A Study on Understanding Placeness and Immigrant-related Social Issues in Rural Areas and Determining the Overarching Characteristics
Article information
Abstract
Background and objective
The influx of foreign workers has also increased in South Korea over the past 20 years due to the global labour movement between countries and the labour shortage caused by the aging of South Korea. In the case of rural areas, the youth age group was insufficient, and the aging population was more serious, so the dependence on foreign manpower was inevitably higher. In rural areas through the influx of foreign workers, spaces reflecting their culture are emerging. The purpose of this study is to provide implications for resolving issues of overseas migrants by analysing recent Korean and foreign research trends and characteristics of overseas migrants in rural areas, with a focus on placeness.
Methods
To address the aim this study utilised bibliometric analysis employing visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer program for overseas research collected from Scopus document search and Netminer program for South Korea research drawn from Korean Citation Index (KCI) database.
Results
This study determined that first, since the 2000s, there has been an increase in related overseas research. However, there were only 382 studies covering all of ‘place,’ ‘immigrant,’ and ‘rural,’ and the number was even lower in South Korea. Second, in research on overseas immigrants in rural areas based on place, community and health were identified as major issues. Third, the difference in research issues between overseas and South Korea was analysed by the degree of community and the approach to health issues. As a result, this study concluded that social inclusion should be addressed first through community and health issues.
Conclusion
Through research characteristics related to ‘place’, ‘immigrant’ and ‘rural’ at home and abroad, the placeness of overseas immigrants in rural areas has brought up issues of community and health. However, more importantly, concluding remark is that social consensus on social inclusion should be prioritised to contextualise these issues.
Introduction
Transnational immigration, accompanied by labour movement between countries and an increase in overseas immigrants, has become a global phenomenon as a result of the neoliberal globalization that emerged following the capitalist economic recession of the 1970s (Park, 2020). South Korea was designated as a “recipient country” (a country receiving immigration) by the United Nations in 2007. (Jung et al., 2016). Since then, the number of foreign immigrants in South Korea has increased by 7.2% per year on average since 2017 (Immigration Policy Statistical Yearbook, 2021). Population aging in developed countries is threatening labour force size and productivity due to a decrease in the working-age population (Bloom and Fink, 2010; Maestas et al., 2016). In South Korea, the population aged 65 and older has entered an aging society, accounting for more than 14% of the total population, since 2017. This creates an opportunity to rely on foreign labour, which is especially problematic in rural areas (Jeong, 2020). In other words, the issue of overseas immigrants in rural areas has become critical. Studies on overseas migrants in rural areas in South Korea have been studied in terms of a study on the mid- to long-term development of multicultural families by focusing on the socio-economic impact of marriage immigrant women in rural areas (Seol et al., 2015), the capacity of marriage migrant women and the support plan for job participation in the rural labour market (Cho and Jeong, 2022), the life satisfaction and social participation activities of rural marriage migrant women (Yang, 2010; Yang et al., 2009), and rural marriage migrant women’s social adaptation (Choi et al., 2008; Yang, 2006) which are mostly labour-related studies dealing with the next generation of agricultural workers according to aging society.
