South Koreas Policy for Low-skilled Migrant Workers: Tensions between Functional Imperatives of the State and Their Impact on Policy Coherence

Abstract

This article examines key tensions manifested in South Koreas policy for low-skilled migrant workers since the institutionalization of the Employment Permit System in 2003, by utilizing Boswells (2007) theory that suggests security, accumulation, institutional legitimacy and fairness as key functional imperatives of the state embedded in migration policy. By connecting the four imperatives with the inherent principles of Koreas labor migration regime, this article finds that the tensions between the often-incompatible functional imperatives of the state substantiated in Koreas migration policy for low-skilled migrant workers during the period of 2003-2019 have produced and exacerbated policy incoherence. This showcases that it has become increasingly more difficult for the Korean government to form a unitary message on its labor migration policy