Beyond the Census: The Invisible Lives of Immigrants

• The immigrant’s Han (deep sorrow) and ‘breath’ cannot be measured by annual income or home ownership.
• We must restore the individual narratives that have evaporated through the cracks of the Census’s cold numbers.
• May the anthropological gaze, recording the scent of sweat on the ground rather than statistics on a desk, become the compass for policy.

Whenever Statistics Canada releases its Census results, the Korean community is swept up in a strange excitement. People are busy analyzing how much the Korean population has grown, how much the average income has risen compared to other ethnic groups, and how the ratio of professionals has changed. Headlines like "Korean Community’s Status Strengthened" or "Economic Power Expanded" dance across newspaper pages. Yet, whenever we see those sleek numbers, we feel a chill in a corner of our hearts. This is because the deep sighs of the Korean convenience store owner, or the tears of the 1.5-generation professional—who appears successful on the outside but suffers from identity confusion on the inside—are not recorded anywhere in those flashy graphs and charts.

Numbers possess power. The government allocates budgets based on numbers, and politicians read the voters' minds through them. However, numbers inherently contain the "trap of averages." When the lives of immigrants are judged solely by the yardsticks of income level, home ownership, and education, the texture of life existing beneath the surface gets crushed. Statistically, we may be a "successful Model Minority," but anthropologically, we remain marginal people living with "unexplained anxiety." To capture the immigrant’s breath that economic indicators miss, we must now set aside statistics and pick up the anthropological lens of "Participant Observation."

We can see the clue in the examples of other ethnic communities in Canada. Look at the Indigenous Peoples. For a long time, the government tried to manage them using only negative statistical figures such as alcoholism rates, incarceration rates, and unemployment rates. The result was a dismal failure. Change began only when the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)" was set in motion. Instead of counting numbers, they began to listen to the testimonies of residential school survivors. They spent days and nights transcribing and recording their oral histories, documenting the narratives of pain they had endured. Only when this vast amount of "Qualitative Data" was gathered did Canadian society begin to move. The hearts of people and the direction of policy, which could never be moved by a single statistical table, shifted before the transcript containing the trembling voice of an elder. This is the power of narrative and the destructive force of qualitative research.

The case of the Jewish community also offers significant implications. They do not fossilize the victims of the Holocaust simply as the number "6 million." The USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive records even the most trivial memories of each survivor on video—such as the smells they smelled or the sensation of hunger in the concentration camps. Even in the process of immigration and settlement, they do not hide their community’s internal conflicts, religious struggles, or intergenerational discord; instead, they research them academically. Jewish studies institutes at the University of Toronto or York University provide the government with practical data through fierce self-reflection and critical research, rather than simple praise. Thanks to this, they have established themselves not merely as a "wealthy immigrant group," but as a "respected community with a history."

On the other hand, what is our reality? We are overly obsessed with the "Myth of Success." The hardships of the first generation are consumed merely as seasoning for the conclusion of their "children’s admission to an Ivy League school." Topics such as failed immigration, domestic violence, mental health issues, and lonely deaths among the elderly are hushed up and swept under the rug because they "lower the prestige of the community." The economic collapse and bizarre shamanistic landscapes of a Korean family in 1980s Vancouver depicted by author Gloria Kim in her novel The Banquet of the Dead, or the confession of an elite father’s alcoholism and family disintegration in J.J. Lee’s memoir The Measure of a Man—these "inconvenient truths" that are not caught by the Census are, in fact, the real data we must face and research.

I offer a suggestion to academia and the government: Do not think you have fulfilled your responsibility by simply circulating a few survey sheets. You need "Participant Observation"—stepping out of the research lab and entering the lives of immigrants. The answer to true immigration policy lies in the conversations exchanged in church parking lots on Sunday mornings, the laments of the elderly while playing Baduk (Go) at the senior center, and the brief greetings exchanged at the checkout counters of Korean grocery stores. Reading the "Context" of why a successful second-generation immigrant with an annual salary of over $100,000 suffers from inner depression, or why a retired first-generation immigrant feels terrible isolation despite Canada’s welfare benefits, is a realm that artificial intelligence or big data cannot touch—it can only be done by the warm gaze of a human being.

Furthermore, internally within the community, a "Democratization of Records" is urgently needed. We have long advocated for the establishment of a "Cyber Immigration Museum" that transcends time and space. This should not simply be a space for displaying old photographs. Just as Italian immigrants recorded the sweat they shed at Toronto subway construction sites and the recipes of the sandwiches they ate from the perspective of labor history, we too must microscopically collect our labor and life history. The burn scars from ironing at the dry cleaners, the ramen pot used during international student days, the English diaries written by the second generation in secret from their parents. When these trivial "Artifacts" and memories gather to form a massive "Qualitative Database," we finally gain the grounds to request of the government: "Do not view us merely as taxpayers or a labor force, but treat us as citizens with a unique culture."

Immigration does not only mean physical movement across borders. It is a process of chemical mutation where one identity is dismantled and reassembled. True immigration research analyzes even the heat, gas, and residue generated in that process. Behind the "smooth success" shown by economic indicators lies a "real life" that is bumpy and wounded. Soothing the grain of that life and recording it—that is the burden we must bear as we live as proud Korean Canadians. Numbers cannot prove people. Only people can prove people. What we need now is not higher income statistics, but records of deeper understanding and empathy.

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The USC Shoah Foundation is a non-profit organization established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, which began with the mission of recording and preserving video oral testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. Through its "Visual History Archive," the foundation digitally accumulates tens of thousands of testimonies and provides them to researchers and educational environments, utilizing them as resources for human rights and civic education to combat prejudice, hatred, and antisemitism. Today, the archive has expanded beyond the Holocaust to include testimonies from various genocides—including those in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, and Bosnia—and collaborates with universities, museums, and online platforms to make these records accessible to learners and the public worldwide.