Neoliberal Capitalism, Racism and Migrant Workers in South Korea: Beginning the Discussion

The South Korean migrant workers movement is now entering is third decade. In the last twenty years, the issues facing migrant workers have become well known in South Korean society. We have also had some significant gains. These include the abolition of the trainee system, gaining the right to industrial accident insurance and severance pay for undocumented migrant workers, the establishment of MTU and its recognition by the Seoul High Court, the UN and the ILO. Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that, right now, we are flailing. The pool of migrant activists has been drastically weakened by government repression. Meetings of the Alliance for Migrants Equality and Human Rights go around in circles unable to find direction. KCTU has set target numbers for migrant worker organizing, but has no real organizing plan. And, most importantly, we have not figured out a way to reproduce and empower migrant leadership. All of this makes me feel like we need to develop a new framework and a new direction. I believe that to find this framework and direction, we need a clearer understanding of the exploitation of migrant workers as part and parcel of neoliberal global capitalism and the flexible labor regimes it engenders. I also believe that we have to understand how racism supports and is supported by these systems, and how it shapes the lives of migrant workers and their children. In what follows I attempt to develop this understanding. I have three principle goals in this paper. The first is to explain what racism is and how it manifests in South Korean society, particularly with respect to migrant workers. The second is to place migration within a global context, and specifically to investigate how neoliberalism shapes migration to South Korea. The third is to begin a discussion of what analysis of racism and a global(internationalist?) perspective on migration means about what the migrant workers movement in South Korea should be doing. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I give a theoretical and historical explanation of race and racism and their relationship to global capitalism. In the second section, I locate migration as a phenomenon shaped by the international division of labor. I also demonstrate how neoliberalism shapes migration by looking specifically at out-migration from the Philippines and South Koreas rise as a country of destination since the late 1980s. In this discussion I try to pay attention to the way racism interacts with the regimes of flexible

production and labor that shape migrants lives. In the third section, I look at some of the specific form that racism towards migrant workers in South Korea takes at the levels of policy and representation. In particular, I try to demonstrate the relationship between immigration policy that relegates migrant workers to the category of foreigner, racial representations of migrant workers as inferior and capitalist exploitation. In the final section, I discuss the implications of an anti-racist, internationalist perspective for the South Korean migrant workers movement. This presentation is a first attempt to put these ideas onto paper and out into the space of the South Korean movement. It is definitely not a final product, but rather means to provide a basis for communication and food for thought and debate. I. Race and Racism I will begin by define race and racism theoretically and historically. To do so, I draw heavily on the experience of the United States and the work of American scholars. This is in part because the history of the United States is intimately bound up with the history of racism, just as American society is fundamentally shaped by the experience of race. More than this, however, it is because I am most familiar with American racism and racist theorists. Clearly, therefore, this discussion has many limitations.

a. Race American race theorists Michael Omi and Howard Winant offer the following definition of race: [A] concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies.1 This definition begins from an understanding of race as socially constructed. To say that race is socially constructed is to recognize that while racial designations make reference to essential or pseudo-essential qualities or physical characteristics, there is in fact no biological basis for different racial groupings.2 Because of this, racial categories have varied significantly over time and locality. Take, for example, the term Asian. In South Korea, Asian is increasingly used to refer to people from countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal and Bangladesh, who have migrated to Korea in large numbers since the late 1980s. The designation Asian marks these people as essentially different from
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd Ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 55. 2 Omi and Winant, 4.
1

native Koreans and often as inferior, the objects of scorn, pity, charity and education. (Think for example of the term used to designate the children born of one Korean parent and one parent from a South, or South East Asian country, the names of the centers and or Asian Brothers, the name the singing group formed by the multi-national group of migrant workers in , , which incidentally, includes one woman.) On the 2000 United States census, however, Asian referred to: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. The different constructions of Asian in South Korea and the United States have been formed in different economic, social and policy contexts of the two countries. To say that race is social constructed is not to say that it is a mere illusion. Rather, race has real influence on society and politics and plays a role in shaping institutions and identities.3 To understand how this happens, it is helpful to understand race as an element of common sense4 or ideology that shapes and is shaped through social practices.5 As common sense embedded in social practices ranging from everyday interactions to the development and implementation of state policy, race becomes an element of social structure with deep meaning, but also not impervious to change.6 Omi and Winants definition also highlights the fact that concepts of race are, from the start, laced with conflict. The creation an ordering of racial categories is fundamentally related to hegemonic processes through which particular groups establish economic, cultural and political control and through which particular regimes of accumulation are maintained.7 For this reason, concepts of racial difference always have designations of inferiority and superiority implicitly or explicitly embedded within them. It is important to emphasize, however, that race is often not a

Omi and Winant, vii. I follow Omi and Winant in using a Gramcsian definition of common sense, which has been further developed by latter scholars, most especially Ramon Williams. See, Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, ed. and trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1971); Raymond William, Marxism and Literature (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 5 I am here using drawing from Althussers theory of ideology and interpellation, which posits that individuals are interpellated as [ideological] subjects through material ritual practice[s] of ideological recognition. Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards and Investigation), Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 117. I believe this theory is also consistent with Omi and Winants discussion. 6 Omi and Winant, 55. 7 Omi and Winant, 56. This is a summary of the Gramscian conception of hegemony. See above, ft. 13.
3 4

consciously fabricated justification for inequality, but rather a semi or subconscious naturalization of it. Many people believe that racial categories and the prejudices and inequalities based on them have existed from the beginning of human history as part of our nature. In fact, however, the concept race with which we are familiar first arose only 400 hundred ago in the context of New World colonization, the African slave trade and the establishment of the world capitalist system. It developed as Europeans sought explanations for their domination over indigenous Americans and enslavement of Africans that sounded and felt like common sense.8 [[[ If we look at the experience of the early American colonies we can see how ideas of race developed in the context of the establishment of the New World economy and society. Lets take Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Settled by an expedition financed by the Virginia Company of London in 1607, Jamestown, like other North American colonies, required an agricultural labor force in order to become a profitable venture. The colonist first attempted to force indigenous Americans to take on this role, but failed because the indigenous people knew the land much better than them and could simply escape. The colonists then turned to the use of white indentured servants, who provided the majority of the labor required by Jamestown settlers for most of the 1600s.9 While some African slaves were brought to the colonies they were at the time a more expensive form of labor, and so were only present in small numbers. As the century wore on, however, indentured servants became less and less profitable: They had to be constantly replaced when their contracts ended. Some also set up their own farms once they were free and could become competitors. Finally, they were increasingly influenced by the revolutionary ideas of individual freedom circulating in England in the mid-1600s and had a tendency to demand their rights as Englishmen to better conditions. Where as at the beginning of the century indentured servants had been a less expensive source of labor than African slaves, by the end of the century this relationship had been reversed. The colonists thus turned to the large-scale importation of African slaves as a practical means for cutting labor costs. As this changed occurred, the colonists established laws that defined the status of blacks in the colonies. Initially, blacks lived in various states (free, servant, slave), mingled socially with
On first scientific attempt to categories people as racist, see education booklet, 7. Explain indentured servant

