Socialization and national identity in East Asia

This dissertation contains three papers. The first paper explores potential mechanisms through which outgroup languages affect attitudes toward the outgroups through a survey experiment in Taiwan. Contrary to existing studies that show outgroup languages triggering threat and anxiety, I argue that exposure to outgroup language does not necessarily prompt negative attitudes, but activates pre-existing attitudes toward the outgroups. The second paper studies immigrants’ decisions not to naturalize in the immigrant-receiving countries, with the case of the Korean diaspora in Japan, where some diasporic individuals refuse to naturalize even after more than four generations. With a newly compiled dataset that has every former foreign citizen who naturalized in Japan between 1969 and 1980, I show that Koreans who live in prefectures less influenced by the immigrant political organizations are less likely to naturalize, especially after the sending country’s intervention. This papers stresses the importance of the transnational ties of a diaspora in making their decisions about political incorporation. The third paper examines whether the state-sponsored textbooks changed the collective national identity. I investigate an education reform that explicitly recognized the co-existence and equality of different ethnic groups in Taiwan to untangle the causal relationship between the dissemination of national narratives and change in national identity. Using a theoretical framework about ethnic recognition, I also test whether the textbook reform mobilized members of the previously disempowered majority group to support their co-ethnic political parties, and whether members of the previously powerful minority group felt assured about their participation in the polity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Chu, Yuan-Ning

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wong, Cara J
• Gaines, Brian J
• Winters, Matthew S
• Livny, Avital

• Identity
• East Asia

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Yuan-Ning Chu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120507

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120507