A dramatic increase in physical mobility is a hallmark of the transition to modernity in any society. The combination of economic industrialization, mechanization of transportation and proletarianization of labor makes migration necessary for effective development. This paper will examine concepts of modernity to elucidate the central role played by migration in transition to economic, social, cultural, and political modernity. Changes in internal and external migration in 19th and 20th century China, Japan, and Korea will be examined along with conventional historiographical periodization to see how understanding modernity as movement can and should alter our understanding of East Asian history.

1. Migration and Modernity (and
Identity) in East Asia
Jonathan Dresner
Pittsburg State University
MWWHA 2016

2. • History is more sensible when a mobile,
not static, population is assumed.
• Many definitions and descriptions of
modernity fail to include new patterns
and volumes of human movement as a
primary component.
• Modernization -- the transition to
economic and social modernity -- cannot
happen without migration.
• Nationalist identity, a core component of
modernity, frequently obscure migration.

3. Consensus definition of modernity
without migration
• industrialization, labor markets, wage labor
• constitutionalism, and increasing emphasis on
rights and needs of the people
• a public sphere
• nationalism and imperialism
• individualism
• rational, scientific and technological development;
increasing application of bureaucratic, scientific,
and technological methods
• anti-traditionalism and opportunistic future-
orientation

4. Osterhammel's 19th C.
• Asymmetrical efficiency growth: industrialization
and innovation, frontier development, military
might, state control of citizenry
• Mobility increased in scale, speed, infrastructure
• Asymmetrical reference density: information
mobility, discourse of "the West," non-Western
studies
• social and legal equality as an ideal, in tension with
creation of a new hierarchy of nations and races.
• emancipation, including democratization (pressure
towards, if not success in), and legitimation of
colonialism/imperialism as emancipatory

5. East Asia and Migration: Japan
• Early Modern: dekasegi seasonal migrant
workers, high levels of urbanization, national
highways, elite mobility
• Modern: population registration, but mostly
free. Railroads and conscription.
• Steady emigration of labor, regionally
specific internal migration, and government-
sponsored colonial migrations. Students.
• Postwar colonial return migration.

7. East Asia and Migration: Japan
• 1990s return migration program:
Assumption that Overseas Japanese
descendants would be easier to assimilate
than non-Japanese immigrants.
– Emigration as frontier settlement, colonial
migration erased.
– Kenjinkai and kibei emphasize cultural
continuity
– Japanese essentialism, Nihonjinron assumes
unchanging cultural core. Internal diversity
obscured.

8. East Asia and Migration: China
• Qing: relatively liberal diasporic emigration,
remittances, traumatic displacements.
• Early 20th century urbanization,
industrialization, massive displacements.
• Later 20th century: Communist control and
forced migrations; Hukou registration.
Taiwan, Hong Kong become hubs of
diaspora.
• Student/study migration a constant.
• Diaspora as nationalistic source of pride,
remittances, potential subversion.

9. East Asia and Migration: Korea
• Choson: low labor mobility, genealogical
presumption of immobility
• Colonial: Forced modernization, Japanese
immigration and forced labor migration.
• Korean War: massive displacement
• Post-war liberal, mobile south: low
emigration, overseas adoption, rising
immigration
• Post-war communistic north: control, forced
migration, remittances critical.

10. Concluding Thoughts
• Modernity with migration at the core?
– While immigration is reasonably well
recognized, emigration is not, and internal
migration often assumed rather than studied.
– Control v. acceleration.
• Differences in East Asian migration reflect
the different experiences of modernity, but
don't seem to be causative.
• History is more sensible when a mobile,
not static, population is assumed.

11. Select Sources
• Background image from Chinese Art: anonymous Song era scroll
"Streams and Mountains"
• Cartoon: Kiyama, Henry (Yoshitaka). 1998. The Four Immigrants
Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924.
Trans. and edited by Frederik L. Schodt. Stone Bridge Press: San
Francisco, CA.
• Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2014. The Transformation of the World: A
Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Patrick
Camiller. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. 19th century
summary from 907-919.
• Adam McKeown. 2008. Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and
the Globalization of Borders. Columbia University Press: New York.
• Sztompka, Piotr. 1994. The Sociology Of Social Change. Wiley-
Blackwell: Hoboken, NJ.
• Patrick Manning. 2003. Navigating World History: Historians
Create a Global Past, Palgrave Macmillan.

12. Select Bibliography
• Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions
of Globalization. U Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London
• Prasenjit Duara. 2004. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo
and the East Asian Modern, Rowman&Littlefield
• Gluck, Carol. 1985. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late
Meiji Period. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.
• Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, and Meera Balarajan. 2012.
Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will
Define Our Future. Princeton UP
• Madeline Hsu. 2000. Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home:
Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and
China, 1882-1943 Stanford UP
• Hwang, Kyung Moon. 2010. A History of Korea: An Episodic
Narrative, Palgrave Macmillan.
• Young, Louise. 1998. Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the
Culture of Wartime Imperialism. U California Press.