I have arrived in Korea after spending a wonderful week in Tokyo. Language classes begin next week so I have a few days to settle down into my small apartment near Naksŏngdae station, a short bus ride from campus, and review material from last summer.
As most who have been reading anything from the Korean media or its English language weblogs know, there was just a major set of local elections here recently. It wasn’t terribly exciting as everyone had expected the conservatives to sweep the elections in all but a few southwestern strongholds. However, it was significant in that it was the first local election in Korea to allow permanent foreign residents the right to vote. Read an interesting posting by Skindleshanks, who discovered this fact. Although due to a requirement related to the length of residency, he thought he might have been ineligible, he has reported that materials regarding the election were all delivered to him and he voted successfully in the election. Yesterday in The Korea Times Kim Rahn reported on the participation of foreigners, almost seven thousand of which qualified to participate, most of which were apparently citizens of the ROC (Taiwan).
This is wonderful news and allows me to make another rambling follow-up on my recent anti-nationalist rant.
While I don’t have any good data on hand, my impression is that Korea’s move to allow foreign participation in local elections is part of a broader trend in this direction and it is not the only country to permit this. There a number of ways to interpret this. On the one hand, it can be seen as a very careful and limited step towards allowing a form of political participation on the part of non-nationals. The numbers who qualify are usually quite small and the fact that the elections are local minimizes the impact. Even moderate nationalists might approve the move as a pragmatic way to provide a kind of harmless political pressure valve through which long-term foreign residents can vent their grievances and feel like semi-members of the community.
For those of us who look forward to the eventual disintegration of the nation-state, this is an important, if very limited first step. If the numbers of foreign residents who vote increase and this process becomes “naturalized” in the political arena as a fairly regular phenomenon it has the potential to subtly change the public conception of what qualifies someone for political participation. Barring a nativist reaction, which is always a danger, alternatives to the national conception of “citizenship” might find a space in which to be nurtured.
The conception of national identity finds its concrete institutional form in citizenship which is a legal conception, confirmed variously by one’s blood (it is a profound source of shame for humanity that one’s genetic disposition remains a qualification for anything in the aftermath of the horrors of the 20th century) or a monogamous commitment to a static set of features of the national project of the host nation (which may incorporate cultural, linguistic, political, or even spiritual elements).
Note that the kind of national “polygamy” found in dual (or more) citizenship is an aberration, but one with effects not entirely unlike allowing foreign nationals political participation. With the exception of small nations that see the benefits of treating their citizenship almost entirely as an economic good, dual citizenship is barely tolerated where it is accepted. People like me who travel with multiple passports can choose whatever visa provisions and other benefits are most convenient at the moment (for example, I entered Korea on a Norwegian passport because it gets 90 days versus 60 days for the US), and rarely fully meet their tax obligations to all their associated states. As long as our numbers remain relatively small, we are only a minor threat to the legitimacy of nation and the nation-state system as a whole. At the most basic “contractual” level, it is assumed that in exchange for my submission to the duties and taxes of one state, I will receive the rights, benefits and protections that its political processes have seen fit to provide and its economic and institutional structures can bear. Since dual nationals often find their duties in conflict (eg. the inability to afford both Norwegian and US taxes; the inability to fulfill Norwegian military service while honestly answering the US passport application’s question regarding “oaths of allegiance” to other states) and we can select political leaders for multiple communities despite the difficulties in claiming to be a productive and engaged member in multiple communities at once, our promiscuity is clearly adulterous.
Why do I say “static” features? Is there no such thing as a “dynamic” nation? We might be skeptical of the recent slogan of a “Dynamic Korea” but what about immigrant nations such as Australia or Canada, not to mentioned the United States, whose very core nationalist principles are founded on the illusion that the country is somehow uniquely gifted in such virtues as freedom, toleration, and cultural diversity. Some may scoff at its exceptionalism but it is simply impossible for the United States to abandon its arrogance, even if it wanted to, because its brand of ideological nationalism (unusual in history, the Soviet Union and revolutionary France being other possible examples) has little else to turn to. Then maybe China could be seen as a dynamic nation, it is after all technically a multinational state, though we could make strong arguments against this interpretation (and not only because of the centrality of that slippery idea of a “han” ethnicity). To be honest, I have strong doubts that a “dynamic” nation is even possible. You see, I don’t believe nations can be “dynamic” and still retain any useful content.
