• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.17-39
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• 2011

As recent inflows of foreign immigrants to relatively advanced countries in Northeast Asia have rapidly increased, Japan in particular uses 'multicultural coexistance' as a key concept for developing both discourse and policies on them. This paper is first of all to suggest a new typology of multicultural societies in the world ill order to differentiate the case of Northeast Asian countries from those of Western countries. And this paper is to suggest that foreign immigrants in Japan have different positions in labor markets and living experiences according to historical and social backgrounds as well as their nationality. The transformation process towards multicultural society is not only historical and social but also geographical and spatial, as foreign immigrants have made different spatial distribution and regional segregation in types. In order to control this socio-spatial process towards multicultural society, Japan has developed the concept of 'multicultural coexistence' similar with that of multiculturalism in Western countries. This concept seems to be quite significant as it has been initiated by local communities for symbiotic relationship between foreign immigrants and native Japanese dwellers. But it can be regarded as a strategic ideology to control foreign immigrants as it targets mainly on Nikkeijin, and is usually concerned with the cultural aspect. Seen from a theoretical point of view, this concept can be seen as closed with liberal multiculturalism as opportunity equity, but far from corporative multiculturalism as outcome equity, and it is on the process transferring from the first stage of tolerance to the second stage of legislation of nondiscrimination, while being distant from the third stage of legislation paradigmization of recognition, and hence appears to be easily reverted to assimilationism.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.735-754
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• 2012

Korean society in the 2000 has experienced new many social and spatial issues such as the process of neoliberalism and changes in urban and spatial policies, the development of information and communication technology and reconfiguration of informational social space, radically increasing foreign immigrants and transformation to multicultural society, global warming and environmental injustice, and these new issues have promoted development of social geography in Korea. In addition to a review on them, this paper provides a review on empirical researches on traditional issues which have been dealt with in social geography in the 2000 in Korea. Even though there have been numerous sub-issues, they can be divided into two categories: one is urban and communal social geography including urban housing and residential segregation, urban social problems such as poverty, crime, education, health care, social welfare, urban and rural community building, identity, sense of place, and social movement; the other is social geography of population and migration, including population movement, aged society and social welfare for elderly people, and foreign immigrants and formation of multicultural social space. As some difficult conditions such as path-dependent process of neoliberalism, transformation toward informational, aged, and multicultural society would continue, so social geography in Korea to tackle with these external conditions should deepen its theoretical insights and widen its research issues.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.181-203
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• 2011

Transformation towards multicultural society requires discussion on new concepts of citizenship which would overcome some limits of national citizenship developed on the basis of the nation-state. Citizenship can be defined as a relationship between individuals and their community, and conceptualized in a relation with identity. Citizenship also includes its spatial elements such as site and movement, place and public/private space, boundary and territory, flow and network, level and scale, etc. and in particular implies a multi-scalability of local, national, and global level. A new discussion on citizenship has emerged in Japan in shift to multicultural society, especially focusing on activities of local governments and grassroots social movements to support and ensure welfare services to and human rights of foreign immigrants in local communities, hence develops a concept of local citizenship. This concept seems to be highly significant for both foreign immigrants and Japanese dwellers for multicultural coexistence, but raises serious problems of separating local citizenship from formal national citizenship and from universal global citizenship. In order to resolve these problems, a new multiscalar concept of glocal citizenship which links interrelationally local, national and global citizenship. The concept of glocal citizenship is suggested to lead academically a new version of cosmopolitanism which embraces the universal and the particular in a dialectic manner, and to give strategically an alternative to multicultural coexistence policy and discourse and local citizenship discussion in Japan.