An increase of immigrants brings about substantive changes in the extensive areas such as population composition, social relationship, economy, culture, politics and etc. On one hand, it will cause social conflicts and economic problems. On the other hand, it will be a turning point for a new social development. Multicultural societies have common interests to improve positive aspects of multiculturalization and solve its negative aspects at the same time.
Cultural diversity related to immigrants means a lot in dealing with the task. As diverse languages and cultural resources are more important in globalization process, enlarging cultural repertory is a positive motivation for the society. In addition, developing human resources with diverse languages and cultural skills are another positive aspect of the multicultural society, which will help to solve immigrants' poverty and social isolation.
The Korean society is increasingly likely to meet the conflicts and social problems related to immigrants in the development process of multicultural society. This is time for Korean society to make efforts to minimize negative effects of the multiculturalization. and to maximize its positive aspects. At this point, 'productive diversity' strategies are noteworthy which means practical efforts to improve cultural diversity and increase possibility for the multicultural society to turn into a positive way.
KWDI has carried out the cooperative research project "Policy Paradigm for Transition to Multiethnic/Multicultural Society in Korea" from 2007. In this year, the 4th-year research is proceeded with the purpose to establish the basis of policy measures to realize 'Productive Multicultural Society'.
The Korean society has its special characteristics in respect of importance of so-called 'multicultural family' including marriage-based immigrants and their children in expanding social attention to cultural diversity and multicultural society. Cooperative research in this year tries to approach the possibility for marriage-based immigrants and their children to develop interlingual/intercultural competence based on their linguistic/cultural specificity and realize the competence in a positive and productive way in social arena, and to grasp main obstacles which they meet in doing so. The policy measures are also pursued to support marriage-based immigrants and their children to overcome the obstacles and develop interlingual/intercultural competence, and to enhance the positive aspects of cultural diversity at the social level as well as the individual level.
The research outcome proves that marriage-based immigrants and their children have very limited possibility to develop interlingual/intercultural competence. Because they are imposed by various obstacles as follows:
- Dominant belief in cultural homogeneity and negative values on cultural specificity of multicultural family
- Limited opportunities to use minor languages and culture in family daily lives
- Strong division of linguistic and cultural spheres between main society and ethnic groups, limited opportunities of intercultural communication between marriage-based immigrants and main society
- Low practical values of interlingual/intercultural competence
Most multicultural families have serious limitation in improving their linguistic/cultural specificity as positive assets. Especially, multicultural families with low socio-economic position and marginalized cultural status is almost impossible to achieve that. They are likely to see their own cultural specificity as negative and even try to remove them as much as possible.
However, on the other hand, there are actual cases to overcome such obstacles and succeed in realizing their interlingual/ intercultural competence. At present, these movements are in the beginning steps and has not yet shown any foreseeable results. Nevertheless, these movements prove possibilities to look forward to positive improvements of interlingual/intercultural competence of marriage-based immigrants and their children and social values on cultural diversity in multicultural society.
This research proposes policy measures to increase possibilities for marriage-based immigrants and their children to improve their interlingual/intercultural competence as follows:
- Recognizing cultural specificity of multicultural family and cultural diversity at the social level: establishing comprehensive policy plan to realize interlingual/intercultural competence for multicultural family, providing legal basis for the related policy
- Improving family and social environment for cultural diversity: promoting intercultural family model pursuing cultural diversity and gender equality, strengthening strategies to improve interculturalism of main society on the basis of positive aspects of multicultural society.
- Developing cultural resources with priority to minor languages and cultures: advertising and educating positive value of minor languages and cultures which are mostly neglected in the Korean society, providing special sections for minor languages and cultures in community libraries and schools.
- Strengthening policy basis to improve interlingual/intercultural competence of multicultural families' children: establishing basic approach to educate minor languages as their mother tongue, consolidating infra structure for minor languages education, expanding education opportunities and activating networks among institutions in use of education resources.
- Supporting marriage-based immigrants' social and economic activities based on their interlingual/intercultural competence: establishing support systems for jobs based on their interlingual/intercultural competence, developing human resources in the ares of immigrant's settlement service and bilingual education, expanding lifelong education opportunities to strengthen interlingual/intercultural competence for marriage-based immigrants, developing bridging programs to stimulate intercultural communication between marriage-based immigrants and main society.
Key-words: productive diversity, intercultural competence, bilingual education, marriage-based immigrant, multicultural family, multicultural society
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