Description
- Abstract:
- Demographic change, driven by immigration, is renewing debates over who belongs in society. However, scholars have overlooked how these debates influence democratic consolidation, or democratic stability and longevity, despite the topic’s saliency in the face of democratic erosion. I reconceptualize democratic consolidation to mean efforts by the state to safeguard democracy from threats, arguing that symbolic citizenship—beliefs and attitudes that delimit societal membership— influences democratic stability. Evidence from the case of South Korea, an ethnically homogeneous democracy experiencing immigration, suggests that an inclusionary notion of symbolic citizenship can advance democratic consolidation. Distributional semantics analysis of more than 4,000 public press releases and news editorials surrounding two events in South Korean immigration policy (the 2003 Employment Permit System’s Passage and the 2018 anti-Yemeni-refugee backlash) and survey data provide evidence. I conclude that, despite many immigration policies, South Korea has failed to advance an inclusive political culture. This failure contributes to fragmentation and political polarization, indicators of democratic backsliding. It is facilitated by the exclusion of migrants from political processes, and poor multicultural education. This thesis has implications for theories of democratization, democratic consolidation, and immigration policy. In today’s world, what we say about who we collectively are matters.
- Notes:
- Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2023
- Concentration: International and Public Affairs
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- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
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Citation
Lee, Annette Y.,
"Negotiating Symbolic Citizenship to Safeguard Democracy: Immigration and Democratic Consolidation in the Case of South Korea"
(2023).
International and Public Affairs Theses and Dissertations, The Watson School of International and Public Affairs Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/yb83-dc03
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The Watson School of International and Public Affairs Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the The Watson School of International and Public Affairs department....