'This intriguing piece of work casts migrants as urban actors, desires as social forces, and the city as assemblage. This work helps readers understand how migrants, desire, and the city shape each other through their encounters. It leads us to view the relationship between migration and cities in the East Asian context through the lens of the making and re-making of Seoul.'
HaeRan Shin, Department of Geography, Seoul National University
'This is one of the first books to bring together two critical developments in 21st century Asia: the emergence of global cities and increasing immigration. Empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated and methodologically innovative, the book reveals how the making of Seoul as a global city is deeply entwined with migration as a process of becoming at the individual level.'
Biao Xiang, School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford
Global Asian City develops a novel approach to exploring the relationship between migration and cities centered on the idea of desire as a social force that drives migration. Based on the author's two landmark studies, the book draws on more than 120 interviews of emigrants to Seoul—including migrant workers from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, English teachers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and USA, and international students at two elite Korean universities—to offer a rich comparative account of the lives of different migrant groups on temporary status in the Seoul Metropolitan Region. The author focuses on the causes of international migration to Seoul, South Korea, and reveals how migration has transformed the city and nation, especially in the last two decades.
Global Asian City is a valuable source of information and fresh ideas for researchers in the fields of human geography, migration studies, urban studies, Asian/Korean studies, sociology, anthropology, and development studies.
