Rethinking Ethnicity in Social Integration Through Korean Immigrant Volunteering in the United States

This paper examines three case studies on volunteering by Korean immigrants as a lens to explore how immigrants balance integrating into their host society while expressing their ethnic identities. Immigrants continue to face challenges including negative attitudes and discriminatory policies which shape their everyday experiences, pointing to a need for further understanding of their own priorities and perspectives on social integration. This can be informed by anthropological frameworks by thinkers such as Frederik Barth and Edmund Leach, which highlight ethnicity as a process of social organization dependent on human agents and situations. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, I analyze findings from sociological studies through such anthropological frameworks to provide unique insights on how Korean immigrants experience social integration and ethnic maintenance through volunteering in the United States.