Selective Institutionalisation and Transnational Moral Economy in the Korea–Central Asia Migration Corridor

ABSTRACT This study examines migrant incorporation and informality in the Korea–Central Asia migration corridor, focusing on Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Using 2024 administrative data from the Korean Immigration Service, it compares registration outcomes and visa composition across four sending countries with distinct institutional profiles. Rather than treating informality as policy failure, the study shows that the coexistence of formal incorporation and unregistered residence is a structured feature of migration governance. The findings are organised into an ideal‐type typology of corridor profiles—kinship‐driven, institutionalised hybrid, diversified emerging and new‐frontier informal—demonstrating how bilateral infrastructure, diaspora composition and origin‐state capacity interact with destination‐state policy to produce corridor‐specific configurations. Drawing on a transnational moral economy framework as an interpretive lens, the analysis highlights how responsibility for social reproduction is distributed across states, households and transnational networks. The typology is proposed as a transferable analytical framework for comparative corridor research, contributing to debates on selective institutionalisation, migrant precarity and the governance of managed labour mobility.