8 9

white workers (free, servant) and had a variety of political rights. After the switch to slaves as the principle source of labor power, laws were drawn up that made blacks slave for life, designated whites as freemen and erected social barriers between the two groups. White freemen were given the vote, while a Slave Code was established that regulate that use and treatment of black slaves, and make sure their status was maintained. There were two reasons for the establishment of these laws. The first was the need for a legal structure to regulate a new labor relationship that developed once the cost of slaves outstripped the cost of indentured servants. The second was fear of rebellion of a united multi-racial underclass. Such a rebellion had occurred 1676, making this fear more acute.10 Clear hierarchal differentiation of whites and blacks secured the loyalty of poor whites and provided a more easily controlled enslaved labor force for the colonys ruling class. The ideology of distinct races and white superiority developed as colonists wrote the Slave Code and explained it to themselves and each other. It was then reproduced through the everyday economic and cultural practices of a society centered on racial slavery until the Civil War.11 At the same time, slave labor in the South and the Atlantic slave trade produced the wealth that was invested in textiles, shipbuilding and other emerging capitalist enterprises in the Northeast of America and Europe, as Marx clearly recognized.12 It is not a stretch, therefore, to say that the advent of race and racial domination was fundamentally intertwined with the advent of global capitalism. ]] Since the abolition of slavery, race and racism have been reproduced in different forms during different phases of capitalism. They took the form of Jim Crow segregation that kept white and black worker legally divided from the late 19th century until the 1960s in the U.S., helping to shore up white planters control over black agricultural labor in the South. They were also reproduced and elaborated in the context of Western imperialism at the turn of the last century through the establishment of relationships of dominance and dependency between imperialist nations and their colonies and the unequal relationship between westerners and natives within the colonies themselves. At this time colonization and racist social structures were given supposedly objective backing by the categorization and hierarchal ordering of different
Bacons rebellion. For this history see Fields, Morgan. 12 In Capital, Vol. I Marx writes, The discovery of goal and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of capitalist production (915).
10 11

racial groups by European scientists. As European capitalism expanded across the world incorporating different areas unevenly into a global system of production, so too did racism, shaping relationships within and between countries. As Balibars writes, Race, and therefore racism, is the expression, the promoter and consequence of the geographical concentrations associated with the axial division of labor.13 Another favorite scholar has explained the relationship between race and capitalism as follows: [T]he entire history of the capital mode of production and its ever-expanding global reach has been organized through the structuring of [racial, gender, etc.] difference The accumulation of capital continues to take place through the social and legal differentiation of labor.14 As will be shown below, today racism works through laws that regulate immigration and foreign labor.

b. Racism Above I have used race to refer to ideological grouping of people. The concept of racism I employ goes beyond seeing it as simple ideology or individual prejudice. Rather, racism refers to a system of domination and oppression based on racial categories, which is developed, maintained and altered through the interaction of individual prejudice, ideology, law and policy. Like patriarchy and gender oppression, systemic racism is fundamentally related to, although not identical with, global capitalism. Individual acts of racial discrimination or acts which preserve the unequal access of racialized groups to information, skills and resources, government policy that limit the rights of racialized groups, and racial representations are all important elements of systemic racism. The interplay of these elements with one another over time shapes inequalities in resources, opportunities and power, forming a racist social structure that simultaneously supports and justifies the system of capitalist accumulation and the hegemony of the groups who benefit from it.

Balibar, 1991, 80. Lowe, 159. Peter Bohmer has identified the following ways in which racism supports capitalism within national economies: 1) It permits employers to pay lower wages to black [and other people of color] than to white workers. The difference between the wages of black[/people of color] workers measures the superexploitation of black[/people of color] workers and the super profits of capital; 2) Racist ideology is accepted in varying degrees by most white workers decreas[ing] the ability of workers to unite across racial lines and struggle as a unified group..; 3) Racist ideology makes blacks unemployment more acceptable than white unemployment to white society. It is therefore easier to maintain higher unemployment (in Marxist terms, a larger reserve army of labor) than if whites and blacks share unemployment equally. By reducing worker bargaining power, higher unemployment lowers the average wage and thus, increases the profit rate (2).
13 14

II. Global Capitalism, Migration, Neoliberalism and Racism a. Migration and the International Division of Labor Global capitalism functions through and maintains a world system that organizes nations and regions in unequal relations and creates linkages between them through trade, investment and labor flows. This system has enabled international migration on several levels. First, the internationalization of production has involved the development of export agriculture and export manufacturing in peripheral areas, which tends to displace portions of the population by transforming subsistence workers into wage labor. Displaced workers migrate first to urban centers within their own countries and then to other more developed countries if employment opportunities in those urban centers are not sufficient. In addition, trade and investment between countries creates what Saskia Sassen has called cultural linkages between disparate places. Workers producing goods that will be exported to developed countries, often in companies owned by capitalists from developed countries, gain information and knowledge about these countries through this contact. This making emigration to these countries imaginable and desirable. To say it in another way, export economies and foreign investment in less developed countries make previously settled workers mobile and then create material and cultural linkages between countries of origin and countries of destination. Migrants travel along these linkages in a reverse direction from capital.15 In the last thirty years, neoliberal globalization has increase inequalities within and between rural areas and between the countries of the global North and global South.16 The fact that this inequalities fall generally along racial lines is no accident. Rather it arises from uneven incorporation of different regions into global capitalism that has occurred along with the development of racial categories and racist social structures. Race works to erase this historical unevenness by naturalizing unequal relationship as arising from the essential traits of different peoples: It is the characteristics of the workers (in the global South) themselves, their lack of sophistication, their helplessness, their lack of skills, their great need, their inferior culture, their
Sassen, 1988, 20; 1993, 74. The Gini coefficient, which is used to measure inequality between countries, has risen dramatically since 1980, when neoliberal globalization began in earnest. On a scale from 0 to 100, inequality rose from 46 in 1980 to 54 in 1999 to 67 in 2005. According to the UN Development Program, massive inequalities between countries are mirrored within countries between rich people and poor people, men and women, rural and urban and different regions and groups. In one study of 73 countries measured between 1960 and 2000, 54 showed rising inequality, 12 showed no change, and only 7 showed declining inequality. Andreas Bieler, et. al., The Future of the Global Working Class: An Introduction, in Labour and the Challenges of Globalization: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity? (2008), 10.
15 16

