The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies CCIS University of California, San Diego Non citizens, Voice, and Identity: the Politics of Citizenship in Japan’s Korean Community By Erin Aeran Chung Harvard University Working Paper 80 June 2003 1 Noncitizens, Voice, and Identity: The Politics of Citizenship in Japan’s Korean Community Erin Aeran Chung Program on U.S.-Japan Relations Harvard University Weatherhead Center for International Affairs 1033 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138-5319
[email protected] Prepared for delivery at the First Annual Summer Institute on International Migration Conference, University of California, San Diego, June 20-22, 2003. The research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Japan Foundation. 2 Abstract This paper examines the relationship between citizenship policies and noncitizen political behavior, focusing on extra-electoral forms of political participation by Korean residents in Japan. I analyze the institutional factors that have mediated the construction of Korean collective identity in Japan and, in turn, the ways that Korean community activists have re-conceptualized possibilities for their exercise of citizenship as foreign residents in Japan. My empirical analysis is based on a theoretical framework that defines citizenship as an interactive process of political incorporation, performance, and participation. I posit that the various dimensions of citizenship—its legal significance, symbolic meaning, claims and responsibilities, and practice—are performed, negotiated,