Abstract
The Cost of Belonging is a profound and insightful ethnographic account of various groups of Korean migrants coexisting in a shared living and working space in Beijing. It is written by a second-generation Korean American sociologist who conducted fieldwork in China during 2009–2010. Sharon Yoon skillfully weaves intimate stories of everyday life in Koreatown and original survey data of nearly 800 Korean migrants into the sociological account of solidarity and mobility. Unlike many existing studies, this book highlights “a darker side of transnational communities” (p. 5), which explores Korean migrants’ lack of solidarity and how they confront failures in running small businesses. In general, this book is a delightful read for both academic and nonacademic audiences. It contributes to the literature on ethnic enclaves, migrant entrepreneurship, and the global middle class.
The Cost of Belonging is composed of an introduction and six chapters. In Chapter 1, Koreatown in Beijing is characterized as a “highly stratified space” (p. 1) where different types of Koreans encounter: South Korean expats dispatched by the Korean conglomerates on short-term assignments, entrepreneurs who run small businesses, and Korean Chinese who are third- and fourth-generation Chinese citizens of Korean ancestry. Koreatown is also regarded as a “transnational enclave” (p. 14) that is insulated from the host society while retaining connections with South Korea. Following this, the author discloses the awkward disconnection in daily interactions between South Korean and Korean Chinese in the enclave (Chapter 3). From a transnational perspective, she attributes the disjuncture in ethnic relations to South Korea, where popular media and public discourse generate negative and notorious stereotypes of Korean Chinese (Chapter 2).
Chapter 4 continues to address the power relationships between South Koreans and Korean Chinese occurring in the workplace. The author finds that South Korean conglomerates prefer to hire young and female Korean Chinese laborers rather than male ones. They expect these women to terminate their career after marriage or childbirth which helps to legitimate a “delicate status hierarchy” (p. 97) that privileges South Korean managers who are mostly male and senior compared to their subordinates. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to compare the two Korean groups with regards to social ties cultivated in churches and economic achievements in building small businesses. Yoon explains that solidarity emerges in the Korean Chinese church rather than the South Korean one, because the Korean Chinese have generated a collective sense of marginalization by both South Korean and Han Chinese societies. Meanwhile, Korean Chinese entrepreneurs are more likely to achieve success compared to their South Korean counterparts because they stand at a structural brokering position between the South Korean and the Han Chinese groups that are divided by linguistic and cultural barriers. Finally, the author argues that youth unemployment and cleavages within the middle class in the Korean case essentially derive from the neoliberal reforms in Korea and around the globe, and international migration exacerbates this precariousness.
The Cost of Belonging raises and resolves several crucial and thought-provoking questions regarding international migration. First, it is an imperative attempt to interrogate why people who share a common ancestral heritage (i.e., Korean Chinese and South Koreans) fail to generate a sense of solidarity as they coexist in a shared living and working space. The reason lies in the limitation of ethnic and cultural origin, which cannot prevail over the influences of neoliberal reforms, economic crisis, and market deregulation that occur in South Korea and around the world. Second, the book illustrates how different institutional environments that Korean Chinese migrants are involved in (e.g., conglomerates and small firms) have affected the resources they can acquire, regardless of their liminal position as cultural intermediaries between South Koreans and the Han Chinese. This finding enriches our understanding of cultural brokerage, particularly its advantages and drawbacks generated in various settings. Third, by revealing the South Koreans’ economic failure in small businesses, the author challenges the well-established enclave theory arguing that ethnic enclaves lead to migrants’ economic success and prosperity. Rather, she points out that migrants’ capability of “broadly establishing rapport with culturally diverse groups of people” is crucial to the success of entrepreneurship (p. 166).
The book leaves two crucial questions unanswered. First, it is unclear what “the cost of belonging” exactly refers to. In my understanding, the reference might be twofold. On the one hand, Korean Chinese migrants leave their hometowns in massive numbers to seek economic opportunities in Chinese metropolises such as Beijing and in South Korea. This exodus is at the cost of losing the sense of belonging to the place they call home. On the other hand, a sense of belonging is an integral part of the emotional aspirations of the global middle class that is representative of South Koreans. However, in reality, they fail to form a sense of solidarity and belonging with co-ethnics in China. This may be the cost caused by international migration in relation to flows of global capital and neoliberal reconfiguration. Another underexplored question that Yoon raises in the final chapter is how stratification within the Korean community affects the future of politics and social movements in the transnational enclave. Despite this, The Cost of Belonging remains an excellent book that will be beneficial to academics and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, migration, and area studies.