sexism or else it is the corruption of Southern hemisphere governments, their political institutions and their (racialized) employers that are to blame for their poverty.17 Inequalities in income and opportunity closely influence the direction of migration waves that bring racialized subjects to more developed countries and migration has increased as neoliberal globalization proceeds. Statistics recorded by the International Organization of Migration show the number of migrants in the world doubling between 1965 and 2002 from 75 to 150 million. By 2002, there were an estimated 185 million, 2% of the world population. At present the figure has thought to have grown to 200 million or 3% of the word population.18 Of course, migration occurs due to a combination of factors including economic conditions, war and political instability, historical political and cultural ties between countries, previous traditions of migration and individual choice. We cannot, therefore, say that neoliberalism, by itself, creates migration. Nonetheless, neoliberal policies have greatly accelerated and shaped the direction and character of migration over the least three to four decades. Trade liberalization and the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and IMF are major causes of the gap in income and unemployment opportunities between nations and regions. They also play a large role in displacing workers in poor countries from their local livelihoods. One of the most dramatic examples of the relation between neoliberal policies and migration is the effect of NAFTA on rural Mexican populations. According to the AFL-CIOs Solidarity Center, [T]he flood of cheap agricultural products from the U.S. following the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) displaced 1.7 million small-scale Mexican farmers and destroyed the agricultural economy in Mexico. Having lost their livelihoods, and faced with few employment opportunities in rural areas, agricultural workers migrated to urban areas in Mexico to compete for jobs. This migration resulted in lower wages in urban centers and displaced workers who, in turn, migrated to countries such as the United States in search of work.19

b. Neoliberalism and Philippine Out-migration

Cite Bonacich and Wilson. Stephen Castle and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration, 3rd Edition (New York: Guilford Publications, Inc., 2003), 4. While some scholars insist that previous waves of migration such as the 59 million people who left Europe between 1846 and 1939 were of similar scale, these authors note that the vast numbers of undocumented migrants in the present day means that the actual scale of migration is much higher than official statistics (4-5). 19 Neha Misra, The Push and Pull of Globalization: Ho the Global Economy Makes Migrant Workers Vulnerable to Exploitation, Solidarity Center Policy Brief (August 2007), 2. For a rich historical and sociological explanation of this process see David Bacon, Illegal People.
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In the future it will be worthwhile to conduct an in depth study of the specific ways in which neoliberal policies, along with political instability and war, influence the migration of the various national groups now present in large numbers in South Korea. This is not possible at present. Instead, I will here substitute a brief look at one case: the Philippines.20 I have chosen the Philippines because it has been the largest source of permanent international immigrants from Asia since 1990, and is now the largest Asian contributor to the global flows of temporary migrant labor.21 There are now roughly 48,000 Filipinos in South Korea, making them the third largest group of migrant workers in the country next to Chinese (including Chinese Koreans) and Vietnamese. Pressure to emigrate in the Philippines has been caused by poverty, under and unemployment over the last thirty years that have persisted at the same time as income levels in nearby countries have increased. In the 1970s, the Philippines had a higher per capita income than Thailand. Today, it has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the region, one of the lowest shares of workers in manufacturing and one of the highest incidences of poverty.22 The well-known Filipino scholar and activist Walden Bello finds the critical origins of the Philippines economic stagnation in the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment program imposed on the country in the early 1980s. The required tightening of fiscal and monetary policy at a time of international recession led to a downward spiral of private investment and a collapse of the countrys industry. Pressures by international creditors, the government of Corazon Aquino, opted not to attempt to make up for the drop in private investment through public expenditures, and instead adopted a model debtor strategy, hoping to shore up continued access to international capital markets. Instead of being invested in the domestic economy, government resources flowed out in debt service payments, which averaged 8% to 10% of the GDP yearly and totaled nearly $30 billion during the years from 1986 to 1993. To make matters worse, the onerous terms of repayment that were subject to variable interests rates and the practice of incurring new debt to pay of the old meant that instead of decreasing, the Philippines foreign debt actually increased from $21.5 billion in 1986 to $29 billion in 1993. Lack of government investment in the economy, along
On the fact that migration is not driven only by economic factors. Robin Cohen, Migration and its Enemies, 170. In December 2003, the Commission on Filipinos Overseas recorded a total of 7,763,178 Filipino citizens abroad (roughly 9% of the population) including 2,865,412 permanent settlers, 3,385,001 temporary migrants and 1,512,765 undocumented migrants. See for more recent figures: http://www.cfo.gov.ph/pdf/statistics/Stock%202009.pdf. 22 Philip Martin, Migration and Trade: The Case of the Philippines, International Migration Review, Vol. 27, no. 3 (August 1993), 640.
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with political instability and persistent government corruption, made it difficult to attract foreign investment during the 1980s and early 1990s at a time when surround countries were successfully bringing in Japanese and other foreign capital.23 In addition to lack of government investment, neoliberal policies enforced through successive IMF structural adjustment programs have further eroded the Philippines industrial sector and weakened workers rights. Trade liberalization during the last two and a half decades led to multiple bankruptcies in manufacturing, resulting in massive layoffs. The textile industry was particularly hard hit. The combination of tariff cuts and the abuse of duty-free privileges resulted in a shrinking of the industry from 200 firms in 1970 to less than 10 by the end of the century. Trade liberalization has also negatively affected the agricultural sector, making the Philippines a net importer of rice by 1995.24 Finally, trade liberalization has drastically cut government revenues due to decreased customs collections. In 1994 Executive Order 264 called for a phased reduction of tariffs to 0 to 5 percent over a 10-year period. The result was a fall in customs collections from P64.4 billion to P41.4 billion between 1995 and 2004, a decrease of over 35%, while the value of imports rose from $25.5 billion in 1995 to $37.4 billion. As Bello writes, Combined with the outflow of debt service payments, the collapse in customs revenues precipitated the fiscal implosion, which made it even more difficult for government to finance the capital expenditures that were necessary to [stimulate] domestic and foreign investment in order to decisively lift the country from the stagnation of the eighties and nineties.25 This situation has resulted in persistent low growth rates, the worst in South East Asia until very recently. From 1990 to 2005, the Philippines growth in GDP per capita averaged only 1.6%. And, while the GDP growth rate has improved in recent years, underemployment and poverty continue to be a severe problem. While unemployment dropped from over 11% in 2005 to 7.4% in 2011, underemployment has hovered around 20%. Between 2003 and 2006, when the GDP growth rate averaged 5.4%, the poverty incidence actually increased from 30.0% to
During the same period, the government of countrys surrounding the Philippines opted for a different strategy, investing heavily in the development of infrastructure. It was their goal to attract Japanese capital, which had been deterred from domestic investment due to the loss of competitiveness of Japan-based productions after the yen was drastically revalued relative to the dollar in 1985. 23 The strategy worked to bring in direct foreign investment to countries such as Thailand and Indonesia. 24 Ligaya Lindio-McGovern, Neo-liberal Globalization in the Philippines: Its Impact on Filipino Women and their Forms of Resistance, 5. 25 Bello, 13.
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32.9%.26 At the same time outflows of Filipino migrations have grown steadily since the early 1980s.

Year (as of Jan.)

