Abstract
Identity crafts for migration and citizenship purposes require the assistance of brokerage actors that help secure documents, advise on self-presentations, and vouch for relevant credentials. While recognizing the contradictory roles these intermediaries play in both facilitating and controlling migration and the porous boundary between for-profit and non-profit actors, scholars have yet to explore what challenges these characteristics pose to the organization of a particular brokerage transaction. How do these intermediaries reconcile their roles as migration facilitators and surrogate gatekeepers? Does it matter to present the transaction as driven by financial rewards or other loftier goals? How are the boundaries between different types of intermediaries enacted and contested? I explore these questions through the case of a religious organization that helps migrants establish their religious identities for asylum claims-making on religious grounds. Combining insights from the “relational work” approach with ethnographic research in Korean evangelical congregations in the U.S., I show how the template of gift giving allows the church to focus on making the faithful as God’s intermediary, instead of screening them as the state’s private deputy, and avoid an accusation that its trade with asylum-seekers turns the Christian persona into a quasi-commodity. The boundary between the church and commercial brokers, between gift giving and market exchange, however, is constantly contested and renegotiated through the interaction between the transaction parties. In conclusion, I discuss how the relational work approach can advance our comparative inquiry into the brokerage transactions facilitating the “profane” exchange of “sacred” identities for migration and citizenship purposes.
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Notes
I further develop elsewhere the concept of “unauthorized identity craft” in the context of international migration, proposing it as a better alternative to a more common term “identity fraud.” The latter term takes for granted the state’s monopolistic claim to the truth of individual identities. “Unauthorized identity craft,” by contrast, allows us to explore the conditions of this “symbolic violence” that recognizes only some identity claims as “legitimate impostures” while defining others as “frauds” (Bourdieu, 2000). The concept of “unauthorized identity craft” emphasizes the performative dimension of identity and problematizes a clear distinction between passing and authentic identities (Goffman, 1959b). But as compared to the conventional symbolic interactional approach, the concept takes into more serious account the power of the state and structural inequality in answering the question of what make certain identity claims more legitimate than others.
People-changing organizations seek to achieve changes in their clients “by altering their basic personal attributes,” whereas people-processing organizations “by conferring on them a public status and relocating them in a new set of social circumstances” (Hasenfeld, 1972:256).
Due to the largely clandestine nature of Korean Chinese migration to the U.S. and the limitations in existing entry records (which do not distinguish Korean Chinese from other Chinese citizens), it is difficult to measure the size of the Korean Chinese population in the U.S. As of 2014, community leaders estimated the number to be somewhere between 40,000 to 60,000 and growing.
If individuals apply for asylum after being placed in removal proceedings (due to the absence of valid entry documents or legal status), they are funneled straightly to the immigration court without interviews with asylum officers.
There are several reasons why Korean Chinese asylum-seekers choose Korean immigrant rather than Chinese immigrant congregations. Even if they speak both Korean and Chinese, many feel more comfortable with Korean as a result of the distinctive minority policies of the PRC. Moreover, because of the history of Chinese migration to the U.S., the lingua franca of many Chinese American congregations is likely to be Cantonese or Fujianese, which they do not understand as Mandarin speakers. The lives of Korean Chinese migrants are also more deeply embedded in Koreatown than Chinatown due to the aforementioned language barrier and the higher wage level in the former. Lastly, ethnic Korean missionaries and churchgoers (often their own employers) have played a critical role in their initial exposure to Christianity throughout their prolonged migration careers (Kim, 2019a:947), influencing their language of faith.
Regarding the questions this article focuses on, I found little significant difference between the two cities and between the two churches (which belong to different denominations) where I conducted fieldwork. Furthermore, while my fieldwork was limited to Korean American congregations, my interlocutors as well as a few journalistic and fictional accounts currently available confirm that similar observations can be made in Chinese American congregations as well (Semple et al., 2014; Hilgers, 2018).
