Differentiating Sedimented from

Modular Transnationalism:
The View from East Asia*

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University

The dominant literature on transnationalism regards it as an alternative way

of framing immigration, but the a priori exclusion of labor migrants from the
scope of migrant transnationalism is untenable. Evidence from East Asia
suggests that labor migrants, who are compelled by the prevailing policy
regime in the region to become sojourners, engage in what can be called
modular transnationalism. Labor migrants are East Asia’s prototypical
transmigrants when seen in light of the rising trend of immigration via
marriage migration, in which case transnationalism can be highly con-
strained by the state and cultural politics. The discussion draws mainly, but
not exclusively, from the transnational practices of migrants from the
Philippines.

Migrant Transnationalisms

As Portes (2001:182) admits, when it was first introduced, “The concept of

transnationalism did provide a new perspective on contemporary migra-

* This is a revised version of a keynote address presented at the conference on “Revisiting

Transnationalism in East Asia: Emerging Issues, Evolving Concepts,” organized by the
ASEAN University Network and the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, Bali,
Indonesia, 9–12 February 2011. The core of this paper was written while the author was a
Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. I am
grateful to Carol Hau, Nobue Suzuki, Shirlena Huang, Shim Doobo, other participants in the
Bali conference, two anonymous referees, and the editors of this journal for their comments,
corrections, and suggestions; they, of course, are not responsible for the remaining shortcom-
ings of this paper.

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 21, No.2, 2012 149
150 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

tory movements and generated a novel set of hypotheses about their

patterns of settlement and adaptation at variance with established models.”
However, it is now accepted that not all migrants engage in transnationalism,
whether in the sociocultural, economic, or political sense, and that a long-
distance relationship involving a migrant cannot be assumed at the outset
to be transnational but must be investigated empirically to establish if it is
truly the case. Rather than challenging models of assimilation and integra-
tion, Portes (2001:183) proposes that “It is more useful to conceptualize
transnationalism as one form of economic, political, and cultural adaptation
that co-exists with other, more traditional forms.” Transnationalism can co-
exist with other modes of existence, whether in the life of individuals or a
group of migrants, given that lives are not fully coherent and are subject to
“multiple orderings of reality” (Tambiah, 1990). Moreover, as I hope to
show in this paper, the type of migrant and the context of migration inflect
the practice of transnationalism and the conscious engagement in
transnational social fields.
As a theoretical starting point, this paper takes migrant transnationalism
as referring to a social process characterized by substantively bifocal
consciousness and orientation, as well as regular practices of conducting
migrants’ lives across state borders, of living out significant domains of
social life both “here” and “there.” In the words of Vertovec (2004:974-975)
who draws from Bourdieu, it involves a “complex habitus of migrant
transnationalism,” a “bifocality” that produces “a kind of cognitive ten-
sion” in the migrant who is simultaneously engaged with and oriented to
both origin and destination. As orientation and practice, migrant trans-
nationalism may be impelled or sustained by global or plural visions. In
everyday life, it is commonly mediated by electronic telecommunications,
remittance systems, and contemporary modes of travel. It implicates even
those who have not migrated who become participants in transnational
social fields. However, the orientation to the “here” and “there” and the
relations in spaces in-between should not be assumed as given or static
because these can be episodic and seasonal, and can change as actors move
through the life course or as the wider historical context changes. Embed-
ded in a processual social field, transnational practices “ebb and flow in
response to particular incidents or crisis” (Levitt and Glick Schiller,
2004:1012). Migrant transnationalism as a process has complex ramifica-
tions on identities and subjectivities and the larger social, cultural, political,
and economic dimensions that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state,
even as the realities of the nation-state remain salient for both migrants and
nonmigrants. Migrant transnationalism calls for analytical devices and an
epistemic shift away from what Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002:1007)
have referred to as methodological nationalism, “the tendency to accept the
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 151