Unemployment (% workforce as of Jan.) 7.4 7.3 7.7 7.4 7.8 8.1 11.3 11.0 10.6 10.3 11.4 9.3 9.0 8.4 7.7 8.3 8.8

2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995

Underemployment (% workforce as of Jan.) 19.4 19.7 18.2 18.9 21.5 21.3 16.1 17.5 16.1 15.9 16.9 21.2 22.2 21.7 21.1 21.0 18.6

Philippines: International Migration Out Flows, Remittances and Population Growth

International migration statistics International migrant outflows Total of Yearly growth Permanent international rate of residents migrants per year international migrants (%) 41,551 392,533 -45,269 418,053 6.5 49,338 427,552 2.3 56,350 505,621 18.3 58,020 529,050 4.6 55,745 514,371 (2.8) 63,149 509,244 0.1 62,464 677,483 33.0 64,154 750,615 10.8 66,390 763,020 1.6 64,531 782,938 2.6 56,242 709,816 (9.3) 60,913 721,035 1.6 54,059 801,755 11.2 39,009 870,652 8.6 40,507 877,527 0.8 51,031 892,659 1.7 52,054 919,653 3.0 57,720 949,628 3.2 Filipino migrants remittances (in US$ million) 658.89 687.20 680.44 791.91 856.81 973.02 1,181.07 1,500.29 2,202.38 2,229.58 2,630.11 4,877.51 4,306.64 5,741.84 7,367.99 6,794.55 6,050.45 6,031.27 6,886.16

Year

Temporary contract workers 350,982 372,784 378,214 449,271 471,030 458,626 446,095 615,019 686,461 696,630 718,407 653,574 660,122 747,696 831,643 837,020 841,628 867,599 891,908

Population

1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

53,351,000 54,668,000 56,004,000 57,356,000 58,721,000 60,097,000 60,703,000 63,729,000 65,339,000 66,982,000 68,624,000 68,617,000 69,951,000 71,549,000 73,147,000 74,746,000 76,348,000 77,926,000 79,503,000

26

Bellow, 2.

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2003 2004

867,969 933,588

55,137 64,924

923,106 998,512

(2.8) 8.1

7,578.46 8,550.37

81,081,000 82,663,000

Source: Philippine Migration and Development Statistical Almanac

There have been efforts to attract foreign investment to the Philippines, not entirely without success. In the mid-1990s, the Ramos government sought to attract FDI by establishing Special Economic Zones, easing restrictions on property ownership and providing tax breaks for foreign capital. The idea behind these policies was that foreign direct investment would increase exports and promote industrialization, creating jobs both within SEZs and in peripheral industries that would develop to support the needs of SEZs and therefore alleviating unemployment.27 The SEZ, however, did not have the intended consequences. Between 1995-2005 FDI in SEZ clustered in region containing the Cavite and Rizal provinces did create a recorded 2 million jobs in that area. It also, however, stimulated migration from rural areas to that region, such that regional unemployment actually rose. In addition, the SEZ accelerated the transformation of surrounding rural areas leading to a decrease in agricultural productivity, thus further stimulating rural to urban migration. As in the case of Mexico, uprooted rural Filipinos who find themselves in overcrowded urban areas that lack sufficient stable employment, often turn to overseas migration as the next step in their attempt to means to supporting families back home. Korean investment in the Philippines helps to create the material and cultural linkages that bring Filipino migrants to South Korea. In addition to the strong economic pressures for emigration, the government of the Philippines has, since the 1970s, used labor export as a stopgap measure against unemployment and as means to bring foreign exchange into the economy. In 1974, the Marcos administration established the manpower exchange program to facilitate the migration of temporary contract workers to countries throughout the world. Government officials, including Marcos himself, petitioned governments in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America to import Filipinos as a source of labor. By the time Marcos was deposed in 1986, labor exportation had become firmly entrenched in the Filipino economy. The government brings in needed revenue through pre-departure fees and exit taxes and relies heavily on remittances sent home by overseas workers as form of poverty alleviation and a source of foreign exchange. Remittances now bring over $8 billion a year into the economy. Moreover, scholars have estimated that without labor
27

Sanders, 5.

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migration, the rate of unemployment in the Philippines would increase by 40%.28 The government uses these figures to construct a glorified image of labor migrants as heroes as a means to promote further migration. Most activists agree, however that reliance on labor export and remittances allows the government to skirt its responsibility to come up with a real plan for promoting long-term development. They point out that remittances do little to stimulate employment since they are generally not invested in employment-generating projects, and making families dependant on sending their members overseas.29

Stats on Filipino migration to SK c. Migration to South Korea and South Korean Capital Accumulation Driven from their homes by transformation of the agricultural economy, poverty, lack of adequate employment and the government policy of labor export, Filipino migrant workers travel to countries in the West, the Middle East and increasingly Asia. But, what has made South Korea an important destination for them and other migrants. The answer to this lies in changes in changes in South Koreas role in the global division of labor and the structure of accumulation of the South Korean economy. Migrant labor has now become a necessity to South Korean accumulation and is thus brought in and regulated by the government. The original entry of migrant workers, however, occurred not as a result of efforts by the government or capital to attract them, but rather due to choices made by those workers themselves. During the 1980s, South Korea seemed a miracle of capitalist development, at the same time as the fall in oil prices was causing stagnation in the Middle East, a previously important destination region for Asian migrant labor. South Koreas rise from periphery to semi-periphery created something of a spectacle for people from other Asian countries. This advance was, of course, made possible by U.S. aid given with the goal of fortify South Korea as a bulwark against communism and a junior economic partner of Japan and violent export-led development under the leadership of anticommunist dictators. Nonetheless, South Koreas growth caught the attention of people in the region as a rare example of rapid capitalist development achieved by a culturally and geopolitically similar country with a similar history of colonization. Interest in South Korea was strengthened by the advertizing effect of the

28 29

Castles and Miller, 1998 references in Parrenas, 52. Lindio-McGovern, 15-16.

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Asian Games and the Olympics held in Korea in 1986 and 1988. Moreover, South Korea had established diplomatic relations with communist countries such as Vietnam and China, facilitating travel from them.30 More generally, at around this time South Korean capital began to invest in and move production (- )to Asian countries where cheap labor could be found in an effort to compete with the rapid global expansion of transnational capital based in developed countries. This investment formed material and cultural linkages that enabled migration. In addition to investing overseas, South Korean conglomerates also turned to outsourcing and subcontracting within South Korea as a means to reduce production costs. Small and medium size firms unable to expand overseas were incorporated into this system of production as subcontracts. As such, they faced downward pressure on wages and conditions. At the same time, the workers struggle of 1987 increased the strength of organized labor and gave it the ability to demand relatively better conditions and wage increases. With many Korean workers expecting more than could be offered from small and medium-size companies, these firms turned to migrant labor to fill growing labor shortages. Migrant workers were thus incorporated at the lowest level of Koreas structure of accumulation.31 By 1993 some 25% of the workforce in factories that employed fewer than 30 workers was migrant.32 In the 1990s as South Korean the system of flexible production became firmly entrenched in the South Korean economy, Korea became a net receiving, rather than net sending country for migrant labor. Recognizing migrant workers increased presence and indispensability to the South Korean economy, the government began regulating migrant labor at roughly the same time.33

d. Migrant Labor, Irregular Work and Racism Easily paid lower wages and forced to work long hours, fire-able at will without social backlash, migrant workers worked as irregular labor at a time when the concept was not yet in wide use. Since the 1997 IMF crisis, however, greater and greater numbers of Korean workers have been irregularized such that irregular worker is now a common household term. The
KBJ, 10-11. Migrant workers have also been incorporated at the lower levels of industries that cannot be moved overseas: fishing, farming, construction and the services that develop to support industrial production. 32 Katharine Moon, Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism, in Koreas Globalization, Sam Kim, ed. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press),148. 33 KJB, 17.
30 31

