Be(com)ing Korean in the United States: Exploring Ethnic Identity Formation Through Cultural Practices
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Be(com)ing Korean in the United States: Exploring Ethnic Identit ...

Chapter 1:  Introduction
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Until the latter half of the 20th century, the most popular destination countries were China and the Soviet Union/Russia due to their proximity. However, since World War II, the United States replaced both China and the Soviet Union/Russia as the most popular destination, with almost 40% of the 5.5 million people in diaspora living in the United States.

Milton J. Esman (1986) wrote,

The term “diaspora” has long been associated by historians and social scientists with the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine, their homeland, following their defeat by the Romans in A.D. 70. More recently, the concept has been generalized to refer to any population which has migrated from its country of origin and settled in a foreign land, but maintains its continuity as a community. Thus our working definition of diaspora is “a minority ethnic group of migrant origin which maintains sentimental or material links with its land of origin.” (p. 333)

The definition of diaspora presupposed that networks are still salient despite the experience of migration. As Appadurai (1996), Bhabha (1994), Hall (1990), Ong (1999), and others have shown, the advancement of technology, media, and migration has enabled people to keep in touch with families and friends in their land of origin. This link is stronger than ever, and citizenship is no longer limited to location.

The term diaspora makes two main assumptions. The first assumption is that there was a single locale from which all people who identify as a particular ethnicity originated. The second assumption is that even as they live away from the original location, these communities maintain versions or remnants of customs and cultural practices as part of their ethnic identity. While people in diaspora may be integrated to their host society, their ties with their ancestral home often remain salient through the deployment of these customs and practices, or as Herbert Gans would call it, “symbolic ethnicity.”