Furthermore, various side effects of the rapid influx of foreign workers in rural societies are being revealed. Currently, the proportion of immigrant workers in the agricultural labour force is rising, reaching approximately 37% (Kim et al., 2014; Jeong, 2019). In general, immigrant workers in rural areas are more vulnerable to disadvantages in living conditions such as food, clothing, and shelter, verbal violence because of communication difficulties, unfair wage conditions, physical disease treatment, and human rights violations by private control (Kim and Lee, 2017). According to Jeong (2017), immigration is a source of change in settlements and the various dimensions of places associated with it because of the structural movements that cause it and the various cultures that accompany the immigrants. Nonetheless, even in urban research, which has been actively discussing space in the past, migration has not been treated as an important factor, and migration research has not paid much attention to the theory of space for a while, emphasizing the importance of space research for migrants. According to him, the space of overseas immigrants is recognized as an important space for forming new relationships. In this regard, place can be described as a concept that individuals or groups perceive about place. The representative concept is called Place Attachment (Lee and Kim, 2018). Humans perceive the world through experience and cognition in a place, and the emotional bond between a place and an individual leads to a place of interest known as ‘Topophilia’ (Cresswell, 2004). Individuals may express place attachment through place affection and bond to a specific place in relation to various places in their daily lives (Park and Kim, 2016). Altman and Low (2012) also raised the need for a comprehensive study because a place includes physical and abstract concepts. Since the 1990s, discussions on space have emerged, and methodological and epistemological efforts (Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2011) to re-examine human behaviour and culture while paying attention to placeness have emerged in anthropology. Furthermore, research on overseas emigration takes a transnational approach and introduces spatial concepts and categories such as locality and scale, so that the social relations of migrants are reflected in space and place, resulting in a complex and multi-layered process that transnational social fields (Glick-Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, 1994), immigration studies and urban studies began. Moreover, through the complex progress of globalization and international migration, the fact that the space of migration is also a point where the experiences of the migrant subjects are weaved has been reawakened (Lee, 2013). Because a place reveals a concrete reality through the daily experiences of immigrants and others, it is emphasized that the analysis of migration space is a research topic that must consider the interaction between macroscopic, structural, and microscopic elements (Jung, 2017). On the other hand, as several continental-level transnational worker migration routes emerged overseas, they became a key group of temporary residents in many rural areas. Although immigrant workers face racism from residents, there is a general agreement that immigrant workers contribute to the rural economy. In this context, overseas studies often aim to address social problems for rural overseas immigrants, as the studies have been conducted in advance compared to Korean studies. However, there is little evidence on what aspects of characteristic issues have been raised and can contribute to addressing social issues in relation with immigrants, in rural areas. This is a gap in knowledge between previous studies. In addition, there is little systematic analysis of research trends in the context of overarching keywords ‘place’, ‘immigrant’, and ‘rural’. This calls on systematic analysis as well as comprehensive studies related to the placeness of rural foreign immigrants where overarching relatedness and implications could be drawn. This is ultimately to deliver emerging characteristic issues to South Korea to address problems raised in South Korea recently. Therefore, this study sets the following research objectives. First, recent research trends on ‘place’, ‘immigrant’, and ‘rural’ at home and abroad are analysed. Second, the characteristics of place-oriented rural immigrants are derived. Third, through Korean and international comparisons, characteristics and implications for South Korea are presented.
Research Methods
Research scope and contents: bibliometric analysis
To address the aim this study conducted bibliometric analysis employing visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer for network-mapping interface analysis and Netminer for topic modelling analysis (Fig. 1).
Flow chart of bibliometric analysis in this study.
Network-mapping interface analysis (NMIA)
For Network Mapping Interface analysis, VOS viewer version 1.6.18 software was used. VOS viewer is already optimized for quantitative author- and keyword-based bibliographic analysis of previous studies, and keyword associations are also quantitatively and visually derived (Van Eck and Waltman, 2014). As a result, we attempted to derive an expanded correlation by analysing the connectivity and major clusters of related studies, with a focus on overseas research trends related to ‘place,’ ‘immigrant,’ and ‘rural’. In this regard, keyword analysis was carried out. ① The database that became the extraction standard for analysis was Scopus ② Extraction conditions were English research papers and peer review journals ③ Search strings were ‘place’, ‘immigrant’ and ‘rural’ (P&I&R). Since there were only 382 studies related to P&I&R, related studies were extracted by additionally searching with ‘place’ and ‘immigrant’ (P&I), ‘immigrant’ and ‘rural’ (I&R), and ‘rural’ and ‘place’ (R&P). The extracted data was converted into a RIS file and used for network mapping analysis with VOS viewer Software Ver 1.6.18. Following the first analysis, similar word extraction and merging attempts were made, and keywords with clearly insufficient relevance were excluded from the second analysis. By mapping the extracted data, year-by-year and network analysis were performed. The cluster formation based on the complete network with the highest degree of centrality and the ego network with high correlation with a special path was analysed in keyword analysis. The obtained results were coloured differently depending on the year and visualized to analyse recent research trends.