National identity is an abstract conception – the idea that one is part of an organic body, a national body which one is born into, absorbed by, or severed from. It is alive: it can strengthen, decay, be victorious, or suffer defeat. Its fate is shared by its constituent members, or so it must claim in order to survive. Of course the nation can evolve and not even the most passionate traditionalist would claim that it is or should be completely fixed, but the myth of the nation must have a certain static quality about it because nationalism requires that there is something—a core—established at some point of origin or in the distant mists of time, which travels across time. From the nationalist perspective, the Chinese today must have some reason to believe that they belong the same body, however minimally defined, as those other cultural and political units they lay claim to in their “X thousand years of history” (For x, enter however many thousands of years of illustrious Chinese history you think they deserve). Norwegians must believe that there is something that makes us different than the Danes and the Swedes, whether we locate that “core” uniqueness thousands or only hundreds of years in the past. If our language sounds too much like a bastardized Danish, then lets go “discover” an “old” one and make all the kids learn it in school. Let the nationalist poets explore the rich potential of this new Frankenstein mishmash of dialects that poses as “authentic” Norwegian. Taiwanese nationalists must believe that there is some content to their idea of what it is to be Taiwanese, sufficiently broad to include everyone you want to include (Hakka, “indigenous” peoples, but what to do about those recent arrivals from the mainland eh?). Let us throw in just a pinch of Dutch rule, relative isolation from the mainland, sprinkle a few decades of Japanese colonial rule, and we’re not sure what you get but it sure ain’t “Chinese” anymore. When the “dogs” went home in ’45 and the “pigs” arrived, so the nationalist story might go, Taiwanese could recognize how different they were. Add the slaughter of ’47 and you have yourself a textbook narrative of national origins.
This latter organic conception of nationality, distinguished from other forms of communal identity by its link to (or passionate aspiration for a link to) the state, is the prime target of my contempt. However, it is also the most difficult to overcome. It is undeniably both the largest source of cultural production ever known to our species, but also the largest source of cultural destruction. It has inspired generations to rediscover a respect for “the people” and their customs, to recognize their important and equal role in the community but it is also the very thing which has painted their blood on every flag. And oh, how the crimson has flowed, so much so that many have convinced themselves that there is some way to inoculate ourselves from its darker side. How many of us have tried to make some meaningful distinction between “nationalism,” that nasty word that represents a warped and extreme ideology and evokes images of fascism and a bright and healthy “patriotism” which represents a warm and fuzzy love for one’s country that in Norway might evoke images of ice cream and parades on the 17th of May, or for all of us, the joyful audiences watching World Cup games. This bit of dangerous sophistry has covered the world in a snowy blanket of fluffy naivety.
The organic conception of national identity has come a very long way in just the last century or two and will probably take longer to undo. However, the legal institution attached to all this, which includes the idea that citizenship has a monopoly upon a series of desirable political rights, can be undermined by specific, if gradual, efforts in the political arena. Allowing foreigners participation in elections, and the toleration of a “fifth column” of polygamous dual citizens like me are two limited steps in this direction. However, as the word “fifth column” implies, if we were ever seen as uniting, perhaps joining with illegal immigrants in an “open conspiracy” (To borrow a term from Wells) to destroy the nation through legal or at least non-violent means, we would be quickly recognized, isolated, and crushed. Far better to go quietly about one’s business.
In the meantime, changes can happen in the minds of the broader population. Here is where the impact of foreigner electoral rights and dual citizenship radically diverge. My dual citizenship is hard to defend before nationalists as anything other than the subversive two-timing it clearly represents. However, this is not the case with offering those foreigners who have established long-term residency in a community and established their stake in that community the right to shape the political landscape. It seems like such common sense: Let us say I live in Japan for several years, I work there, I pay my taxes, I separate out my non-combustibles for the garbage, I obey the laws of my community and send my children to receive an education in your schools. What makes me so different than a neighbor with the Japanese passport that justifies their political rights and denies me the same? If my “kind” increases in number, our community will change, to be sure. You may not like it but our voice will become stronger, our votes count for more, and we may find common cause with each other and take positions you object to—that you may even find fundamentally opposed to “what we have always stood for.” The laws may change – the garbage might not always come in half a dozen categories.
