Global migration statistics indicate that people are on the move, crossing national borders at unprecedented rates. Ji-Yeon Jo's study of return migration, or what she calls “legacy migration” (p. 7), offers insights into a particular sub-field of migration in which members of an ethnic diaspora decide to migrate back to what is, or is imagined to be, an ancestral homeland. Rather than conceptualizing migration as unidirectional, Jo examines migration as a process that can be circular in nature and complicated by economic, political, historical, and affective factors. The focus on South Korea is timely, given the growing body of empirical work on return migration in Asia. As a country whose concepts of nationhood are closely linked to understandings of ethnicity and shared bloodlines, contemporary South Korea is currently engaged in impassioned debate over what it means to be Korean as it transitions into a multicultural society. Jo's book looks at how legacy migrants use competing or overlapping ideas of Koreanness to legitimate their claims of “belonging” in such a South Korea.
The strength of Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration lies in its comparative and multi-sited approach to ethnicity and nationality. By putting multiple return migrant communities in conversation with one another, Jo allows us to see how Seol and Skrentny's concept of “hierarchical nationhood” plays out in the experiences of these simultaneously Korean and not-Korean individuals. National policies in their home countries of China, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) of post-Soviet republics, and the United States influence ideas of Koreanness in the diaspora. They also shape the expectations and skills that return migrants bring to South Korea. Jo uses multiple sites in South Korea, along with fieldwork in Yanji, China, to extend our understandings of legacy migration both in the homeland and abroad, where ethnic Koreans have maintained stable communities for multiple generations.
The first three chapters, which form part one, outline the historical background of emigration patterns from the Korean peninsula to China, CIS countries, and the United States, respectively. The narratives of forced exile versus voluntary emigrants reveal how historical periods mattered significantly to the original formation of these Korean diaspora communities, especially in relation to the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula (1910–45), the Korean War (1950–53), and the Cold War. Koreanness is passed down through stories, language retention, and history, and it remains an uneven yet enduring presence across the three diasporic communities.
Part two compares the challenges these three legacy migrant communities face as they strive to find a sense of belonging in an ancestral homeland that simultaneously includes and excludes them from the Korean “family.” Chapter 4 explores reasons for why these legacy migrants move to South Korea and their expectations prior to arrival. These narratives complicate neat characterizations such as “labor migrants,” “education migrants,” and “marriage migrants” commonly found in studies on immigration. Korean Chinese, CIS Koreans, and Korean Americans often inhabit a combination of these roles over the course of their migration experience. Common to all three is an initial phase of “homing” in which their physical returns fulfill some of their dreams of belonging to a homeland and provides relief from the ethnic discrimination and persecution they faced in their previous “home” countries. Economic stagnation in their home countries also serves as a “push” factor. However, these returns become more complicated as legacy migrants contend with both anticipated and unexpected culture shocks related to inclusion and exclusion. Jo outlines how the honeymoon often leads to disillusionment for these legacy migrants.
Jo's inclusion of CIS Koreans, an understudied diasporic community, highlights the multidimensional nature of the return migration experience. For example, their lower levels of attachment to Koreanness and subsequent lower expectations of acceptance in South Korea reflect their weak connections to relatives in South Korea and to ancestral hometowns. As a result, CIS Koreans are cushioned to some degree from the culture shock and perceived rejection that their Korean Chinese and Korean American counterparts face as a result of their legacy migration. Physically as well, these three communities are separated into different neighborhoods in South Korea, with very few significant overlaps with South Koreans or with each other.
Chapter 5 highlights the unevenness of South Korean nationality laws, especially the impact of the Overseas Korean Act on legacy migrants. Jo examines the “boundary, form, and value” (p. 101) of citizenship that create differences in legal versus social definitions of belonging, which becomes tied to the status of certain skills and talents. She also notes that economic and Western cultural capital privilege Korean Americans over the other two groups, even when Korean Americans do not possess the cultural and linguistic fluency of the Korean Chinese.
In chapter 6, Jo offers a valuable contribution of “linguascapes” (p. 129) to Appadurai's theoretical framework of “scapes.” Language proficiency affects the employability of legacy migrants in the South Korean labor market, which has consequences especially for Korean Chinese, whose fluency in a historically based traditional form of Korean is devalued in the context of a modern vernacular that has shifted to native-based vocabulary and integration of more English words. Legacy migrants in general often speak of being held unfairly to higher standards than other visible foreigners because of their shared ethnic ties.
Chapter 7 explores how family and kinship operate within these three legacy migrant communities. Migration often means long-term separation from family, which has the deepest impact on Korean Chinese, many of whom leave children behind in China. In her exploration of marriage migrants among those with South Korean spouses, Jo notes the ways that foreignness can remain a stigma, especially for Korean Chinese and CIS Koreans, and even transfer down to their children. The rise of multicultural families and the returns of legacy migrants foretell a reckoning in the near future regarding the close relationship between ideas of ethnicity, race, and nationhood in contemporary South Korea.
The rich narratives and comparative analysis in Homing highlight and reveal important complexities in diaspora/homeland relations within the context of return migration. Returns are not simply about shared ethnicity, as the statuses of nation-states within the global economy also shape the experiences of these legacy migrants in South Korea. Korean Chinese receive the most attention in the book. But while comparative studies cannot always treat communities equally, the experiences of CIS Koreans and Korean Americans could have been considered in greater depth—for example, in chapter 7 on transnational families. This book also opens the door to future areas of research that explore other axes of difference beyond the nation-state. Jo includes, for example, some discussion of gender in terms of South Korean citizenship policies, family registries, and marriage migrants, but this theme could be an interesting area for further study. Another lens of analysis for future studies could be generational status and the persistence of ethnic identities within third- and later-generation diasporic subjects. Overall, Homing is an important contribution to the growing interest in return migration in general and in South Korea specifically.