nation-state and its boundaries as a given in social analysis,” the model of

national society as a container of sociality that tends to cut off analytically
everything beyond the borders of the state.
Despite the cosmopolitan sensibility of scholars who work in this field,
because of its theoretical birth in the Americas, the literature on migrant
transnationalism is undergirded by a strong and pervasive but often tacit
assumption that this phenomenon pertains exclusively or mainly to immi-
grants. By initially counterposing transnationalism to assimilation and
acculturation, and lately recognizing their co-existence, the unmistakable
reference is to immigrants, whether these be framed as individuals, net-
works, or communities. At one point in the evolution of this literature, this
unspoken assumption has been made explicit in the words of Castles
(2003:14) who has proposed that “[t]emporary labour migrants who so-
journ abroad for a few years, send back remittances, communicate with
their family at home and visit them occasionally are not transmigrants.” The
contradiction in this assertion is palpable in that in the same breath Castles
(2003:14) states, “[t]he key defining feature is that transnational activities
are a central part of a person’s life,” not the person’s possession of a specific
immigrant status. On the basis of this “defining feature,” labor migrants,
this paper contends, cannot be excluded a priori from migrant trans-
nationalism. Castles’s assertion is symptomatic of the privileging of immi-
grants in the transnationalism literature. Ironically, it comports well with
“the rule of sedentariness within the boundaries of the nation-state” given
that immigrants’ settlement in the destination state is “linked to the territo-
rialization of the nationalist imaginary” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller,
2002:310). Discussions of transnationalism can be subtly beguiled by meth-
odological nationalism.
The same assumption limiting transnationalism to immigrants under-
lies the question that Asis (2005:33) has raised: “The growing literature on
transnationalism and migration and development has developed based on
the experiences of migrants in regions which offer the possibility of settle-
ment. What is the relevance of transnationalism in the Asian context?” The
answer this paper proposes is that there are different types of migrant
transnationalisms, one that can be inductively inferred from the practices of
temporary or contractual labor migrants and another from the practices of
immigrants. What is needed is to understand and differentiate the trans-
nationalism of immigrants from that of labor migrants. Empirically, such as
through surveys, it is possible to distinguish the transnational engagements
of immigrants from that of labor migrants. Here, the approach is concep-
tual, but nevertheless based on available empirical data. In particular, this
conceptualization is informed mainly, but not exclusively, by studies on
Filipino migrants in East Asia, mainly Japan and South Korea, where labor
152 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

migration has occurred under peculiar circumstances, along with a limited

but increasing flow of immigrants through marriage migration. However,
before analyzing the transnational engagements of migrants in this part of
the world, there is a prior need to understand why “the relevance of
transnationalism in the Asian context” could even be raised. This requires
an overview of the historical structuring of labor migration as the prepon-
derant mode of movement in the region, which the next section sets out to
do.

The Policy Regime of Labor Sojourning

The extremely uneven development within East Asia has witnessed the
acceleration and intensification of large numbers of population movements
and cross-border flows, both regular and unauthorized, occurring along-
side other forms of regional integration. Most movers are not, at least
officially, immigrants but temporary economic migrants (guest workers),
who are involved in various forms of flexible sojourning that meet the need
for various types of workers in the region’s destinations. This heteroge-
neous group can be differentiated based on origin/destination, occupation,
gender, and other variables. They include low-skilled contractual workers
(with substantial numbers commencing in the 1980s), who move from the
less- to the newly- and older-industrialized economies in the region, as well
as highly skilled labor (becoming visible in the 1990s) who move to coun-
tries with varying levels of economic development. More recent estimates
of the population of foreign workers in Asia peg the number at 5-6 million
(SMC, 2012).
It should be noted that, although individuals with varied levels of skill
migrate for economic reasons, highly-skilled migrants, usually profession-
als, have a career to speak of which lends their migration a creditable level
of security, flexibility, and high status. They move through three different
channels: internal corporate transfers, social networks, and placement
agencies (Wang, 2008). As valued human capital, they can be offered per-
manent residence and entitled to family reunification by states that other-
wise deny settlement to the less-skilled. In contrast, low-skilled labor
migrants will be happy to have a livelihood, but can hardly refer to their
overseas work as a career. An origin country like the Philippines sends out
professionals to a diverse range of destinations in the region, ranging from
Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia to Singapore and Japan. However, their
overall numbers pale in comparison to the magnitude of labor migrants
from the same source country. Undoubtedly labor migration is the over-
whelming component of mobility within the region. As Charles Stahl
(2003:29) puts it, “While migration out of, into and within the region takes
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 153

a variety of forms—tourists, students, refugees, family reunion, labour,

business—it appears that it is migration for mainly economic reasons, and
particularly temporary labour migration, that has experienced the most
rapid growth. Labour migration is anticipated to become increasingly
important to the countries of the region for the foreseeable future.”
What is crucial to note is that low-skilled and unskilled economic
migrants in East Asia are essentially sojourners. This situation arises from
the migration policy regimes of destination states that prohibit permanent
settlement, even if some tolerate the protracted stay of migrants. As Castles
(2003:20) points out, “The perception of migrants as temporary workers
who will not settle is still very much the conventional wisdom for Asia
Pacific elites. Immigrant settlement is not officially permitted anywhere
(with some exceptions for people with high levels of financial or human
capital).” While Western Europe recruited guest workers needed in the
economic boom after the Second World War, this policy ceased officially in
1974 and many of the guest workers eventually became permanent settlers
(Castles, 1986). In East Asia, the labor migration regimes have been de-
scribed as gendered and racialized—and ostensibly copied, according to
Asis (2005:17), from those of countries in the Persian Gulf. Contract labor
systems in the Gulf and in East Asia are based on “differential exclusion”
that accept migrants “only within strict functional and temporal limits: they
are welcome as workers, but not as settlers; as individuals, but not as
families or communities; as temporary sojourners, but not as long-term
residents” (Castles, 2003:11). At one end of the continuum is Singapore’s
policy of full acceptance of low-skilled migrants, along with their exclusion
from settlement and prohibition from marriage with a local; in mid-range
is Taiwan’s policy of allowing the entry of unskilled workers in specific
industries for a limited period, with no further reentry; at the other end of
the pole is the official policy of excluding migrant labor but de facto
toleration of their presence evident in Japan.1 This latter end of the spectrum
serves as a limit case insofar as labor migration has not been the official
policy but has occurred nonetheless, a peculiar situation that calls for some
explanation.
Japan officially excludes low-skilled migrant workers, although by the
early 1980s women who worked as entertainers or hostesses began to be
legally allowed into the country on “entertainer visas” that harked back to