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intensification of flexible labor relations has come with an intensification of divisions among workers (irregular vs. regular workers, workers in large-scale corporations vs. small-scale firms, native workers/foreign workers, dongpo vs non-dongpo migrant workers, etc.) the result of capitals structuring of difference for the purpose of profit. Racism works to reproduce and naturalize these divisions, as well as to spread them from the workplace to other areas of society.

Phases of South Korean Capital Accumulation and Migrant Labor

Phase 1 (1945~1987) Form of Accumulation *Compressed capital accumulation 45~62: foreign aid and savings 63~87: state-led development U.S.-Japan-Korea Phase 2 (1987~1997) *Dependent monopoly capital accumulation Phase 3 (1997~ ) *Neoliberal flexible capital accumulation

Trade relations

Place in division of labor Labor relations

Periphery *Barrack-style() labor relations: coercive and violently oppressive More out than in migration

Direction of migration

2004: Employment Permit System and Trainee system 2005: EPS alone Formation of migrant Out-migration Unregulated/unnoticed Formation of migrant workers Formation of Korean entry workers as social class in American communities Korean society Source: Adapted from Kim Byeong Jo, Stages of South Korean Capital Accumulation and Labor Migration, 15-16.

Legislation related to migration

Diversification of trade relations with Asian countries Semi-periphery *Antagonistic labor relations: labor wins relative freedom of activity, rights/Formation of migrant labor market Equalization of out and in migration/After 1992 in migration exceeds out migration. Before 1991: Lack of regulation 1991: Trainee system

Further diversification

Semi-periphery *Flexible labor relations: Increased competition based on divisions in working class. In migration greatly exceeds out migration.

The close connection between flexible production, migrant labor and racism is not unique to South Korea. In most, if not all, destination countries migrant workers are incorporated into neoliberal regimes of production and distribution. Edna Bonacich and Jake Wilson have shown, for instance, how deregulation of the transport industry and new technological developments in the 1980s that made possible labor cost cutting strategies by logistics companies also led to the increased participation of immigrants and other people of color in the transport and logistics workforce. Jobs in trucking, ports and warehouses that were once secure, full time and included

15

benefits, are now part-time, insecure, without benefits and occupied largely by Latin American immigrant and other racialized groups.34 The same can be said for jobs in the meatpacking, poultry and construction industries, as well as in low-end services such as janitorial and security work.35 Female migrant workers in countries from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia to Hong Kong are employed as domestic workers and are thus excluded from even the most basic labor law protections. As Bonacich and Wilson point out, immigrants are prime targets for these irregular, low paying and often hazardous jobs because the dire situation in their home countries mean they will often take jobs that native workers refuse, because restrictive immigration and foreign labor policies limit their access to other forms of employment36, and because their negative racialization37 means the public is generally less outraged by the substandard conditions and lack of rights they face.38 The point to emphasize here is that while in South Korea trade unionists still view migrant workers by and large as minority group, worthy of assistance but separate from the main activities of the labor movement, the fact is that that the exploitation of migrant labor is part and parcel of the system of sub-contacting and flexible labor now widely recognized as one of labors most fundamental enemy. Similarly, while racism (or anti-racism) is not yet word that slips easily off Korean trade unionists tongues, it is in fact a structure of oppression intimately intertwined with neoliberal capitalism.

III. Faces of South Korean Racism How do we identify racism and how do we fight against it? I said earlier that systemic racism is created, maintained and transformed through the interaction of individual acts of discrimination, acts which preserve or deepen inequality between racialized groups, government policy that limit the rights of racialized groups, and racial representations. [[[ .To objectify and study this process Omi and Winant conceptualize it as a series of historically situated projects defined as simultaneously [] interpretation[s], representation[s], or explanation[s] of racial dynamics, and [] effort[s] to reorganize and

Find note. Solidarity Center, 2. 36 Nandita Sharma labels migrant workers who enter destination countries through short-term rotation programs (like the EPS) as literally unfree, akin to slave or coolie labor of past decades (24). 37 Add Sharma definition of racialization. 38 Note in B
34 35

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redistribute resources along particularly racial lines.39 Racial projects include all of the elements of systemic racism that I have just mentioned. Interacting with one another, racial projects define particular racial groups and their relationships to one another. The writing and justification of slave codes like the one enacted in Jamestown in the late 1600s can be seen as among the first of such racial projects, which when combined with the actual act of enslavement and other practices that ordered whites above blacks created the racial hierarchy that defined colonial America. As can be seen from this example, racial projects are embedded in the processes of capital accumulation and the establishment of the hegemony the dominant groups who benefit from it.

a. Present Day Racism Different racial projects contribute to the reproduction of systemic racism in more or less obvious ways. [ For instance, while representations of Asian Americans as naturally entrepreneurial are clearly essentializing, it is not immediately obvious how they contribute to reproducing a structure of domination until they are viewed in the context of Asian immigration to the U.S., exclusionary state and federal laws, the refusal of American professional organizations to recognize occupational qualifications achieved in non-Western countries, the exploitative conditions in immigrant-owned small shops, and the role these shops play in expanding the field of accumulation for large corporations. Close examination of this history, however, shows that such a statement, far from benign, serves to justify the difficult conditions under which many Asian immigrants are forced to work as suitable to their nature.40 Similarly ], [[, Different elements play different parts in the construction and reproduction of systemic racism.]] In South Korea, exclusionist immigration policies are generally not based on explicitly racist categories (the right to naturalization in South Korea, for instance, is formally based on length of period of residence, amount of assets, and knowledge of Korean language and culture41). When combined with individual prejudice, racist representations and South Koreas system of accumulation based on multilevel subcontracting, however, their effect is to reproduce migrants from South Asian countries as a negatively

Omi and Winant, 56. Need citation 41 South Korean Nationality Act, Article 5, last amended by act no. 8892, 14 March 2009.
39 40

