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.

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.