1
Following Japan’s lead, South Korea also implemented a trainee system to bring in
migrants to fill the need for less skilled workers in small- and medium-sized companies. The
system bred unauthorized migration and abusive working conditions. NGO efforts, among
others, led to the passage of a law in 2003 to establish a system for the hiring of foreign migrant
workers. The Employment Permit System was launched in August 2004.
154 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

the entry of jazz musicians from the Philippines who performed in clubs
exclusively for American soldiers at the end of the Second World War
(Ogawa, 2010:18–19). Falling officially in the category of Overseas Perform-
ing Artists, entertainers or hostesses are not unskilled as far as Japan’s
system of classification is concerned, although in this discussion, they are
regarded as low-skilled. In 1990, in the face of labor shortages but with the
ideology of ethnic homogeneity winning out, the Immigration Control Act
introduced severe penalties for unauthorized workers and their employers.
Nonetheless, while firmly closing the “front door” of unauthorized immi-
gration, it opened three “side doors”: to the Nikkei, the descendants of
Japanese immigrants in other parts of the world, with large concentrations
from Brazil and Peru; to “trainees,” an invented category through which
foreign workers could undergo on-the-job training in Japanese factories;
and to students in language schools, who are allowed to work (Mori, 1997).
Despite this measure, the illegal employment of workers without
proper documentation has persisted. Innumerable students and trainees
enter Japan and overstay their visas, and work as irregular migrants,
usually in 3K (kitanai, kiken, kitsui) jobs, the equivalent of the 3Ds (dirty,
dangerous, demeaning). How is unauthorized migration possible in a
strong state? Historically, most immigration to Japan after the Second
World War took the form of undocumented entry, mainly from Korea over
which Japan had been a former colonial ruler. The system “was highly
arbitrary: official responses to undocumented migrants varied, both indi-
vidual to individual and from one immigration office to another” (Morris-
Suzuki, 2006:139). A legacy of US-influenced Cold War policy, Japan
operates on “a policy under which official entry requirements remain
highly restrictive, while the government selectively turns a blind eye to the
. . . hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants whose presence serves
economic or other purposes” (Morris-Suzuki, 2006:151).
Once an unauthorized construction worker in Japan, Ventura (1992:
170–171) provides a graphic personal account of encountering the tolera-
tion of unauthorized migrants as an exercise of sovereign state power.
Having decided to “surrender” to the authorities, he still thought of dis-
simulating by pretending to be “like an illiterate”—only for the enforcement
officer to produce a highly detailed map of the neighborhood where he
thought he had lived a concealed existence:
I was shocked. Even though I had always suspected that we lived
in Koto on sufferance, I hadn’t fully appreciated that when we
thought we were hiding we were doing no such thing. All our
efforts to live invisibly were nothing more than a charade in which
the workers, the recruiters, the Mig-mig and the police all played
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 155

their part. We lived in hiding. They pretended not to see us. When
public opinion demanded, they made a token raid. For the rest of
the time, we were a necessary evil. We thought we were so clever.
We thought we knew the ropes. Whom did we think we were
kidding?
It is estimated that one out of every four irregular migrants who are
detained or arrested is subsequently given a provisional release order and
granted a special permission to stay, at the discretion of the immigration
officer (Jimenez, 2011a).

