Despite the fact that the government and NGOs are developing education programs themed on multiculturalism, case studies and researches in the perspectives of Korean language schools or civil organizations, which are places where marriage migrant women actually confront the Korean society, are hard to be found. Also, the majority of the programs called ‘multicultural education’ tend to focus on the marriage migrant women’s fast ‘settlement’ in Korea, being ignorant of the cultural differences that lie among women from different countries. Multiculturalism programs should aim at empowering migrant women by enabling them to understand each other’s cultural differences and recognize the importance of communication and networking. For this, multicultural education for Koreans who have close, everyday relationships with marriage migrant women, namely husbands and local communities, should also be provided.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the situations of programs for marriage migrant women and their husbands, and develop an education program based on multiculturalism. The multicultural education to be dealt here is education that encourages women to actively and diversely express themselves in their local communities to the effect that prejudices and discriminations are broken down. This study will thus examine the ‘best examples’ of current multiculturalism programs and analyze their strong points, and propose a new education program in addition. Specifically, research has been done on the education programs of marriage migrant centers, civil organizations, and NGOs in Korea. The differences and likenesses between the programs and the strong/weak points of each program were analyzed. Analyses were done on examples from other countries, such as TASAT of Taiwan, and Korean language and multicultural programs in the rural and urban areas of Korea. In-depth interviews with developers of education programs, performers, and the marriage migrant women and spouses who attend programs were conducted as well.
The outcome and suggestions of this research are as follows. Firstly, the multiculturalism programs for marriage migrant women should enhance potential of the women through cultural, artistic education and educating them as multicultural education teachers. The significance of cultural, artistic education is that it breaks from logic that women must learn Korean in order to express themselves. Through plays and video-workshops, women can learn to actively express their experiences, opinions, and emotions in other ways than letters. This enables them to positively understand and encounter people in their communities. Also, educating women as multicultural education teachers lets women recognize the factors that cause self-oppression and enables them to eliminate those factors and speak out for themselves in the mainstream society. Secondly, multiculturalism education for Korean husbands aims at informing them what perspective and attitude husbands should have in order for women to have their human rights protected, and develop their potentials so that they would acquire social membership. Through this education, husbands can emerge from their marginal social statuses and cultivate their abilities as citizens with multicultural sensitivity. Thirdly, multicultural education for local communities should be able to provide faith and assurance that migrant women can transform communities into multicultural spaces full of energy and creativity. It should focus on changing ethnocentric mind-sets.
In conclusion, the goal of multicultural education within everyday life should be the cultivation of cultural self-respect and potential of migrant women so that they bring forth economic mainstreaming rather than becoming marginal groups in the labor force and the Korean society.？
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