My research examines how collective identities become politically meaningful, institutionally durable, and publicly contested. I work at the intersection of political sociology, social movements, youth studies, and Korean Studies, with a focus on neoliberalism, inequality, and democratic conflict in South Korea and beyond. Across my work, I am especially interested in how categories such as "youth" become usable for collective claims, policy design, and political representation.
Dissertation Project
A Generation in Search of Hope: Youth Movements and Youth Identity in Neoliberal South Korea (PhD dissertation, UC San Diego)
My dissertation explains how cheongnyeon ("youth") - once a flexible life-stage label - became a durable political and policy category in South Korea after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, culminating in the 2020 Framework Act on Youth. Rather than focusing only on whether youth mobilize, I ask a different question: how does a temporary and internally diverse identity become stable enough to organize governance, budgets, and political conflict?
Empirically, I trace the pathway by which movement claims became institutional categories. I examine the emergence of youth activism in the late 2000s, including organizations such as Youth Community Union and Minsnail Union, and show how activists translated experiences of precarious labor, housing insecurity, debt, and delayed adulthood into collective claims and policy interventions. I follow how these efforts contributed to the 2015 Seoul Youth Framework Ordinance and, ultimately, the 2020 national Framework Act on Youth.
Methodologically, the project combines multisite ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, organizational and policy archives, and computational analysis of Korean news and public discourse. This mixed-methods approach allows me to connect everyday experiences of precarity with long-term transformations in public discourse, institutions, and state policy.
The dissertation also develops a broader theoretical argument about age as a political category. I show that "youth" in contemporary Korea is not simply a demographic label or a state-imposed policy target, but a moral and political language through which activists made structural inequalities legible and actionable. In current and future work, I extend this framework to examine the historical genealogy of cheongnyeon and the contemporary contestation of youth politics across ideological lines.
Current and Ongoing Work
Alongside the dissertation/book project, I am developing several article-length publications on youth politics, collective identity, and neoliberal social change:
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"Making 'Youth' Political: How an Age Category Became a Collective Identity in South Korea" (under review)
Examines how youth became a collective identity and a durable axis of political representation.
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"Layered Youth: How a South Korean Housing Movement Made 'Youth' Politically Usable" (near submission)
Analyzes youth housing activism, especially through Minsnail Union, and develops a framework for understanding how movements stabilize "youth" through organizational and institutional layering.
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"The Making of the Terrain: Neoliberal Restructuring and Youth as a Public Problem-Category" (in preparation)
Traces the broader historical and structural conditions that made youth a central political problem in contemporary Korea.
I also work on broader comparative and interdisciplinary questions about youth politics beyond Korea. This includes a co-authored review article on youth participation in the far right (revise and resubmit at Sociology Compass) and ongoing work on how generational identities shape moral and political participation across different contexts.
Earlier Research and Related Work
Before my current dissertation project on youth politics and collective identity, my research focused on migration, disability, and human rights in South Korea. These projects examined how structural inequality becomes visible in public discourse and policy, and they continue to shape my broader sociological interest in category formation, social exclusion, and political recognition. This earlier work includes research on second-generation migrant children and youth in South Korea, disability and digital media activism, and refugee policy implementation.
In this line of work, I analyzed the life chances and integration experiences of second-generation migrant children and youth in South Korea, as well as the experiences of YouTubers with disabilities in Korea as an emerging form of media participation and representation. I also contributed to policy-oriented research on refugee governance and implementation, including work with the IOM Migration Research and Training Centre on South Korea's refugee policy after the 2013 Refugee Act and related legal frameworks for refugee status determination.
Selected Earlier Publications and Policy Reports
- Cho, Eunchong. 2025. "Constraints and Life Chances of Second-Generation Migrant Children and Youth in South Korea." In Migrant Children and Youth: Wellbeing and Integration around the World, edited by L. E. Bass. Emerald Publishing.
- Cho, Eunchong, and Yun Hyung. 2020. "The Experience of YouTubers with Disabilities in South Korea." In Reinterpretation of Disabilities (in Korean).
- Min, Jeewon, and Eunchong Cho. 2017. "South Korea's Refugee Policy and Implementation Since the 2013 Refugee Act: Trial and Error." IOM Migration Research and Training Centre. (Equal contribution with first author.)
- Min, Jeewon. 2018. International Legal Systems and Case Studies on 'Gender Guidelines' for the Determination of Refugee Status (IOM MRTC Research Report Series No. 2017-03). IOM Migration Research and Training Centre. (Research Assistant: Eunchong Cho.)