Intra-Asian Migration and the Limits of the Asian Community

Introduction

Now more than ever, people are migrating between countries at an exponentially increasing rate. In Asia, the world's largest continent by land area as well as population, the mobility of persons and groups is shaped by government policies, formal and informal institutions at high, meso, and lower levels, and localised cultural, social, and psychological processes (Hugo 2012). People migrate not just from countries in the Global South to the Global North, but between those in the South and even vice versa; historical diaspora communities are shifting in their collective organisation and influence (Liu and Ren 2023); and the integration of peoples into society ascends perceived binaries (first vs. second-generation, temporary vs. permanent) into a greater transnational framework.

Given the relative success of multinational cooperation efforts like the European Union, the natural question is posed whether the same can be done in Asia, where a hypothetical "Asian Union" (AU) could be created in the same style as the EU. Within this AU, the peoples of the continent could graduate not just beyond the borders of their respective nation-states, but the concept of the nation-state itself, shaping their social, political, and economic structures to fit the challenges of a hyper-globalised world (Lecture by Chung, 12/11/25). Migrants would be one of the major catalysts for this change, being a vector of transnational sociological shifts and embodying the spirit of tolerance and diversity that this AU movement espouses. However, although migratory flows in the Asia-Pacific region are increasing in volume and diversifying in scope, the formal institutional and individual cognitive walls that fundamentally hinder international cooperation — e.g. nationalism, social ostracism, unequal development — are evidently far from being overcome. Motivated by economic actualisation and socio-cultural affinity, the quotidian experiences of intra-Asian migrants demonstrate individual and systemic issues which would preclude the formation of Dr. Joon-Kon Chung's proposed Asian Community.

Economic Motivation and Its Limits

A primary motivator for intra-Asian migration is economic opportunity: chances to fully utilise one's skills, the consequence of which is the obtaining of remittances to send back to the family and community. Chinese and Indian migrants to Singapore in the modern day are often highly educated and technically skilled, holding engineering, research, middle-management, or other professional jobs and attaining middle-to-upper-level incomes (Zhou et al. 2020). Care workers from Southeast Asia are incentivised and often required to hold some level of training certification, even undergoing additional training in destination countries like Japan (Lan 2022). Not only can economic motivations be strong incentives for migrants to stay in a given country, but migrants often feel a sense of duty to their families (Mahmud 2021; Zhou and Li 2016) and communities at large to send back remittances.

Although this clearly contributes to the increased intermingling of people of different backgrounds, a more nuanced examination of the actual experiences of remittance-seeking migrants suggests an invisible wall which prevents true equality between migrants and members of the host country. Generally, remittances actually reinforce socio-economic inequality in the sending communities as well as change consumption habits in ways that may not contribute to local productivity (Zhou and Li 2016). Even when poorer and female-led households do benefit from remittances, their experiences are more often characterised by sacrifice and hardship; for example, "young female entertainers in Japan and Korea are often forced to live from tips while they pay off huge placement fees, bound by contracts in near-slavery conditions; yet they can potentially earn well from tips; thus, friends and sisters willingly follow them into the same situations" (Eversole and Johnson 2014).

Further, unequal development outcomes on a national scale can be evidenced in the success of the labour-export mitigated industrialisation strategy utilised by South Korea to develop economically, as opposed to that same strategy's failure in the Philippines (Lee 2025). In this case, the systemic walls of economic and gender inequality cannot be easily overcome, as our existing conception of the nation-state still holds meaning insofar as it must be used to characterise the disparate development trajectories of various communities and countries.

Socio-Cultural Affinity and Persistent Division

Another motivator for intra-Asian migration is some sort of affinity with the host country — in terms of ethnic, historical, diasporic, or some other sense of purported belonging in that community. Co-ethnic immigrants are actively encouraged to repatriate themselves to Japan by the national government to reconnect with their cultural heritage (Chung 2021); co-ethnic immigrants are also a primary source of labour in contemporary South Korea (Yu 2023). Even if one does not share a direct connection with the country, labourers are still expected to meet certain standards of linguistic and cultural understanding with their host country. Guest labourers selected to work in Japan are either legally required or otherwise strongly compelled to possess basic Japanese conversational fluency, use traditional honorific systems, and abide stringently by Japanese laws (Lan 2022; Le 2022).

However, in spite of even strong degrees of affinity with the host society, legal systems as well as cultural perceptions still reflect divided, nationalistic, and socially isolating norms which degrade the experiences of migrants. In Japan, co-ethnic migrants who attain permanent residency have either no right to vote or only a very limited ability to run for public office (Lecture by Zhou, 1/14/26). Foreigners, too, are stereotyped: "Vietnamese workers in[…]Japan[…]have developed a reputation for breaking contracts to seek informal work" (Le 2022, p. 1196), and foreigners in Korea are stereotyped negatively by national origin regardless of race, class, or ethnicity (Yu 2023). Native-born descendants of migrants, irrespective of the number of generations their families have been in Japan, are subject to the same naturalisation process as foreign-born aliens (Chung 2021).

Even when one finds a strong co-ethnic diaspora community — where there is no distinction between themselves and native-born counterparts in the same ethnicity — conflict and social ostracisation are still felt strongly. Undocumented Fujianese immigrants to the United States experience difference from other Chinese immigrants, facing discrimination due to their accent and perceived lower status even in spite of clear economic success (Zhou and Li 2016). Native-born ethnic Chinese and Indians in Singapore, a diverse immigrant society, are seen to be socio-culturally distinct from their "new Chinese" and "new Indian" first-generation counterparts (Ho and Kathiravelu 2022). Even in cases of extreme integration into the host society, a strong sense of community, and a transnational identification with their homeland — as with the Chinese Voluntary Associations in Singapore — CVA spokespeople still see themselves as forging a unique identity conspicuously separate from being a mainland Chinese (Liu and Ren 2023). No matter how many seeming formal barriers are overcome, cognitive and cultural barriers still remain such that migrant identity and interactions are forged via difference, rather than integration.

Conclusion

Migration is motivated by major factors such as economic opportunity and socio-cultural affinity, the consequences of which may include actualisation just as much as exploitation and division along various lines. Systemic issues of inequality between communities within a country as well as between countries are fuelled by migration, as are struggles with and separations of identity on the individual level. Although an AU may one day be possible, quotidian migrant experiences are fundamentally shaped by the current conception of the nation-state, and transnationalism remains our best working framework for the future.

Works Cited

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Mahmud, H. (2021). "Beyond economics: the family, belonging and remittances among the Bangladeshi migrants in Los Angeles." Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha.

Yu, S. (2023). "Migrant racialization in South Korea: class and nationality as the central narrative." Ethnic and Racial Studies.

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Zhou, M. (2026). Lecture, Asian American Studies M179. UCLA. 14 Jan. 2026.