Topic Modelling Analysis
Topic Modelling Analysis was performed using NetMiner 4 Ver 4.5.0 software. Topic modelling is a text analysis technique that automatically extracts specific topics, issues, and subject groups from text data based on the simultaneous use pattern of keywords. LDA topic modelling analysis has the advantage of automatically extracting and classifying topics by analysing the frequency of words in text data of documents (Jeong, 2022). The frequency distribution and longitudinal trend were analysed for KCI papers searched on the database for the past 20 years as ‘Rural’, ‘Immigrant’, and ‘Place’. In addition, the degree centrality analysis was conducted to determine the centrality structure in the network. The degree centrality analysis is utilized to explain such cases which are the characteristics of each node, expressed as the number of nodes directly connected to each node as well as an indicator that recognizes the influence or activity of a specific node. The connection distance represents the shortest distance between the two nodes, and the short connection distance can be redeemed to have high connectivity. Mainly, statistical methods were used to understand primary keywords and changes. Topic modelling is employed as a method which derives the subject of a document through word analysis in the original text (Won and Kim, 014). In the case of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) among the mainly used topic models, similarities between documents and words are calculated as conditional probabilities (Styvers and Griffiths, 2007). LDA topic modelling analysis is behove fully utilized to be able to grasp the overall data structure of documents and categorize them by subject based on the various contents contained in the documents (Lee et al., 2022).
Results and Discussion
Analysis of Korean and Foreign Research Trends
Overseas research trends
The trends of overseas research were analysed through longitudinal analysis among bibliometrics on overseas immigrants and places in rural areas (Fig. 2).
Research trends of P&I, I&R, R&P and P&I&R.
Because there were only 382 studies related to P&I&R from 2000 to 2022, a longitude analysis was attempted by dividing it into P&I, I&R, and R&P. As a result, the P&I was 6,330 cases, the I&R was 2,620 cases, and the R&P was 23,683 cases. R&P research was the most active, followed by P&I and I&R. The quantitative increase in all studies increased, but the rate of increase in P&I studies was relatively fast. In other words, it demonstrates a lack of research on rural overseas immigrants. The top 20 keywords were analysed in the P&I&R study based on occurrences and total link strength (Table 1).
Frequency analysis of top 20 keywords
As a result, with the exception of the key words ‘Immigrant’ and ‘Rural area’, demographic words like ‘Human’, ‘Female’, ‘Aging’ and ‘Child’, social factors like ‘Rural community’, ‘Social network’, ‘Sense of community’, and ‘Social inclusion’ and health-related keywords like ‘Health service’, ‘Health disparity’, ‘Well-being’ and ‘Health survey’ ranked at the top. Demographic, social, and health-related factors were largely derived through the analysis of the top 20 keywords. Through this, each of the four social and health-related factors was located at the top, indicating the importance of research on this. In other words, research on overseas immigrants in rural areas demonstrates the importance of social relationships and health.
The keywords ‘Place’, ‘Immigrant’ and ‘Rural’ were used to conduct network mapping interface analysis (Fig. 3). As a result, 148 keywords, 13 clusters, 1208 links, and a total link strength of 668 were analysed. The main keywords derived from Table. 1 constitute the main clusters and show strong connectivity with one another. As a result of analysing trends by year since 2010, health-related issues have been addressed continuously since 2010. In the middle of 2010, there was a surge in research on rural areas and immigrants. It was recently discovered that research on social networks and communities such as ‘rural community’, ‘social network’ and ‘sense of community’ was conducted around 2020. In other words, studies on ‘Place’, ‘immigrants’ and ‘Rural’ show that health has long been studied as a major issue, and that the social network issue for overseas immigrants is a relatively new issue.