Labor Migrants vis-à-vis Immigrants

Given this policy context in East Asia, the theoretical optic cannot be on
immigrants, who have been the overwhelming focus of the literature on
transnationalism issuing from the Americas. In East Asia, the theoretical
orientation, by necessity, must focus on forms of mobile labor—whose
journeys take the homeland as the final destination, although this end can
be deferred or avoided by journeying on to another destination. Migrants
may opt to overstay their nonworking visa and engage in illegal employ-
ment in the hope of dodging the authorities and postponing the day of
return to the homeland or migration to another country, but the threat of
deportability haunts the unauthorized. Whether their stay is legal or not,
they are bound to leave their current destination. Yet, the timeframe of such
a journey cannot be predetermined.
Contract labor migration can last for a short period, but very often
migrant workers spend many years overseas, some in a single destination,
while others move and find opportunities elsewhere. The transience of
labor migration can be highly indeterminate, rendering temporary as a
descriptor of labor migration rather vacuous. One study of irregular mi-
grants from the Philippines found one such migrant to have stayed unde-
tected in the destination for as long as seventeen years; some migrant
workers in Japan have overstayed their visas for eleven years (Battistella
and Asis, 2003:71, 100). Jimenez (2011b) has encountered a Filipino who has
been an irregular migrant in Japan for twenty-six years now.
The stages of labor migration, starting from desiring to work overseas
through to the period of overseas employment until the putative return to
the homeland, can be cast in terms of a ritual journey, a secular pilgrimage
that requires personal sacrifices and an element of gambling. This experi-
ence puts the migrant in a position of double liminality in relation to two
societies, the origin and the destination (Aguilar, 1999). Even in reaping the
rewards of overseas work, the worker also contends with and acts on the
156 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

basis of a dual frame of reference that holds the “here” and “there” in
creative tension until the sojourn reaches some sort of resolution. On
completing a contract of employment, the migrant worker may return to the
homeland and there attain a prestigious new status as a generous financial
savior to the kin group; a trustworthy kin, friend, or fellow villager; and an
enviable role model in the local community. The migrant’s personal agenda
may be subsumed in the outward journey, but “earning money for the
family” based in the origin is often the justification for working abroad and
the source of meaning for what many migrants frame as a life of sacrifices.
The journey eventuates in the marked transformation of migrant
subjectivities, which makes them adept at repeat migrations.
Under these circumstances, the hard distinction between labor mi-
grants and immigrants is difficult to sustain. Even when the duration of
overseas work is not protracted, labor migrants exemplify bifocal con-
sciousness and orientation and conduct their lives across state borders.
Research in an upland Philippine village called Barangay Paraiso shows
that migrant workers do engage in the types of activities associated with
immigrant transnationalism (Aguilar, 2009; Aguilar et al., 2009). In advocat-
ing the significance of immigrant transnationalism, for instance, Portes
(2001:188) states that it is possible for “successful transnational entrepre-
neurs [to] eventually return home, taking their families along. The common
practice among immigrants of investing in land and ‘retirement homes’ in
their communities of origin points in this direction.” The landscape of
Barangay Paraiso and countless other Philippine villages have been dra-
matically transformed through the investment of precious resources in
house construction, an investment in memory and ritual of belonging and
anticipation of return pursued by labor migrants, including seafarers
(Aguilar, 2009).
Portes (2001:188) also mentions the importance of language acquisition:
“The process of assimilation has been conventionally described as the
gradual learning and adoption of the language, culture, and behavioural
patterns of the receiving society and corresponding abandonment of those
of the countries of origin. This process was traditionally regarded as a
precondition for the socio-economic advancement of immigrants.” Labor
migrants do acquire a level of proficiency in the language of the destination;
although this may be rudimentary, this functional literacy aids them in their
day-to-day working lives, although it may not enable them to find better
employment. This is often the case of Filipino labor migrants who generally
have a facility for acquiring the language of their destination. They thus
exhibit a trait of conventional immigrant behavior without being immi-
grants and definitely without abandoning their mother tongue.
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 157

Portes (2001:191) also highlights the significance of immigrant

transnationalism for local development: “towns and rural communities in
sending countries that have civic committees of their natives abroad are
definitively better off in terms of physical infrastructure—from church
repairs to paved roads and health centres.” Labor migrants, too, have been
involved in similar local-level development. Gibson, Law and McKay
(2001:365) have called attention to the “economic activism” of migrant
domestic workers whose involvement in “multiple class processes . . .
allow(s) them to produce, appropriate and distribute surplus labour in
innovative ways” in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Reflecting on the
celebrated case of Pozzorubio, Pangasinan Province, which has seen the
active development assistance provided by its local diaspora beginning
with domestic workers in Hong Kong in 1993, Opiniano (2002, 2005) has
advanced the case for migrants’ “transnational philanthropy.”
Whether in terms of some form of language acquisition in the destina-
tion as well as various forms of investment and civic participation in the
origin, there can be no strict differentiation between labor migrants and
immigrants. The situation in East Asia is further complicated by the fact that
the immigrant status of a marriage migrant often shades into that of a labor
migrant (or vice versa), as will be discussed later. That substantial domains
in the life of labor migrants parallel those of immigrants makes the exclusion
of migrant workers from the scope of transnationalism difficult to maintain.
Labor migrants engage in transnationalism just as immigrants do. The next
section examines some of the ways by which labor migrants in East Asia
practice transnationalism in variable situations that compel them to lead
lives that span at least two countries.

