As its title suggests, The Cost of Belonging by Sharon J. Yoon endeavors to unravel the multiple costs born by ethnic Koreans of varying citizenship, social class, and migration statuses as they seek to work and live in Beijing's Koreatown, Wangjing. One would be forgiven for presuming, at first glance, Wangjing to be a space where residents experience some semblance of collective identity and belonging because of their shared Korean ancestry. In documenting the patterns of migration and settlement within Wangjing, however, Yoon quickly asserts that Wangjing resembles less the immigrant communities that have dominated the US-based literature on ethnic enclaves and more the structural workings of a “miniature Seoul within Beijing” (p. 14), inequalities and all. That is, while Wangjing is definitively a “Korean” enclave based on its ethnic makeup, there is considerable social, cultural, and economic stratification among its residents, much like one would observe in Seoul. This is evidenced by the fact that different “types” of Koreans (e.g., Korean Chinese minorities, South Korean entrepreneurs, South Korean expats) live in markedly different parts of the city, work at different jobs for different wages, attend different churches, and, overall, live very different lives. These observations alone diverge considerably from the findings on Korean migrant communities in locations such as Los Angeles and New York, where co-ethnic ties between Korean migrants of different backgrounds have been argued to serve as the backbone for not only economic prosperity but also a shared sense of identity and belonging.

So, how can a trait that is so central to the well-being of Korean migrant communities in the United States have such a minimal impact on the lives of Koreans in Wangjing? Contending that “corporate interests and neoliberal restructuring have transformed co-ethnic labor relations within overseas communities” (p. 16), Yoon explains that factors related to the economic ascent and political histories of both South Korea and China have helped develop Wangjing into a “transnational enclave” (pg.11), thereby distinguishing it from the more “traditional” Korean enclaves researched in the West.

For example, the three migrant Korean groups that make up Wangjing's population—South Korean entrepreneurs, South Korean expats, and Korean Chinese minorities—though each arrived in the enclave because of the effects of global capitalism, possess vastly different economic backgrounds, outlooks, and goals. The South Korean entrepreneurs, for instance, tend to be middle-class small business owners who migrated to China in the hope of rebuilding their economic prospects following the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. South Korean expats, then, are those employed by South Korean transnational corporations (or chaebols) and assigned to work at overseas headquarters on a temporary basis. Lastly, Korean Chinese minorities are longtime residents of China with Korean ancestry who migrated internally to Wangjing seeking economic opportunity, typically from rural Korean enclaves located in the northeastern part of the country near the China–North Korea border. Though only a small subset of this overall population is employed by South Korean chaebols, all Koreans in Wangjing in some way rely on the capital brought in by these corporations and their employees. As Yoon shows, this unequal weight of and reliance on South Korean chaebol capital has important ramifications for the way Korean identity is defined and contested within the enclave's borders, especially along the overlapping lines of class status, occupation, and perceptions of morality.

The Cost of Belonging excels in several important ways. First, it provides long-overdue updates to the sociological scholarship on ethnic entrepreneurs and enclaves. The Cost of Belonging also thrusts the ethnic enclave literature into dialogue with several fields of study in which overlap has been uncommon, such as the sociology of religion, organizational sociology, diaspora studies, and feminist studies. Another strength of Yoon's book is the quality of its writing and research design. The book achieves the quite remarkable feat of being intimate and engrossing while simultaneously methodologically rigorous and scholarly. Yoon expertly incorporates ethnographic accounts, interviews, and survey data throughout the book, allowing the “field” to voice itself, so to speak, even as she curates the data with her own scholarly analysis.

In particular, the richness of the ethnography provides a transporting effect, such that readers occasionally feel that they are tagging alongside Yoon in the field. Certainly, the standout moment in the book is Yoon's recollection of the daybreak prayer service at First Presbyterian, a Korean Chinese underground church that she attended as part of her fieldwork. The sincerity and emotionality evoked in this vignette reflect Yoon's overall approach to conducting research and writing about the field, which she refers to as “vulnerable ethnography” (p. 25). In addition to helping build rapport with members of relevant communities, this methodological approach also has the effect of humanizing the author for readers, allowing the audience to gain insights into the insecurities and concerns held by the researcher and thereby instilling a possessive investment in the project's success. To that end, this book should appeal to experts and students alike.

Even with these many strengths, there are a few areas of the book that would have benefited from additional expansion or theoretical inquiry. Namely, I would have liked to see an interrogation of Korean-ness in Wangjing that included more critical race/ethnic analysis. There are instances in the book when Yoon hints at the possibility of such a project, such as in her “Note to the Reader” (p. xvii), in which she asserts that Korean-ness is “socially constructed.” But while Yoon deftly illustrates how Koreans in Wangjing consistently negotiate the parameters of Korean-ness through their day-to-day lives, rarely does she analyze these actions in relation to the larger efforts to define Korean-ness emerging from either of the Korean states or from the larger Korean diaspora. Taking a more critical approach to the (identity) politics of Korean-ness both inside and outside Wangjing would have reinforced the book's argument about the inherent messiness of using ethnicity/ancestry to group people who are otherwise very demographically diverse.

Otherwise, The Cost of Belonging provides an investigation into the inner workings of a transnational enclave that is as engaging and accessible as it is groundbreaking. It offers a much-needed shift in thinking about migrant communities, especially of the role that ethnicity plays in conferring a sense of belonging in the ethnic enclave.