To illustrate, in May 2012 when the Obama administration officially pronounced its support for the legalization of same-sex marriage, participants of the weekly prayer gathering prayed for God to save America from moral degeneration. This account that turns the former missionary discourse about heathendom in Asia and Africa upside down is commonly found among second-generation Asian American evangelicals as well as African or Vietnamese Pentecostals in Europe (Krause, 2011).
In fact, it was impossible for many church members whose asylum cases were still pending to participate in this missionary trip even if they wanted to. Many of those who had obtained permanent residency through asylum were also worried that their reentry into the U.S. might be jeopardized if they traveled to the country where they had been allegedly persecuted. It is then not surprising that most of the participants in this missionary trip turned out to be South Korean or American passport holders. What seemed more important than persuading Korean Chinese church members to participate in the trip was to expose them to this ethnoreligious narrative consistently.
This statement is not limited to those who are not serious about their Christian persona. As mentioned earlier, the primary motive for migration of Christian asylum-seekers is not radically different from that of their non-Christian counterpart.
A single female evangelist complained to me that a new church member tried flirting with her every time she called him, teasing that her frequent calls must be an expression of her interest in him as a potential date. This was by no means a common incident, but it is nonetheless an illuminating one, demonstrating that the meaning of a transaction is an interactional achievement.
These are not the majority of Korean Chinese church members. I nonetheless focus on these vocal minority, as it is the encounter between them and the church that brings into sharp relief the interactional nature of relational work.
The church staff I interviewed did not categorically deny these rumors and reports. They rather tried to distinguish their own church from other churches that might be corrupt.
One of the most well-known examples of taboo exchanges in history concerns the intertwining between religion and economy: the issuance of indulgence in the medieval Catholic church. It is the commerce between the material (e.g., money, certificates of membership and baptism, etc.) and the spiritual (e.g., salvation, blessing, and faith) that makes indulgence in the medieval Catholic church, tithing in Prosperity Gospel, and the church’s transaction with asylum-seekers under examination all potentially scandalous.
Sustained academic analyses of similar phenomena involving other religious traditions are rare. I suspect that the emphasis placed on proselytization (as compared to Catholicism or Judaism), vibrancy of the transnational missionary network, and societal hospitality toward Christian migrants (as compared to Muslims) in the West partly explain why the Protestant church of various denominations is featured more centrally in this configuration than other religious organizations. Moreover, if Uighurs from China, Rohingyas from Myanmar, or Muslims from the Hindu-dominated region in India apply for asylum in the West, their Muslim identity is likely to be treated as equivalent to an ethnic minority identity, the verification of which may not centrally involve religious authorities in the host country. In the case of Chinese asylum-seekers in the U.S., Falungong is likely to generate a similar dynamic given its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and the proselytizing zeal of its practitioners. But I have yet to see any serious analysis of the phenomenon.
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Acknowledgments
This article has benefited from the useful comments and sharp criticisms from Apostolos Andrikopoulos, Rogers Brubaker, Sébastien Chauvin, Andreas Dorschel, Lauren Duquette-Rury, Sung Ho Kim, Chulwoo Lee, Roi Livne, Mara Loveman, Erin McAuliffe, Peter Redfield, Harel Shapira, Myung-Sahm Suh, Robert Wuthnow, and the anonymous editor and reviewers at Theory and Society. I would also like to thank participants in the Economic and Organizational Sociology Workshop at the University of Michigan, the Department of Sociology Colloquium at the Wayne State University, and “What We Owe to Each Other: Rethinking Boundaries, Borders, and Citizenship” Workshop at Harvard University.
Funding
This research was funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Academy of Korean Studies and approved by the institutional review boards. The writing of this article was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies [AKS-2018-LAB-2250001].
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Kim, J. Between sacred gift and profane exchange: identity craft and relational work in asylum claims-making on religious grounds. Theor Soc 51, 303–333 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09468-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09468-8