Modular versus Sedimented Transnationalism

Emblematic of the sojourner are the entertainers who work in Japan’s

nightlife industry (Ballescas, 1992; Fuwa, 1999; Anderson, 1999)—although
their numbers have dwindled considerably with the imposition of visa
restrictions since March 2005, while a small stream to South Korea has also
emerged. Entertainers go to Japan on a three-month visa, renewable for a
similar period, for a total stay of six months. While in Japan they are
provided living quarters, which can be very cramped; they subsist on living
allowances and clients’ tips, and receive full compensation only at the end
of the contract period. For these workers, planning for the return to the
homeland begins as soon as they land in Japan (Parreñas, 2010). Filipinas in
this occupation acquire balikbayan (homecoming) freight boxes that they
fill up with presents as well as food items they would consume on their
return to the Philippines. They remit funds to their families based on their
158 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

daily earnings; they regularly send text messages and make phone calls,
usually using prepaid cards. They may scout for a better club or better
placement agency for the hoped-for return trip to Japan. When in the
Philippines, they strategize for the life they will lead anew overseas. They
may maintain contact with some regular Japanese customers to retain their
patronage in the future, or some of these men may be the ones to seek out
the entertainers while they are in the Philippines. These workers may take
singing or dancing lessons for visa application purposes and to enhance
their trade on their return to Japan. At any given place, they lead their lives
both here and there, but the here and there alternate and switch places. Their
modular transnationalism is evinced by the transportability of their
transnational practices between the origin and the destination, arising from
their state-enforced pendular mobility.2
The situation of entertainers finds a parallel in the domestic workers in
Taiwan, who are legally allowed to work there for at most three three-year
contracts (for a maximum stay of nine years), with compulsory return to the
homeland at the end of each contract. This policy has bred extralegal
measures to ensure that, once in the homeland, migrant workers can return
to Taiwan, even beyond the legally allowed number of years (Lan, 2006:52–
53). The situation of other migrants in East Asia may not be as stark as the
case of these workers in Taiwan insofar as they may not be required to
return, periodically and after a set period permanently, to the homeland;
nonetheless, other labor migrants live with an imminent sense of departure
from the destination. The extreme cases of entertainers in Japan and
domestic workers in Taiwan, in fact, amplify the situation of contractual
labor migrants in the region. Among other things, sojourning increases the
probability of transnational engagement with kin and associates in the
homeland. Virtually every labor migrant sends home remittances on a
regular basis, which can be inferred from the fact that households that
receive remittances spend these primarily on subsistence as well as educa-
tion and other needs (Tabuga, 2007; Ang et al., 2009).
Although labor migrants in East Asia cannot become permanent set-
tlers, a situation that ensures regular and sustained transnational engage-
ment, such engagement is not necessarily simple and straightforward. On
the contrary, prolonged and legal (as one can transfer from one contract to
another without a mandatory return to the homeland) but impermanent
stay may produce a particular instability in the sojourner’s existence.
Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, for instance, experience and get

2
For a comparable discussion of the transnational mobility of cabaret dancers in Switzer-
land, cf. Dahinden (2010).
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 159

accustomed to a sphere of autonomy and a new sense of personhood as they

become acclimatized, so to speak, to a migrant worker’s life. “The feeling
that ‘it is sometimes difficult to go back’—described to me in more or less
poignant terms by several women—was not uncommon,” Constable
(2002:391) has observed. As a result, return visits may be avoided to
maintain the coherence of self, as homecoming risks its “fragmentation.”
Sending home remittances and making phone calls may thus become
deliberate strategies to substitute for return visits. In the terms of Levitt and
Glick Schiller (2004:1010–11), these migrant workers may engage in “ways
of being,” producing a traffic of interactions and practices to sustain
relations with the origin, but their “ways of belonging,” practices that enact
identity, may be more oriented to life in Hong Kong. Actors in these
situations attempt to reduce the extent of modularity in their practice of
transnationalism.3
Further, the transformation of migrant subjectivities can be such that,
despite the inevitability of return, one adapts many aspects of the destina-
tion “in the meantime.” Even if legally they are not allowed to become
permanent settlers, labor migrants acquire bits of cultural capital, such as
picking up the language of the destination. Entertainers in Japan, for
example, must learn some smattering of Japanese or else they could not do
their nightly job that requires conversing with clients and could not earn tips
from them. Language proficiency is part of the set of skills that entertainers
must work on to get higher salaries in their future sojourns (Fuwa and
Anderson, 2006:118–19). They also develop social capital by developing
relationships of trust with a network of key Filipinas and Japanese persons
(perhaps boyfriends), which enable them to meet the goals of their sojourn.
Thus migrants acquire social and cultural capital in the destination, in
combination with social and cultural capital in the origin, as strategies to
ensure the circular and continuous mobility of their labor. Irregular mi-
grants who cannot travel back and forth make similar adjustments: “One
long-term overstayer (nine years) explained that he was able to stay for long
[in Japan] because, ‘I had adapted to their lifestyle, their way of dressing; I
also learned the language, hence no one would take me for a Filipino. Even
in the malls, the other Filipinos thought that I was a Japanese’” (Battistella
and Asis, 2003:100). In other words, even without a state policy on settle-
ment and assimilation, labor migrants in both regular and unauthorized