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racialized group with unequal access to job opportunities, social services and labor and political rights.42 As Etienne Balibar notes, in the post-colonial, post-civil rights world, racism and specific racist projects often do not make reference to overtly biological categories. He has used the terms racism without races and cultural racism to refer to this tendency, which he sees reflected in anti-immigrant sentiment and practices in France. The discourse of cultural racism acknowledges that that the behavior of individuals and their aptitudes cannot be explained in terms of their blood or even their genes, but are the result of their belonging to historical cultures, and often conflates particular cultures or traditions with particular national groups 43 The distinction between native/national and foreigner then come to stand in for biologically-defined racial categories in the process of naturalizing inequalities in rights, wealth and opportunity. The victims, however, continue to be racialized in more explicit ways in other social arenas.

b. Nationalism, Racism and Unfree Labor The South Korean government does not make reference to an Asian, or South Asian or brown race in policy debates. Rather, it defines certain individuals as foreign workers. As foreign these individuals are prohibited from free choice of employment and the right to move between employers. They are also prohibited from staying in the country for extended periods of time and denied the political rights of citizens. These restrictions effectively make migrant workers unfree labor. In this sense, President Catuiras frequent comment that we are treated like slaves is more than a simple metaphor. While not enslaved for life, migrant workers in South Korea are, like blacks in the American colonies, legally kept separate from those defined as Korean (or dongpo), legally denied freedom of movement and political rights through a system that ensures their profitablity to their employers. Yet it is simply accepted that the state has the sovereign right to set up these barriers. The right of states to exclude or limit those who are not nationals is, after all, central to the ideological concept of the nation-state. [[ As neoliberal globalization has accelerated migration, states have increasingly taken on the role of border police. Yet, immigration restrictions have done little to stop or slow migration, a fact that points to the ideological nature of immigration control. Rather
Kevin Gray, 101. Balibar, 21.

42 43

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than actually stopping people from entering, border control serve to underscore the right of the state to fully or partially exclude those who are foreign, thus facilitating the governments regulation of them once they are in the country for the purpose of profit-making. Crackdowns on undocumented migrants have a similar ideological function. While crackdowns in South Korea have clearly not prevented future undocumented migration and have had only limited success in reducing the number of undocumented migrants at present, they serve as a statement of the states right to control those who are foreign, both those with and without residence permits.]] The people who are those made unfree in this way are racialized in much more explicit ways in everyday life. Through interview-based research, Ham Han-hoe has found that Korean employers racial thinking differs little from that in the United States, which associates dark skin with inferiority and menial labor. He also quotes employers who claimed that South Asian workers were naturally physically weak and so, . .44 These sorts of negative associations extend beyond the workplace, as the well-known incident two summers ago in which an Indian professor was slandered as dark and smelly by a Korean man while riding the bus demonstrates. There is one important exception to lack of explicitly racial terms in policy discourse. This is the use of the term dongpo, which differentiates overseas Koreans from other migrants through reference to biological and national sameness.45 Those designated as dongpo have greater freedom to enter and leave South Korea, greater freedom to change workplaces and wider choice of industries to work in. Right now, undocumented dongpos are the beneficiaries of a broad-based legalization program, supposedly based on humanitarian considerations. At the same time, dongpos from less developed countries are not given the same rights as those from Japan and the U.S., demonstrating the flexible and utilitarian application of this term. The use of the racial/nationalist term dongpo, and the policies based on it, serve to create a hierarchy of rights and social status in which Koreans (and overseas Koreans from Japan and the U.S.) are at the top, overseas Koreans from less developed countries are in the middle and non-dongpo migrants are at the bottom.46
Han, 210. For an explication of the origins of the term dongpo see 356 < ?. 46 I have made this argument more concretely in, , , 510 .
44 45

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c. Two forms of Racism Whether as foreigner or as Asian, there are two dominant racist representations of migrant workers, currently in circulation in South Korean society, that of the migrant as criminal and that of the migrant as the object of Korean pity and aid. Far from mere stereotypes, these representations are close tied to the way in which migrants are treated by government policy and public institutions. These also enter into the way common Koreans approach and interact with migrant workers.

1. Criminalization In the last few years, the government and media have given increasing attention to foreign crime.47 This attention comes despite the fact that there is no statistical evidence that foreigners are more responsible for crime than Koreans.48 Actions taken against foreign crime, and the statements associated with them, often implicitly or explicitly blur the distinction between undocumented residence (an administrative offense) and criminal behavior. They also suggest a general correlation between foreignness and potential criminality. A report entitled Plan for Improving Policy on the Unspecialized Foreign Labor Force, released by the South Korean Committee on Strengthening National Competitiveness (Gukgagyeongjaengryeok ganghwa wiwonhoe) on 25 September 2008 provides an example of this trend. This document lists the increase of areas of illegal foreign resident concentration and the occurrence of all forms of crime on the same line, under the section title problems [of illegal migration]: crime and damage to national image.49 It also lists as a problem, the

See for example, Lee Se-hyong, Oegugin beomjoe choeda ansandanwon-guro [High Levels of Foreigner Crime Ansandanwon-Guro, Donga Ilbo, 27 Octoer 2008, http://www.donga.com/fbin/output?n=200810270146; Lee Hanseun, Jo Gwang-deok oegugin byeomjoe 4nyeongan 59% jeungga, [Jo Gwang-deok Foreigner crimes have increased 49% in the last 4 years, Yonhap News, 9 October 2009, http://www.etimes.net/service/CreditBank_2008/shellview.asp?ArticleID=2009100916364802303; Park Si-soo, Foreigns Crimes Rise Significantly, The Korea Times, 3 March 2010, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/03/117_61796.html. 48 The National Polices own 2009 white paper records 4.1 crimes for every 100 Koreans and 3.9 for every 100 foreigners. 49 Gukgagyeongjaengryeok ganghwa wiwonhoe [Committee on Strengthening National Competitiveness], Bijeonmun oeguginryeog jeongcheag gaeseonbangan [Joint Team for the Investigation of Organized Foreign Crime], 25 September 2008, 19
47

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formation of a union by illegal residents [MTU], [leading to] the tendency towards neglect of the law.50 Since the National Competitiveness Committee report was released, the Prosecutors Office, Police and Immigration Service have made several efforts to crackdown on foreign crime.51 Statements by the government explaining these measures comes close to making criminality a characteristic of foreignness. A press release explaining one crackdown effort claimed it was being made out of joint awareness [of the need for a response] to organized and serious foreigner crime, which threatens public order and is associated with the increase in foreigners residing in South Korea 52 That particular crackdown led to the arrest of 1,354 individuals, including 209 accused of using counterfeit immigration documents, over a fivemonth period.53 During another foreign crime crackdown carried out directly before the G20 Summit, illegal residents were explicitly listed among the criminals targeted by stop and search procedures.54 The measures describe here both represent and treat Asian migrants as, by nature, potential criminals, and undocumented migrants as criminal in fact, a pattern which is then reflected in mainstream media coverage. Associations of migrant workers with criminality legitimize and are reinforced by border control, immigration raids and tighter regulation of documented migrant workers in the country. Like measures against and representations of foreign crime, the crackdown against undocumented migrants and targeted crackdown against migrant activists also contribute to the creation and reproduction of systemic racism. This is despite the fact that officially, immigration crackdowns target individuals based, not on racial categories, but on visa status. Articles 46 through 50 of the Immigration Control Act give immigration officials the right to investigate any individual suspected of being in violation of the law, including the right to demanding presentation of documentation of residence status.55 These provisions open the way towards

