Abstract
Researchers tend to agree that migration generates potential for development, but they still ponder why migration contributes to economic development in some regions, while in other regions it may even have negative consequences. This chapter proposes a new framework for the analysis of the development impact of migration. The author argues that a study on the development potential of migration should pay attention to the economic, human and social capital that migrants can acquire and transfer to their home regions. In order to understand the process of capital acquisition and transfer, with its bottlenecks, leakages and distortions, it is important to pay attention to (1) the characteristics of the migrants, in particular their capabilities to acquire new capital and their tendencies to spend it; (2) the types of the new economic, human and social capital they can acquire and the appropriateness of the new capital for the local conditions in the home region; and (3) the policies and specific conditions of the home region. This framework helps to provide a more nuanced picture of the new capital that migration can generate in each specific migration system, and it provides a tool for a detailed analysis of the incongruities between the development potential and the actual outcomes.
The analytical framework is applied on the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Northeast China which stands out as one of the country’s major sources of international migrants. The analysis shows, that the local government in Yanbian was effective in formulating and implementing policies that promoted migration and capital acquisition, but its abilities to channel the new economic, human and social capital back to Yanbian and into viable development programs were weak. However, the massive migration-generated consumption and the concerted efforts by some migrants to establish SMEs invigorated the local economy and set into motion a process that may lead to the creation of an economic environment that encourages grassroots initiatives and private entrepreneurship. International labour migration enhanced the economic wellbeing of the community to some extent, but much of the potential remained unrealised.
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Notes
- 1.
Luis Eduardo Guarnizo has established that economic activities generated by migration and “transnational living” have complex and significant economic consequences both for the migrant sending and receiving areas. He proposes that an inquiry into the multidirectional and multilevel actions which emerge as a consequence of migrants’ desire to “lead a life that straddles across national borders” would importantly increase our understanding of the economic effects of migration (Guarnizo 2003, p. 680).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
This definition has found inspiration in the definition of economic development provided by the International Economic Development Council 2006.
- 5.
The chapter is based on the author’s PhD thesis Ethnic Transnational Capital Transfers and Development—Utilization of Ties with South Korea in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, China. Turku: University of Turku, 2007.
- 6.
The current Korean population in China is of rather recent origin. A wave of migration from the Korean Peninsula began in the seventeenth century. However, most of the migrants arrived during the tumultuous decades between the middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the Second World War. Northeast China was first a refuge for poor peasants and later a base for Korean nationalists, who fought against the Japanese colonial rulers in the period 1910–1945. After Japan annexed Northeast China in 1931, hundreds of thousands of Koreans migrated to the new Japanese-dominated state of Manchukuo, including many forcibly sent to work in factories and mines. However, the vast majority of migrants from Korea came allured by the promise of land. When Japan was defeated in 1945, there were 1.7 million Koreans in Northeast China. When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, some 600,000 Koreans returned to the Korean Peninsula, while 1.1 million remained in China.
- 7.
Si Joong Kim has discerned two generations of Chinese Korean entrepreneurs. The first generation consists of peasants who in the 1980s set up small town and village enterprises (TVEs). Their attempts to grasp the opportunities of South Korea failed in the 1990s due to the lack of skills. The entrepreneurs of the second generation which emerged during the 1990s are more educated and have travelled in foreign countries, thus possessing more skills and networks. They have been successful in trading, IT and the construction industry. However, their businesses remain local (Kim 2003, p. 119).
- 8.
The governance of international migration in Yanbian is discussed in detail in Outi Luova (2008) “Managing International Migration in China—A View from Yanbian, Northeast China”, Finnish Journal of Ethnicity and Migration 1.
- 9.
The “quality of the population” is a broad term which can mean one’s level of education, manners, moral characteristics or even appearance. Rachel Murphy has defined suzhi as “an amorphous concept that refers to the innate and nurtured physical, intellectual and ideological characteristics of a person”. Although concerns about suzhi applied to the entire population, it was particularly relevant to rural areas, which were associated with backwardness, poverty and lack of culture in general and were considered to need special remedial attention (Murphy 2004).
- 10.
This is in contrast to the experiences of Fujian, which is strategically located at the sea border opposite to Taiwan. There, the state interventions in the local economy were minimal, which allowed the local administration to take its own initiative in economic development, and which was aided by a long tradition of entrepreneurship in the region.
- 11.
Income differentials in China between coastal and inland areas correspond with those between developing and developed countries. Moreover, because of China’s two-tiered social system which excludes rural migrants from the social services of cities, Chinese rural-urban migrants have been in a similar discriminated position as international migrants. A third similarity is the geographical distance between sending and receiving localities. Solinger 1995, pp. 113–139; Kenneth D. Roberts has treated China’s domestic migration as comparable with Mexico-US migration (Roberts 1997).
- 12.
Yanbian also had numerous domestic return migrants who had established enterprises. Yet, in reports and in research they have been left in the shadow of international return migrants. Further, Zheng Yushan estimates that one-fifth of all Korean return migrants in Northeast China (provinces of Heilongjian, Jilin and Liaoning) have set up a company (Zheng 2000).
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Luova, O. (2014). International Migration and Economic Development in Northeast China—the Acquisition and Transfer of New Migrant Capital. In: Zhang, J., Duncan, H. (eds) Migration in China and Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_4
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