3
In the case of unauthorized migrants, departing the country of employment to visit the
homeland entails a very high risk that they may not be readmitted; this situation forestalls
modularity. But other aspects of transnationalism remain, particularly remittances and
telephony.
160 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

circumstances embark on the road toward assimilation and may exhibit

some behavior analogous to the sedimented transnationalism of immi-
grants.
Moreover, the policy-dictated predominance of individual, single-
gender, and occupation-specific migration streams from preselected coun-
tries—females in caregiving and domestic and entertainment services;
males in manufacturing, construction, and related jobs—makes for
transnational engagement with families in the origin inevitable, the family
being the raison d’être for the migration of most workers. Given low pay
and legal constraints, a Filipino factory worker in South Korea, for instance,
cannot transplant and bring his family over from the homeland to the
peninsula. To make up for the separation of family members, he resorts to
intensive, even daily, transnational communications, usually via SMS text
messaging.4 Should the worker manage to lengthen his stay abroad, he
begins to craft a life with a semblance of sedentariness but not permanence
or even long-term denizenship, for someday his departure from South
Korea is almost assured. While in that country, a sense of community with
other Filipinos as well as Koreans—blending ways of belonging to two
national groups—is simulated in a locality such as the “Filipino village”
(Lee, 2006b). In the meantime, income earned abroad is earmarked for kin
in the homeland, their daily subsistence as well as investments in education
and possibly house construction. This bifocal orientation arises from the
sojourning nature of their lives. Female migrant domestic workers also
practice this same basic orientation as they craft lives in the destination
while maintaining kin relationships transnationally (Asis et al., 2004; Con-
stable, 1997; Chin, 1997; Lan, 2006; McKay, 2010).
Cultures of relatedness that bind together the kin group become
transnationalized as labor migrants do their best to sustain ties across
borders (Aguilar et al., 2009). Where place denotes a shared history of living
together and doing things together—the process of kinship—residents in
the origin are enabled by telecommunications media to conjure transnational
togetherness with the absent member and thereby register a profound
transnational practice (cf. Vertovec, 2004:976). Given that transnational ties
are not static, sometimes the imaginings of kin in the homeland—such as
about the ease of earning money abroad, which produce different under-
standings of ways of being—can be at odds with the realities of the migrant’s
life abroad, resulting in ambivalent relationships and even intrakin misun-

4
For a similar practice among Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong, cf. McKay
(2010:335).
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 161

derstanding and conflicts (Suzuki, 2005; McKay, 2010). Amid the reconsti-
tution of cross-border kin ties, which may or may not always be successful,
the transnational configuration and maintenance of migrant workers’ fami-
lies is one of several contemporary transborder strategies and arrangements
of social reproduction. In this regard, amid the changing context in Japan,
women migrants may undergo several changes in social status and roles,
such as from being an entertainer to a marriage migrant, who then becomes
a paid caregiver in an institution for the elderly (Ogawa, 2010; cf. Suzuki,
2007).
That sojourning provides the basis for sustained and substantial
transnational engagement results in behavior of labor migrants that puts
them diametrically opposite those of immigrants, especially in the US, in
whose case engaging in transnationalism is an option that they may or may
not take. In fact, transnationalism among immigrants in the US is not
pervasive at all (Waldinger, 2008). Many immigrants may feel a sense of
belonging to the kin group and the national homeland, but their ways of
being do not lead to substantial engagement in transnational social fields.
As Levitt and Jaworsky (2007:131) have noted, “surveys conducted by
Portes and his colleagues (Guarnizo et al., 2003; Portes et al., 2002) found
that habitual transnational activism was fairly low, and that only 10 percent
to 15 percent of the Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Mexicans [sic; Colombi-
ans] they studied participated in ‘regular and sustained’ transnational
political and economic activities,” adding to the criticisms against the very
concept of transnational migration. Most of these immigrants “engage in
some kind of cross-border activity,” such as sending remittances, but do so
only “occasionally;” transnational entrepreneurs who form a “distinct class
of immigrants who engage in these [transnational] activities on a regular
basis” account for only five percent of the total (Portes et al., 2002:283–85).
Portes (2011:503) summarizes these findings as follows: “More recent
studies have shown that acculturation, political incorporation and
transnationalism can co-exist and that better established, more legally
secure and more affluent migrants are those most likely to take part in
transnational activities. By the same token, these are the migrants most
eligible to acquire the citizenship of the host nations and most capable of
participating in its civic and political life.”
Scholars studying the US setting have found it expedient to delineate
the “strictly” transnational from what is not, or to distinguish “narrow”
(and constant) versus “broad” (and occasional) transnationalism (Levitt
and Jaworsky, 2007:132; cf. Itzigsohn et al., 1999). One could make analo-
gous distinctions in East Asia, although no comparable studies have been
conducted so far. The point is that in the United States permanent immigra-
tion—even the undocumented can find avenues to legalize their immigra-
162 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