But what does this have to do with an anti-national project? Why not just support more liberal naturalization laws and open immigration? How is this different than the issues being faced across the world when immigrants flow in, naturalize, and gain political rights? Curzon at Coming Anarchy has a nice discussion of how in the Japan of today, naturalized foreigners have made inroads into the highest legislative body of Japan, even while emphasizing their unique identity. We see similar trends throughout Europe, not to mention the obvious case of the “immigrant nations” of the world. Doesn’t this whole discussion merge into the heated debate over immigration in the United States? Or, in Europe, between self-proclaimed protectors of the Enlightenment and the supporters of the growing Muslim immigrant populations of the continent?
To be sure, there is a lot of overlap and this is certainly no easy issue to breakdown. I would rather save some of the details for another day, partly because I’m still mulling over my thoughts on this. I will say, however, that the debate is already loaded against the immigrant, the naturalized citizen. If they have any choice at all to migrate legally and to naturalize, then it is a “take it or leave it” package. There is a hypocrisy imbedded in the idea of national citizenship. At some level, the rights of a citizen are ultimately justified by our being human. There is no reason to think that I should be treated equally as a woman only if I am a Korean woman. I shouldn’t have free speech because I was born a Norwegian. I emphatically believe that these are not privileges, but rights. These are of course recognized by various often ineffectual international agreements as universal rights. However, as we make our way through other benefits of citizenship in, say a welfare state, we encounter things such as free public education, the benefit of public services, health care, welfare, and other benefits. There are real challenging issues with how to address the very real strain that an influx of usually poorer migrants can have on a state and a society, not to mention the linguistic and cultural challenges posed almost inevitably when societies confront the Other in their midsts, of any economic background.
I will not dismiss such problems or underestimate their complexity, but I will say that I think it is ultimately problematic to try to reduce this to a question of “our values versus theirs.” I am no fan of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that published the infamous cartoons. Its move was clearly provocative, designed to insult a religion for no other reason than to test its limits of tolerance – limits it knew well existed. For this reason, I can hardly approve of the action, nor do I accept Flemming Rose’s idea that the publication of the cartoons was some kind of benevolent “act of inclusion.” This is just not a smart way of cultivating a respect for freedom of speech and the powerful weapon of satire. However, having said that, and noting that the act itself was irresponsible, does not mean that I disagree with the principle at work. I certainly don’t sympathize with the vacillating responses by the Norwegian and Danish governments and the conservative Rose is completely on the ball when he accuses the left of being part of a kind of unholy alliance. He sees the same hypocrisy on the left that he saw during the Cold War: the uncomfortable fact that for all their compassion socialists (and I include myself among them) often blinded themselves to the violence in Communist states, whether it is the Soviet Union or the Khmer Rouge. It is the same hypocrisy that conservative commentators of Korea point out when they note how easily the violence and oppression of the North Korean state is downplayed or left unmentioned by leftists here. Of course, the right is no less talented at the art of selective memory.
The point I want to make here though is that the entire debate, for all its “enlightenment” and civilizational language, is still caught in the national trap. Unlike many of his fellow commentators on the right, Rose’s conclusion in his editorial is quite remarkable for its reasonable and moderate approach. However, it still embraces a language that is stated far more strongly across Europe when he says that requiring that immigrants, “respect their new countries’ political and cultural traditions is not too much to demand.” This sounds applaudably common sensical, but rests upon an assumption that I have tried to challenge here. It depends on the idea that immigrants are like “guests in our house.” They will take their shoes off when they come in, because that is what Norwegians do, and if they naturalize and “move in” they are expected to assimilate, even if the degree of assimilation expected may vary. The house is already built.
I don’t deny that what I am aiming for is something far more radical and far more dynamic. The idea of “guests in the house” must be replaced with a more fluid conception which needs a new metaphor: that of travelers joining each-other for a stretch on the road, perhaps. I have no complete scheme to offer here and am emphatically not claiming that some naive anarchy or all-embracing world government are the only two alternatives to the nation-state. However, I do believe that if our “cultural and political” traditions are worth anything, their legitimacy must not be anchored in the past. Nor does any nation have a monopoly upon them. Enshrining them in constitutions and textbooks cannot prevent their fossilization. This is not cultural relativism—it is free market philosophy. I may be a socialist who believes that democracy means nothing if it promises political rights while denying economic justice, but I am an avid believer in the market of ideas. If the left cannot come to terms with globalization—in all its forms, but especially of ideas, it is doomed to failure.
UPDATE: The June 7th issue of Korea Times has an article, Foreigners Cynical About New Voting Rights which emphasizes how difficult it is for foreigners to get the voting rights described. It also stresses how Korea’s economic is growingly dependent, much as Japan (not to mention Europe) has become, on migrant laborers.