Women hold more egalitarian views than men across most social issues, yet often express greater hostility toward immigrants. We argue that this gender gap depends on the kind of migration at stake. Where migration is institutionally organized to supply women as wives and caregivers, as it is across much of East and Southeast Asia, nonimmigrant women face a threat to their social standing that economic and cultural threat accounts do not capture.
South Korea is a clear case: since the mid to late 2000s, local governments have actively facilitated the entry of marriage migrants, primarily women from China and Southeast Asia, in response to rural “bride shortages.” Korean women read this market as an institution that reinforces patriarchal hierarchy and devalues their own position, while men do not. Two original survey experiments test this account.
We measure evaluations of foreign brides and of the Korean men who marry them, alongside general attitudes toward migrants and immigration policy. Economic and cultural threats predict hostility toward migrants alone; only standing threat predicts that women also revise their views of local men. The findings illuminate a source of gendered immigration attitudes that is invisible where migration is studied mostly as labor migration.
Dahjin Kim is an assistant professor of Asian studies and global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. and B.A. in political science from Seoul National University. Kim’s research examines political communication in online environments, with a particular focus on misinformation and its correction within online communities.
After the talk, the Korea Working Group will celebrate its launch and the Korean traditional holiday, Chuseok.
This event is sponsored by the Liu Institute's Korea Working Group.
Dahjin Kim's research is supported by Justice and Asia.