Gukgagyeongjaengryeok ganghwa wiwonhoe, 19. Geomchal [Prosecutors Office], Oegugin jojikbeomjoe habdongsusabonbu seolchi [Establishment of Joint Team for the Investigation of Organized Foreign Crime], press release, 27 October 2009, 1. 52 Geomchal [Prosecutors Office], Oegugin jojikbeomjoe habdonsusabonbu hwaldong gyeolgwa [Activity Report of the Joint Team for the Investigation of Organized Foreign Crime], press release, 8 April 2010, 1; Geomchal, Oegugin jojikbeomjoe habdongsusabonbu seolchi, 1 53 Geomchal, Oegugin jojikbeomjoe habdonsusabonbu hwaldong gyeolgwa, 1 54 Seouljibang gyeongchalcheong [Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency], Oegugin gangryeong beomjoe seonjejeog daeeung eur wihan oegugin miljip jiyeog teukbyeol dansog chujin [Special Crackdown on Areas of Foreigner Concentration to Preemptively Respond to Severe Foreigner Crimes], press release, 3 May 2010, 2. 55 See, South Korean Immigration Control Act, Articles 46-50, last amended by act no. 9142, 19 December 2008.
50 51

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racial profiling, and there are numerous instances of documented Asian migrants being stopped on the street or mistakenly picked up in raids. As suggested earlier, crackdowns function to expand and solidifying the inequalities in privilege and power between non-white migrants and native Koreans by creating an atmosphere of terror that keeps migrants from carrying out everyday activities, not to mention deters them from complaining about workplace conditions and collective organizing. This is true not only for undocumented migrants, but for all those who work under similar conditions, as they are in constant danger of becoming undocumented due to the temporary and precarious nature of their visas, and because they may be picked up even while they have valid residence status.56 Targeted crackdown against migrant activists, as well, reproduces inequalities between native Koreans as migrants. It does this by wiping out the leadership of migrant organizations, and thus diminishing migrants capacity for collective action, the primary means through which oppressed groups (workers, racialized minorities, etc.) can offset material inequality and lack of representation. By eroding this equalizing force, targeted crackdown serves to keep migrant workers in their place in the racial and class hierarchy. This is why empowerment of migrant workers as a collective political force (, ) is so important in an anti-racist struggle. 2. The Multicultural Benefactor-Beneficent Relationship The other dominant representation of Asian migrant workers, which can be found everywhere from tv commercials to movies to government multicultural programs, is that of a poor creature from an underdeveloped country. This image is most strongly associated with migrant wives of Korean husbands, although it is often applied to (feminized) male migrant workers as well. Whether a pitiable woman or a feminized man, migrants represented in this way are also made into the receivers of Korean benevolence and assistance. Take for instance a recent Yonhap News article, which documents a field trip organized by the Busan police to the Gijeongun police station. Clearly picking up on the polices own explanation of the event, the article states: 16 187 , .
Restrictions on the reasons for which and number of times one can change workplaces and the short five-year residence period stipulated by the EPS mean that EPS workers can easily become undocumented by leaving a workplaces without getting the proper permission or after all changes to change workplaces are used up, or by staying in Korea after the five-year residence period is over.
56

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. . , , , 112 , . (23) " " " " .57 Here, the troubles of South Asian migrant women in South Korea are represented as having nothing to do with discrimination or poverty they may experience in here. Rather their difficulties arise from their uniform timidity, and their misperceptions of Korean institutions, which are based on experience with corrupt government institutions in their home countries. The police (presumably male), help to alleviate these misperceptions through education, interest and compassion ( ). There is, of course, no mention in this article (nor did it likely ever occur to the sponsoring police) that the treatment of South Asian migrants as criminal by the very same police in other contexts, might be one of the reasons for these womens hesitance to step foot in police station doors. The benevolent Korean-pitiable migrant relationship is found all over Korean society these days. Think of government support for multicultural families, of the heroic/comic Korean (disguised as a Bhutanese) in Banga Banga, of the centers who provide services for migrant workers even of the rhetoric used by some labor activists. (I can remember the KCTU director who is now in charge of migrant issues, once explaining the importance of KCTUs attention to migrant workers, by saying that having consideration for the problems of the most lowly workers was the proper spirit for unionists to take.) I need more time to think about the full implications of this relationship of Korean, which seems to permeate all areas of society. One thing is clear, however. This relationship is less about whom migrant workers really are, than is an attempt to redefine what it means to be Korean. It is a representation and a performance of the Korean nation and the Korean people as humane and more advancednot the exploiters of workers systematically made unfree, but the caretakers of less fortunate foreigners.

57

http://www.kookje.co.kr/news2006/asp/center.asp?gbn=v&code=0300&key=20110408.99002163739.

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In the end, both acts that criminalization of migrant workers and acts of pity serve the goal of remaking South Korea as an advanced nation, although in very different ways. The former help to make migrant workers into cheap, exploitable and controllable labor, thus securing profits and improving national competitiveness. The latter hide this exploitation from public view and from individual consciousness. They are a means to demonstrate to ourselves and to others that we are a nation in possession of the resources and sophistication that it takes to be an advanced, tolerant, multicultural society. We might say, therefore that criminalization of migrant workers and acts of multicultural benevolence are opposite sides of the same coin.

IV. Conclusions So, what are the implications of the analysis I have laid out here? In other words, what does an understanding of migration and migrant labor as integral to neoliberalism and flexible production say about the direction the migrant workers movement should take? What does an understanding of racism as a system that supports and is supported by, but not reduced to capitalism mean about the work we should be doing?

a. An Internationalist Perspective and a Global Struggle 1. Recognize that the forces that lead to migration and migrant worker exploitation are global: They include neoliberal polices that exacerbate poverty, un and underemployment, and inequalities between countries and forms of foreign investment that seek to exploit cheap third world .labor in a process of accumulation that benefits transnational capital. Struggles against these causes of migration require international solidarity between workers in less developed (labor sending) countries and developed (labor receiving) countries based on a clear understanding of the role each play in the current global system of production and distribution and how they are connected by it. Building this understanding and real links between workers is a necessity for the future strength of the migrant workers movement as the labor movement as a whole. Research: Specific forces of displacement (e.g. structural adjustment) and material and cultural linkages (foreign direct investment) the bring migrant workers from specific countries of origin to South Korea; Role of (Korean) companies in migrant countries of origin, impact on labor economy, labor conditions, etc.

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Action: Solidarity and joint action by workers in different countries who share the same transnational employers (e.g. joint action by migrant security workers in the U.S. and Europe employed by the same transnational contractor (SEIU); joint action by workers employed by Hanjin in Busan and the Subic Freeport Zone in the Philippines?).

