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In-Group and Out-Group Networks, Informal Social Activities, and Electoral Participation Among Immigrants in South Korea

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Abstract

With increasing global migration, immigrant incorporation and assimilation have become a growing concern. Prior research has mostly focused on economic adaptation of immigrants in North American and European context. This study shifts the focus to political incorporation of foreign-born spouses and other naturalized citizens living in South Korea, a topic that has received very little attention. Its primary goal is to examine the relationship between bridging and bonding social capital, measured in terms of interpersonal networks and informal social activities, and formal political participation, i.e., voting. Data come from the National Survey of Multicultural Families (2012), the largest and most up-to-date government-funded research project on Korea’s burgeoning immigrant population. Using multilevel analysis, this study shows that ties to inter-ethnic contacts (native Koreans) and greater involvement in informal social life are associated with higher odds of voting among immigrants. Greater embeddedness in in-group or co-ethnic networks, on the other hand, is associated with lower odds of voting participation. Moreover, net of individual-level network and background factors, living in a community with a higher level of social activities, is related to greater electoral participation.

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Notes

  1. Some scholars have made an explicit distinction between informal and formal political participation (e.g., Gidengil and Stolle 2009; Nguyen Long 2016), while others (Pilati and Morales 2016) distinguished between mainstream and immigrant-oriented type of political involvement. While fully recognizing the importance of this conceptual dichotomy, the data analyzed in this study (National Survey of Multicultural Families, 2012) only contain information on formal or institutional political participation, i.e., voting. As such, the literature below focuses primarily on the connection between social capital and electoral politics.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A3A2046566).

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  1. Department of Sociology, Ewha Womans University, 52 Ewhayeodae-gil Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, 120-750, Republic of Korea

    Harris Hyun-soo Kim

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Kim, H.Hs. In-Group and Out-Group Networks, Informal Social Activities, and Electoral Participation Among Immigrants in South Korea. Int. Migration & Integration 18, 1123–1148 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-017-0517-1

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