Network mapping interface analysis between P&I&R.
Korean research trends
Studies on overseas immigrants were the most common in 2013, according to an analysis of research trends using the keywords of overseas immigrants and places in rural areas, while studies on overseas immigrants in rural areas were insufficient (Fig. 4).
Research trends of P&I&R (KCI articles, 2001–2022).
As a result of keyword analysis of rural, immigrant, and place in KCI papers from 2001 to 2022, a total of 26 papers were searched. Most of these papers were studies on marriage migrant women and multicultural families in rural areas, and studies on the space created by overseas immigrants in rural areas were lacking. The frequency of keywords in papers included in KCI was shown in the order of women, community, region, life, village, family, marriage, migrant, and society because of keyword frequency analysis. Keywords such as region, village, and place were examined as keywords related to space or place (Table 2).
Frequency analysis of top 20 keywords (KCI)
Keywords like community, society, organization, participation, and movement were discovered to be associated with the concept of governance.
Rural area-centred network mapping interface analysis
On overseas studies on ‘Place’, ‘Immigrant’ and ‘Rural’, an ego network analysis was conducted focusing on the rural area (Fig. 5).
Rural area-centred network mapping interface analysis between P&I&R.
As a result, 105 links and 111 total link strengths have a combined influence of 17%. The ego network cluster was divided into two main clusters because of analysing it with the ‘rural area’ as the complete network. First and foremost, it is a network and participation-based community cluster. Ego networks such as ‘Social network,’ ‘Sense of community,’ ‘Rural community,’ ‘Social movement,’ ‘Participatory approach,’ ‘Amenity,’ ‘Sense of belonging,’ ‘Social structure,’ ‘Social inclusion,’ ‘Interpersonal communication,’ and ‘Communication’ were extracted in this regard. In other words, the issue of linkage and network assortative with overseas immigrants centred on places in rural areas can be established as governance through participation centred on community networks. Second, it is a health issue. In this regard, ego networks such as ‘public health’, ‘health service’, ‘delivery of health’, ‘community health service’, and ‘well-being’ were extracted. Interestingly, the derived ego network related to health showed correlation with multiple social networks such as ‘participatory approach’, ‘social network’, and ‘interpersonal communication’, that is, governance. In other words, in addition to the two main clusters, the correlation between the two clusters is also an important issue.
In terms of analysing Korean research, analysing the centrality of connection related to the space of overseas immigrant women in rural areas, it was shown as shown in Fig. 6. Degree Centrality Analysis was conducted to simultaneously extract the keywords mentioned together from the target document including the keywords, rather than simply listing them by frequency, and analyse what topics are connected to the attention control. Through this, there have been few studies on the health problems of foreign immigrants in rural areas. Nevertheless, Degree Centrality Analysis draws the importance of the role of immigrant women.
Rural area-Degree Centrality Analysis.
It was largely connected to groups such as region, health, policy, village, activity, and participation, focusing on communities and overseas immigrant women. The community was found to have high connectivity with activities, participation, relationships, family, life, conflict, etc., while overseas immigrant women were found to have high connectivity with region, marriage, family, education, life, satisfaction, adaptability, stress, health, support, etc (Fig. 6).
As a result of LDA Topic Modelling analysis, as shown in Table 3, the related words constituting each topic were output because of topic modelling, and five related words were extracted in the order of the proportion of the corresponding word in the topic.
LDA-Topic modelling analysis
The topics were as follows: activities related to the work experience of overseas immigrants, stress due to discrimination of immigrant women, national system based on Korean language problems, adaptation to Korean society due to marriage, relationship with villagers over time, satisfaction effect from participation in life, degree of cultural conflict in the community and health factors based on the educational program. As a result of Topic modelling analysis, social factors like ‘Scholl life of children from multicultural families’, ‘Adapting to marriage migration’, ‘Relationship with the villagers’, and ‘Conflicts of culture in community’ and health-related topic like ‘Migrant women’s stress’, ‘Effect of participation satisfaction’, and ‘health factor’ ranked at the top. Through these results, the importance of community and health problems could be derived.