2. Find forms of organizing that are not bound by national borders: Many unions have started to recognize the need for organizing methods and forms of union membership that follow migrant workers where they go, rather than losing touch with them when they return to home countries or move on to new destination countries. Some efforts made in this area include: 1) Production and distribution of resources explaining labor conditions and introducing unions in common destination countries by Global Union Federations. The UNI () passport is the best example of this type of resource. Workers who carry this passport not only have access to a basic information about unions and rights but are also given a welcome given a welcome from a local affiliated trade union in a new country where they have arrived to work, helped in becoming familiar with the new local community, included on mailing lists for information and invitations to cultural and political events, given access to training courses, counseling and legal support with workplace problems. 2) MOUs between unions in countries of origin and countries of destination that include agreements on collective work to protect migrant workers rights, predeparture and post-arrival labor rights/union education, etc. (GEFONT-MTUC, GEFONTKCTU). 3) Nationality based networks of migrant workers around the world (Migrante International). 4) The International Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (IMWSN), a network established between MTU and former MTU officers who had returned to their home countries in 2007. One of the main goals of this network is to conduct pre-departure education for migrants coming to South Korea, but it has until now faced several difficulties and is not very active. Research: Research on the various methods of organizing across borders, assessment of strengths and limitations and why this type of organizing has not developed further. Action: Efforts to strengthen forms of cross border organizing including cross border union membership based on the above assessment. For KCTU, this starts with better implementation of the GEFONT-KCTU MOU and active efforts to conclude MOUs with unions in other countries of origin.

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3. A Framework for demands to be adopted collectively in countries of origin and countries of destination that recognize the global nature of the problem of migration: Right to abode, Right to migration: The right to abode means having access to the basic things that one needs to live safely and healthily in a local community of origin or choice including: access to decent employment, access to basic social services, means to participate in the decision making of that community (political rights). The right to migrate includes lack of restriction at the borders of home countries, adequate legal and safe pathways for migration to destination countries and chances as permanent residence and basic political rights in destination countries. Research: There is literature explicating the meaning of this framework than needs to be summarized and introduced.58 In addition, many destination countries do offer pathways to permanent residence and political rights to some extent. Labor and migrant rights movements in other countries have their own proposals for immigration policy reform, which include the conferral of some of these rights (AFL-CIO/Change to Win 2009 immigration reform proposal).59 Systems in use and under proposal should be studied and evaluated. Action: Based on this research, a realistic proposal for reform of South Koreas immigration and naturalization system and a plan for winning public support for it needs to be formulated.

B. An Anti-racist Perspective and Anti-Racist Struggle 1. The South Korean labor movement must recognize that exploitation of migrant workers is at the heart of flexible production and flexible labor regimes. It must also recognize that racism as a system supports and is supported by these systems and the hegemony of the class that benefits from them. Korean unions must embrace migrant worker organizing and anti-racist struggle as fundamental to their future survival.

2. Recognize that while racism is fundamentally interrelated with capitalism it is not the same thing. Like patriarchy it will not simply die away when(if?) capitalism is dismantled (Troskyist argument). Similarly, racism is more than simple prejudice that can be overcome by understanding and tolerance. We have to fight racism on various fronts including: in

58 59

For example: Pecoud and De Guchteneire, Migration without Borders: Essays on the Free Movement of People (2007). http://www.aflcio.org/issues/civilrights/immigration/upload/immigrationreform041409.pdf

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interpersonal interactions, at work, in schools, in the media, in government policy. On the level of policy, struggle for comprehensive immigration reform that targets not only the crackdown but the segregation of migrant workers as foreigners is essential. So are demands that breakdown the racial hierarchy between dongpo and non-dongpo migrants rather than ones that perpetuate it (move from demands for full application of the Law on Overseas Koreans to demands for long-term residence rights for all.) (This work overlaps significantly with #3 above.) I have mentioned schools here as an opportunity to stress that racial categories and racism do not end with migrant workers but also affect their children. This is particularly true of the children of undocumented migrants, since their status is passed on, but also applies to the children with citizenship and one Korean parent. The effects of racism include poor school performance, high drop-out rates and inability to attend school all together. Racialized youth are already gaining attention in the media, but it is the wrong type of attention, which portrays them as victims and the objects of multicultural benevolence. This youth need to empowered as actors in their lives and their communities. What is more, they have great potential as future activists, given language skills and familiarity with migrant communities. They are therefore an important target of anti-racist organizing. There are models of youth organizing that connect youth programs to local struggles that could be studied. In the area of media representation and socially misperceptions, we need to conduct and develop education programs that expose not only the fallacy of racial stereotypes but also the function they serve in naturalizing racial hierarchies and inequalities. An astute critique of multiculturalism is part of this effort. In our interpersonal interactions we have to recognize that our actions are not isolated from the racist society in which they take place. In a racial hierarchy where we have power, our actions that maintain this power (greater access to information, greater decision-making power, greater control over money and resources, etc.) are implicated as elements of systemic racism. We need to pay special attention they way our actions, our habits of speech, our work styles, perpetuate or disturb racial hierarchies. Where they perpetuate racial hierarchies, we are responsible for actively changing them. 3. The most important element of anti-racist struggle is empowering the communities at the bottom of the racial hierarchy as social and political actors. A migrants rights movement that

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makes demands, but takes the attitude that we cannot wait for migrant activists to catch up with us and must simply push on with our activities does nothing to upset racial hierarchies. It is, therefore, not an anti-racist movement. The most important element of anti-racist struggle is empowering the communities at the bottom of the racial hierarchy as social and political actors. This means organizing, not simply the type that increases membership, but the type that creates leaders. We need to develop effective strategies and structures for organizing and empowerment. To do this will require: 1) For MTU, defining winnable objectives and building campaigns around them, implementing structures for language learning and skills trainings, drastically improving dialogue in all areas. As one example of what such a campaign might look like, I have written in the past about the possibility of developing a struggle aimed at getting job centers simply to follow their own internal guidelines about translation and investigation and processing of workplace transfer applications as a way of organizing documented migrant workers. The same article includes discussion of migrant organizing strategies used by organizations in other countries that do not have collective bargaining rights. A deeper investigation of these strategies and attempt to adapt them to the Korean context is both possible and necessary.60 2) For other KCTU unions, commitment of trained organizers to migrant worker organizing and the implementation of strategies being used in other sectors ( ), in campaigns aimed at migrant workers.

All of these ideas and strategies need to be fleshed out and concretized. One thing that is clear, however, is that if the South Korean labor movement is going to seriously take on an anti-racist, internationalist perspective towards migrant worker organizing it will have to dedicate resources not only in (as is done now), but also in the policy and international solidarity departments. In addition, if KCTU does not adopt an anti-racist, internationalist perspective and dedicate the necessary resources, it will not be able to affectively organize migrant workers. And, if KCTU does not succeed in organize migrant workers we will see a progressive weakening of the labor movement in the years to come.

See, , - 2011 , (2011 1-2 ).

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