tion somehow (Coutin, 2005:201)—makes it possible to “switch off” the

homeland or to choose from a “menu” of transnational engagements, any
of which is voluntary and optional. Theirs is the sedimented transnationalism
of immigrants, in contrast to the modular transnationalism of sojourning
labor migrants in East Asia, typified in the extreme by entertainers in Japan
and domestic workers in Taiwan.
Thus, the sedimented transnationalism of the well-established migrant
can be contrasted with the modular transnationalism of the labor migrant,
each type of transnationalism taken as an ideal type, an abstraction inferred
from empirical observations. The immigrant who practices sedimented
transnationalism is the active agent who draws voluntarily but strategically
from a repertoire of ways of being and ways of belonging that are mobilized
simultaneously in relation to both origin and destination. This type of
transnationalism proceeds from the immigrant’s secure rootedness in the
destination. It is the emblematic way of life of a select group of immigrants
who combine assimilation, acculturation, and political incorporation in the
country of settlement with transnational engagement with one’s origin.
Immigrants who choose not to define their lives in terms of sedimented
transnationalism refrain from translating ways of belonging (particularly to
the origin) into ways of being in transnational social fields.
In contrast, the labor migrant as a sojourner is a liminal figure, with an
overseas location but no secure base except in the homeland. Uneasily
subsumed in the society of employment, the migrant worker has no option
but to practice transnationalism and to do so in a modular manner: the
migrant’s transnational practices are transportable and are performed in
variable locations as a strategy of sustaining the journey, for the sojourn
itself is contingent upon transnational social fields. The migrant worker
often labors in the grey zone of the law, yet the working environment
demands some degree of acculturation and the labor migrant must accumu-
late some cultural and social capital in the destination in addition to those
built up in the origin, as strategies to ensure the continual deployment of
labor overseas. The migrant worker cannot have a single orientation fo-
cused on either origin or destination, because the exigencies of both sending
and receiving states as well as the requisites of the job and the expectations
of kin compel the worker to remain engaged transnationally. Modular
transnationalism is inherent in the migrant worker’s way of life, who must
hold in tension ways of being and ways of belonging in the dual sites of
origin and destination.
The above juxtaposition of types of transnationalism is informed by
observations on labor migrants in East Asia and immigrants in the United
States. In East Asia, immigration and permanent settlement through mar-
riage migration may not necessarily translate to political or even social
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 163

incorporation.5 As the next section demonstrates, the standing of a marriage

migrant may not be too different from that of a labor migrant, but with
circumstances in the household and the wider culture restricting the mar-
riage migrant’s maneuverability to engage in transnationalism. Seen in this
light, migrant workers remain the quintessential transmigrants in the
region.

Marriage Migration and Constraints on Transnationalism

The internationalization of marriage and family formation is evident in

recent patterns of marriage migration in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan,
Singapore, and China, some with the support and encouragement of muni-
cipal or provincial political entities, which occur often in response to the
profound demographic transitions in these countries (Bélanger et al., 2010;
Jones and Shen, 2008; Lee, 2008; So, 2003; Wang and Chan, 2002). Marriage
and family formation to reproduce the kin group — along with the educa-
tion of children, the day-to-day economic maintenance of the family, the
care of very young and very old dependents, and retirement — are major
facets of population movements across contemporary East Asia (Douglass,
2007; Huang, 2007). Relying frequently on feminized migrations, social
reproduction is increasingly internationalized and transnationalized, with
variable outcomes depending on the intersections of kinship systems,
gender relations, stages of family formation, generational dynamics, class
positions, migration strategies, and state policies, including feeble attempts
at multiculturalism (Lim, 2010; Graburn et al., 2008).
Marriage migration, however, can constrain the transnational engage-
ment of foreign brides. State policies are a major factor. Although no longer
a problem in South Korea since 2002, in Japan foreign spouses are not
immediately granted permanent residency upon marriage to a Japanese
national. They acquire spousal visas ranging from six months to three years,
which replicate the instability of the labor migrant’s sojourn. Spousal visas
need the Japanese partner’s sponsorship. Hence, if the woman separates
from her husband, she cannot legally stay in Japan unless she is the legal

