Sharon J. Yoon - "Finding a Way to Co-exist: Co-ethnic Relations and Mobility in the Korean Enclave in Beijing"

Sharon J. Yoon, Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

Since the 1990s, increasing numbers of South Korean immigrants have traveled to China in search of entrepreneurial opportunities. By and large, these South Korean immigrants have relied on the help of third- and fourth-generation Korean Chinese ethnic minorities to help ease the linguistic and cultural barriers they face in the PRC. Much of the secondary literature on this topic indicates that despite the fact that the South Korean entrepreneurs have access to the help of these Korean Chinese cultural intermediaries and also come with high levels of human capital, many face downward mobility. In contrast, the Korean Chinese ethnic minorities, despite their humble roots as members of agricultural communes in the rural northeastern part of China, have attracted much scholarly attention for their rapid rates of upward mobility through entrepreneurship in the enclave. My dissertation uses ethnographic and survey data on the Korean ethnic enclave in Beijing to examine what might account for these contrastive outcomes. In particular, I highlight how the enclave entraps the South Korean immigrants from acquiring the necessary cultural and linguistic skills to successfully run their businesses, while at the same time, providing the Korean Chinese ethnic minorities with access to a lucrative set of resources that they can effectively monopolize due to their culturally hybrid background.

Sharon Yoon is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Princeton University. She earned her B.A. from Dartmouth College.