Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
9-2015
Abstract
The paper examines the evolution in international commercial marriage migration from Southeast Asia to South Korea from a Complexity Theory (CT) framework, originally from natural sciences but vastly entering the field of social sciences. CT stresses the non-linear nature of complex systems that are composed of a large number of individual components operating within a conditioned boundary whose interactions lead emergent properties in an unpredictable way. The study is based on the author’s fieldwork interviews and participatory observations of marriage migrants, government officers, and social workers in South Korea in 2010-2013, which establishes five phases of brokered marriages, namely, (1) Outsourcing Brides (mid 1980s-), (2) Emerging Anti-Trafficking Norms (early 2000s-), (3) Institutionalizing Multiculturalism (2006- ), (4) Regulating Brokers (2008-), and 5) Sham Marriages and Emerging Nationalism (2010-). She explains the key elements of marriage migration as a complex adaptive system such as feedback loops, adaptation, emergence, self-organisation and agency, and suggests persistent observation and CT as an alternative methodology to study migration.
Keywords
marriage migration, South Korea, Southeast Asia, complexity
Discipline
Asian Studies | Political Science | Sociology
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Asian Studies
Volume
1
Issue
1
First Page
147
Last Page
176
ISSN
2307-9436
Identifier
10.6551/AS.0101.07
Publisher
Asian Studies Association of Hong Kong
Citation
SONG, Jiyoung.(2015). Five phases of brokered international marriages in South Korea: A complexity perspective. Asian Studies, 1(1), 147-176.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1765
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.6551/AS.0101.07