Mobility–ethnicity nexus in the China–North Korea borderland of Yanbian: Migration infrastructure and multi-directional flows

Abstract

Chinese nationals who are classified as belonging to the Korean ethnic minority have become increasingly mobile since the 1980s in the China–North Korea borderland. Korean ethnicity plays a significant role in facilitating migration. This article unpacks the mobility–ethnicity nexus through the theoretical lens of ‘migration infrastructure’. To investigate how the borderland residents became mobile subjects as well as the processes intertwined with Korean ethnicity, the ensemble of technologies, institutions, and actors through which migration is reproduced and mediated are examined. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study focusing on a rural community, this research analyses the multi-directional flows between the village, urban regions in China, and the two Koreas. Included are discussions on the changing state policies and regulations, diplomatic relationships between China and the two Koreas, growing migrant networks, brokers, family members, humanitarian organizations and other intermediaries that jointly organize and mediate mobilities, and the processes that are usually linked to evoking and redefining ‘Korean’ as an ethnic category. Ethnicity-mediated migration infrastructure enables villagers to move, but throughout the move they are continuously perceived as ethnically Korean. Mobility-sustained ethnicity calls for research to look at how ethnic categories gradually become relevant in everyday life, and ultimately institutionalized as people move between places.