According to the community analysis results, it was divided into 6 groups, as shown in Fig. 7. Community Analysis was employed to cluster closely connected nodes, resulting that a total of seven groups belonging to the same community group were derived.
Community (modularity) analysis.
Group 1 is made up of the village, women, immigrants, residents, activities, participation, and conflicts focused on the community, so it appears to be studies on the effect of conflict with residents by participating in village activities. Group 2 is made up of diversity, purpose, capital, and perspective, with a focus on research, so it appears to be studies on diversity. Group 3 is made up of Korean language, education, programs, policy, government, husband, wife, and workers, so it appears to be studies related to health and the government’s education program policy on Korean language for immigrant workers and marriage immigrant women. Group 4 is made up of relationship, satisfaction, factor, degree, country, difference, experience, and provision, with a focus on stress, and it appears to be studies related to satisfaction based on the support system and the factors of stress from experiences in other countries. Group 5 is made up of characteristics, thesis, interview, period, method, participation, analysis, research, etc. with a focus on immigrant women, so it appears to be studies related to analysis of the characteristics of immigrant women using various research and analysis methods. Group 6 is made up of overseas immigrants, life, adaptation, members, society, marriage, Korea, and culture, with a focus on the region, so it appears to be studies related to the adaptation of overseas immigrants to life culture as a member of society in South Korea.
Differences between at home and abroad and Implications
As a result of recent research on “Place”, “Immigrant” and “Rural” at home and abroad and a bibliometric analysis focusing on places in rural areas, differences were drawn from two issues: community and health. Through further discussion on this, we would like to draw implications for South Korea.
Gab in the extent of governance-centred placeness
As a result of conducting the top 20 keyword analysis of overseas papers in Table 1, the rural community, social network, and sense of community were derived at the top, leading to a large connection of social inclusion through governance. Meanwhile, in the results of the analysis of the top 20 keywords in the KCI paper, community and society were also distributed at the top, and through this, a relationship with governance was derived. In summary, it can be re-grouped into three clusters: governance, place attachment, and social inclusion. The extracted terms ‘community’, ‘participatory approach’, ‘amenity’, and ‘communication’ are integrated into governance concepts based on community participation. In some cases, according to Lim’s study in 2022, several complex community centres in Sejong City, South Korea provide an opportunity for creating and realising placeness where local community leads to creating unique region characteristics. For another examples in Jaffe and De Koning (2016) and Tuan (1990), local community approach centred on placeness increases positive perceptions on environmental and urban areas. These integrated concepts and such cases are linked to ‘sense of binding’ and ‘place attachment’. Furthermore, place attachment cantered on the concept of governance has a positive impact on social inclusion. Place-based governance is positive for improving place-attachment (Mohapatra and Mohamed, 2013), and the correlation with improving social inclusion through governance (Popkewitz and Lindblad, 2000) has already been verified through previous studies. However, a positive correlation is drawn in this study on social inclusion when forming placeness around the governance of immigrants in places, particularly rural areas. On the other hand, Korean studies are not only quantitatively insufficient, but also show a limited correlation between women-cantered participation and activities in rural areas. Also, as shown in Table 3. Topic 9, the activities of immigrant women in rural areas can cause conflict in society in a negative way. As a result, Park and Kye (2018) argued that alternatives for social inclusion due to social problems with immigrants should be presented. Social inclusion should not be overlooked any longer as it is argued that it is a critical issue for immigrants seeking to adapt to Korean culture and improve their quality of life (Kim and Nam, 2023). Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the governance-cantered placeness through community formation of immigrants for social inclusion for immigrants in rural areas in South Korea. In other words, it suggests that establishing a governance platform for immigrants in rural areas is a priority for social inclusion.
