KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

As the social concern for multicultural families have rapidly increased, the public policy designed for the group have exuberated in the mid 2000s. The policies, however, mostly focused on the problems the families face during the initial stage of their adaptation, i.e., communication skills, conflict between the husband and the wife. Furthermore, they failed to respond to problems emerged from married immigrant women’s adjustment to Korean society in a long-term perspective. Thus, the purpose of this research is to gain an understanding, from a long-term perspective, of the obstacles the married immigrant women encounter—and their effort to overcome it—by analyzing the raw date of the 2012 national survey on multicultural families and conducting interviews. Moreover, the research focuses on the factors that affect and the measures to promote the social integration of the married immigrant women. The level of social integration of immigrants increases proportionate to the number of years they lived in the land, however, the result shows that married immigrant women face a much more difficult situation during the early stage compared to other groups of immigrants due to the immigration and marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, etc. During the early stage, almost all married immigrant women encounter the language barrier and problem of adjusting to the new family. In addition, the need for their Korean fluency and vocational competence rises as their conferred social roles, for instance, being a parent or breadwinner of the family, increase overtime. This is when they enter the so-called ‘2nd phase of adapting’. Married immigrant women all commonly share a life-changing experience of immigrating to Korean society and marriage. Yet, at the same time, everyone face a different situation and environment, resulting in varying experiences of individuals in the long-term. These experiences could be categorized into four types. The first group consists of those who relatively easily adjust to their new home. They are solidifying their social status on the foundation of their active social participation using their education and language proficiency. Their experience present a possible solution to the complex problem of social integration involving not only the individual but the spouse and the family as well. There are, also, those who strive to pursue a better job by acquiring new credentials. This group shows active attitude based on their past experience, but credentials itself is inadequate to overcome manifold problems such as Korean proficiency, child education, social networking. The third group of married immigrant women were those constrained by economic difficulties. To these low-wage earners, even an idea or effort to overcome the social confinement is inconceivable. The last groups are those who focus solely on domestic relations and heavily depend on their spouse, resulting in lack of effort and incompetency to overcome the problems around them. Meanwhile, the result shows that individual human resources, social support, and experiences of using services are the important factors in the social integration of married immigrant women. Individual human resource can be developed through school education or acquiring new credentials. Particularly, those who go through the school education system in Korea are more likely to have proficient Korean and gain confidence in educating their children. Support from others such as the husband or social workers, also had a positive effect on the social integration of married immigrant women. This psychological and practical support helps the social integration of married immigrant women. Previous experience in related services shown to be another important factor. By participating in various social programs such as Korean education and vocational training, they can expand their social network. There are, also, negative factors to their social integration: experience of discrimination from Koreans or pressure of child-rearing. Thus, this research suggests the following: ① Establishing a comprehensive support system ② Establishing a statistical data ③ Selecting a target with the consideration of other factors than ‘the number of years lived in Korea’ ④ Strengthening measures to deal with the major factors affecting social integration ⑤ Developing programs tailored to each group.