5
In East Asia, sizeable immigrant communities exist, some having had a long history of
settlement, such as the overseas Chinese across Southeast Asia and Koreans in Japan. They
cannot be included in the present discussion due to space constraints, but transnationalism in
the past did exist among these immigrants. Studies that investigate any continuity to the
present of earlier transnational practices can provide a basis for understanding migrant
transnationalism, and its ebb and flow, in the longue durée, currently a major lacuna in the
literature.
164 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

custodian of her children, who must have Japanese nationality. Until

recently, to gain residency in Taiwan took eight to ten years, and spouses
from mainland China were not allowed to hold jobs until they became legal
residents (Jones and Shen, 2008:19). Since August 2009, the wait for citizen-
ship has been reduced to six years, and Chinese spouses (i.e., from the
People’s Republic of China) can obtain residency and work rights upon first
arrival, but—given the authorities’ assumption about the intractable im-
print of the mainland on these women—are subjected to a lesser form of
citizenship, with severe restrictions on family reunification (Friedman,
2010). In countless cases across East Asia, marriage migrants are not
acknowledged as full members of the society into which they have married
(and they themselves may fantasize about being elsewhere)—which can
make them feel and behave like sojourners even if legally they have become
permanent settlers and immigrants.
In marriage migration, remittances to the homeland can be unsettled by
the clash of family ideologies, the outcome of cultural politics that impede
the migrant bride’s expression of ways of belonging and attendant ways of
being. “In marriage contracts, for example, some Filipinas have had to agree
that they would not remit money to their natal families because this would
result in their families’ dependency on their daughters and, more problem-
atically, on their affinal Japanese ie ” (Suzuki, 2003:409). Because of remit-
tances, such wives may be “caught between rival expectations of [their]
natal and affinal families,” particularly when their Japanese husbands feel
bound to honor their traditional familial duties (Suzuki, 2005:133, 139).
Forced conformity to behave as ii oyomesan (ideal traditional bride) sug-
gests that the foreign bride must assimilate Japanese culture in order to raise
a “Japanese” family. At home, she may be barred from eating Filipino food
and maintaining a sense of her Filipino identity. The husband and his kin
may intentionally derail the cultural identity of children of mixed mar-
riages, especially in rural areas, by suppressing the non-Japanese identity
and culture within the family, some even forbidding visits to the maternal
homeland (Satake, 2008). In these immigrant cases, there is no fertile ground
for transnationalism to flourish for both the migrant and her children.
Thus, patrilineal concerns, which accede to sourcing foreign brides to
sire offspring who can perpetuate the family name, also seek to cut off these
brides from their natal land. In South Korea, official regulations echo the old
norm that “a married daughter ceases to be a daughter” (Lee, 2008). Given
familial and societal restrictions, in cases where the Japanese husband
supports his Filipina wife’s sending of remittances, and even allows trips to
the homeland, perhaps letting her work outside the home to earn money for
these purposes, the wife is deemed “lucky” (Faier, 2007:156). Husband and
wife may even dream of or actually retire in the wife’s homeland (Suzuki,
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 165

2005). Where the husband does not support the sending of remittances,
wives may run away from their Japanese husbands and families (although
there may be other reasons for such desertions) to become a migrant worker
and be able to remit money to kin in the Philippines—running away thus
becoming a deliberate transnationalizing strategy (Faier, 2008), a bold
assertion of a migrant’s way of belonging to home and homeland.

Conclusion

Migration regimes in East Asia generally do not welcome labor migrants as

immigrants and permanent settlers. State parameters make migrants into
sojourners, constraining them into a way of life that makes labor migrants
the prototypical exponents of transnationalism in this part of the world.
Certainly no logical ground exists for the assumption in the literature that
reserves this field of human activity to immigrants. Besides, the conceptual
line that divides the immigrant from the labor migrant is thin and porous.
Rather, it is possible to compare and differentiate transnationalisms, two of
which have been identified here: the sedimented transnationalism of immi-
grants in the United States and the modular transnationalism of labor
migrants in East Asia as two contrasting ideal types. In contrast to the
former, modular transnationalism inheres in the life of migrant workers.
What has not been possible to include in this discussion is the vibrancy
of the political sphere in labor migrants’ practice of transnationalism. For
instance, as indexed by participation in elections as absentee voters, politi-
cal transnationalism has been demonstrably more intense and widespread
among migrant workers than immigrants from the Philippines (Aguilar,
2007; Rojas, 2009). The transnational engagements of the small but growing
number of highly-skilled migrants in East Asia has not received adequate
scholarly attention, in much the same way that the long-term transnational
practices of members of long-settled immigrant communities have not been
studied and analyzed. Moreover, there is need to examine the flows of ideas
and practices between migrant origins and destinations, and the ways in
which micro level migrant transnationalism intersects macro level cultural
and economic flows. For such future work, the recognition of the pervasive
and peculiar transnationalism of labor migrants in East Asia can be a useful
starting point, which can be illumined further using fresh, but always
comparative, theoretical lenses.
166 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL

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