It is a well-known fact that warfare and obligatory military service system long played decisive role in the formation of modern nation-states, first in Europe and later elsewhere in the world. While externally the military prowess of a given state was (and still is) decisive for defining its place in a competitive international system explicitly based upon an equilibrium of military force and hegemonic interstate relations,1 internally conscription-based national armies formerly served as main pillars of the state, linking conscript-age able-bodied males with the nationalist ethos1 and acculturating them to views and practices often referred to as “militarized masculinity culture”. “Militarized masculinity”, both in the conscription states and in states possessing large-scale military but relying upon a volunteer force in peacetime, usually involves both a gendered view of the world in which the able-bodied man, the “defender of the fatherland”, was unconditionally privileged over women, defined either as sexualized objects or as child-rearing “mother of the nation”, and a shared feeling of superiority towards men unfit for or unwilling to engage in combat (handicapped, conscientious objectors, etc.).2 Examples of modern states which chose to define their whole able-bodied male citizenry as potential soldiers and use conscription as the primary instrument of “creating nationals”, include revolutionary and post-revolutionary France (which began the history of modern conscription by declaring the levée en masse on August 23, 1793), and the Prussian state, which began introducing French-style conscription practices after suffering a defeat at the hands of Napoleon's conscript army in 1806-1807.3 In more recent times, the state of Israel successfully used a comprehensive conscription system applicable to both men and women. The conscription system inculcated Zionist ideals and the newly-forged Israeli national identity, as well as a siege mentality based upon the imperative of the “national defense” against the demonized Arabic/Muslim world, into the minds of a very heterogeneous body of citizens,4 In South Korea too, as we will see below, conscription provides an ideological fiction of equality, the exclusion of women from the conscription system and, consequently, much more manifestly the “hegemonic masculine” character of the army being an important difference.

Migration is, fundamentally, a response to the uneven distribution of resources around the world or the variability of the environment, however broadly defined. [1] People move from one place to another place to take advantage of a better climate, possible access to better quality agricultural land, better-paying or more numerous jobs, freedom from oppression or discrimination and so forth. The phenomenon has dimensions such as degree of permanency and degree of voluntarism. In reality, it comprises a large number of categories and sub-categories and, as in the case of many of those Chinese people considered in this paper, people can pass through several categories as the result of changes in their own status and in that of the broader political context.

Much about our current world is unparalleled: holes in the ozone layer, the commercial patenting of life forms, degrading poverty on a massive scale, and, more hopefully, the rise of concepts of global citizenship and universal human rights. Less visible but equally unprecedented is the global omnipresence and unparalleled lethality of the U.S. military, and the ambition with which it is being deployed around the world. These bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. Their presence is meant to signal, and at times demonstrate, that the US is able and willing to attempt to control events in other regions militarily. The start of a new administration in Washington, and the possibility that world economic depression will give rise to new tensions and challenges, provides an important occasion to review the global structures of American power.