understood concept in this field of study. The increasing attention to the feminization of migration requires not only gendered, but also scalar-sensitive approaches. Feminists criticize the conventional approach to the migration as a gender-blind approach that privileges national scale around which migration processes are organized. Claiming multiscalar and interscalar analyses, they propose investigations ranging from macro to micro processes which include globalized gendered division of labor, transnational family networks, and reproduction which takes place in and through the bodies and homes of migrant women. The migrant women, the major actors in recent transnational migration, cross various borders: the national boundaries and the public and private divides, in particular. This crossover can unsettle patriarchal gender relations which have been established based on the physical and symbolic division of nation-states and public/private spheres. Blurring these divisions accompanies social construction of various scales. The transnational family networks of migrant women, for example, show the construction of a transnational scale by migrant women as well as globalization from below. This paper points out misunderstandings of scale in the feminist migration literature and attempts to fill the gaps by introducing the meanings and implications of scales developed mostly by feminist geographers. In so doing, it promotes the interdisciplinary communication.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.295-318
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• 2009

This paper explores micro-contexts of transnational migration and decision-making process of foreign migrants in Korea with four types, that is, married immigrants, immigrant workers, professional immigrants, and foreign students, analyzing dates of questionaries and interviews. Some findings can be summarized as follows. First, married immigrants and immigrant workers show relative lower level of micro-environments than professional immigrants and foreign students. Secondly, immigrants workers fill closest in geographical contiguity among immigrants' types, while married immigrants recognize more different in cultural comparison than the former. Both immigrants workers and foreign students think living environments of Korea better than other types, but immigrants workers consider relatively higher the level of technology, while foreign students evaluate lower that of education in Korea than other types. Thirdly, married immigrants give a relatively low score to the easiness of immigration, while both immigrant workers and professional immigrants give a high score to the job environment of Korea. Finally, all types of immigrants show a high portion in a self-decision making for international migration, while professional immigrants have much more experiences on visiting other countries than other types, and both married immigrants and foreign students seem to have utilized their networks with family members who live abroad.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.64-88
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• 2010

Rapidly increasing transnational migration can be seen as a typical process which has proceeded under macro-contexts of socio-spatial characters of origin and destination country and their relationships, shaped with global uneven regional development in the process of glocalization and development of transportation and communication on the global level. In order to consider macro-contexts of transnational migration, this paper emphasizes the concept of multicultural space and some key elements implied in it, that is, place, territory, network, scale (suggested by Jessop et al.) and spatial flow and difference. As results of questionnaire analysis of foreign immigrants' recognition of macro-contexts, this paper suggests some findings: that is, a high level of recognition of all types of foreign immigrants on global changes, the most negative recognition of migrant workers among 4 types of foreign immigrants on economic and social conditions of their origin country, a positive recognition of people in all regions of their origin (except few countries such as Japan) on international migration, and a low level of their recognition in all types on S. Korea's characters as their destination country.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.635-654
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• 2009

Recently, concepts of multicultural society and/or multiculturalism have been not only widely discussed across several disciplines, but also actively promoted in government's policy, as the in-flow of foreign immigrants has increased rapidly. This paper suggests the term 'multicultural space' instead of multicultural society in a sense that both international migration of immigrants and their accommodation to a certain locality presuppose a spatial dimension. This paper also points out that the term multiculturalsim should be used very carefully, because this term includes a normative character implied in a sense of recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity and difference on the one hand, and an ideological one reflected on strategic policies of capital and the state on the other. On the basis of recognition of these problems, this paper tries to reformulate spatially the concept of muticultural society which has been supposed to be constructed due to rapidly increasing foreign immigrants, emphasizing some usefulness of multi-scalar approach. It then analyzes economic and political contexts of transnational migration, providing a criticism of multiculturalism as an ideological logic of capital and the state in transnational captialism. Finally it put a stress upon importance of struggle for spaces of recognition as a new glocal ethics in the age of post-globalization.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.393-408
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• 2018

This study aims to raise our understanding of how memory of a social group is transnationally appropriated and utilized by other subjects. A collective sense of justice for comfort women has been handed to many Koreans either in Korea or in overseas countries since the early 1990s. In the U.S., the first comfort women monument was established in Palisades Park, New Jersey by Korean-Americans and local politicians as they wanted to strengthen the common sense of Korean ethnicity with the symbolic power of the memoryscape. Exploring the diffusion of comfort women memorials in the U.S., this study examines the complexity and multilayered structure of memory politics and its transnational mobility, which are connected to Korean-Americans' struggle for belonging.