Discrete issue on health disparity
Health issues are a top issue not only abroad but also at home. It is undeniable that the health of overseas immigrants is an important issue. The issue of health disparity at home and abroad was raised. However, for overseas immigrants, the sense of place in rural areas differs in health issues. It is an issue of access to resolve health service disparities in other countries, but it is an issue of health service disparities in South Korea. As for health disparity, health service and health survey were derived because of the analysis of the top 20 keywords in Table 1, but in the case of KCI papers published in South Korea, there was no health-related content because of the analysis of the top 20 keywords in Table 2. Through this, research on the health of migrants is insufficient, leading to the need for research.
In the case of overseas, health disparity with overseas migrants is considered as a risk factor, and integrated public health services are provided to both overseas migrants and natives. Differences based on nationality, or even undocumented immigrants, are problematic, but they are met with minimal inclusion in health services. In addition, these health services are being extended to rural areas, trying to resolve regional differences. Conversely, in South Korea, social disparity leads to health disparity. In other words, while the stress problem of immigrant women in rural areas is emerging, it is difficult to find other issues related to the health service of overseas immigrants. Analysis of this is also shown in the Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). According to MIPEX 2020, Korea’s MIPEX index value is 56, which is halfway favourable and higher than the national average of 49. However, the health field was reported to be 40 (slightly unfavourable), which is lower than the overall average. The seriousness of this has already been suggested by Kim et al. (2015) and Kim and Nam (2023). According to Kim et al. (2015), Korea’s health policy for foreign immigrants is ineffective due to the lack of social integration. Kim and Nam (2023) argue that multi-culturalism toward overseas immigrants is insufficient in terms of their inclusion in health problems. However, studies conducted by MIPIEX, Kim et al. (2015) and Kim and Nam (2023) do not show an empirical alternative to addressing health service disparity for overseas immigrants in South Korea, particularly in rural areas. In other words, it demonstrates that there is a lack of good faith in the social integration approach to inclusion. Accordingly, the issue for addressing health service disparity of overseas immigrants in rural areas in South Korea necessitates the search for social integration and inclusion as prior studies, and the need for empirical research is raised based on this.
Conclusion
Along with the increase in the number of overseas immigrants in rural areas in South Korea, social problems arose. To solve these problems, issues have been brought up through places in rural areas. However, due to a lack of systematic research in this area, this study used a bibliometric method to analyse South Korean and foreign related studies. As a result, there are few studies that involved all of ‘place’, ‘immigrant’, and ‘rural’ simultaneously, meaning that this study should have employed the data extracted from each concept. Nevertheless, bibliometric analysis could deduce two major issues ‘community’ and ‘health’. In addition, the characteristics of differences between overseas and Korean studies showed gaps in the degree of community and differences in health issues. In other words, in overseas cases, social inclusion was attempted through the concepts of governance and place attachment. However, in the case of South Korea, it was shown that female overseas migrants’ participation in the community was limited. In terms of health issues, foreign countries showed an approach to expanding and solving health issues, while South Korea showed an issue about the occurrence of health problems among overseas immigrants. The overarching issues identified were community and health, but more importantly, it demonstrated that when social inclusion is preceded, community and health issues of overseas immigrants in rural areas can produce positive results. In conclusion, it is suggested that preceding social integration through places of immigrants in rural areas can produce more positive results in terms of community and health issues. However, there is a limitation in this study that as bibliometric approaches including text mining and LDA analysis as well as others are often exploited recently there have not enough academic reviews in depth. This means that such analyses e.g.) the TF-IDF’s threshold setting, the number of leading topics should be set by the researcher’s subjective analysis and interpretation. Nevertheless, the relatively objective quantification value of the indicators considered in the research process employing machine learning algorithm based on Bayesian probability theory is a methodological cornerstone for objectivity and reproducibility compared to existing meta-studies.