KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

 

With the rapid increase of migrants in the Korean society, multicultural service professionals are important workforce to improve intercultural communication so that immigrants have no difficulty in integrating themselves to the Korean society. As a result, the number of professionals and training programs for those professionals is rapidly increasing but the quality of the workforce and programs is not improving as much as it is necessary to follow up with the increase of migrants.  Therefore, this research analyzes the current status of these professionals and programs to provide an effective mechanism to improve the quality of the workforce.

Several research methods were carried out simultaneously: workshops with experts working in the field of multicultural programs, in-depth interviews with personnels at the training program institutes and migrants, and a questionnaire survey of 332 multicultural service professionals.

Several significant findings are:

First, most of the training programs have started hastily during the last 2 years without in-dept monitoring on the supply and demand of the programs. The institutions in charge of the programs did not conduct prior research on what kinds of qualifications and multicultural competency were necessary for the professionals. As a consequence, the programs did not provide useful skills and capabilities for them to develop their expertise.

Second, many of the programs were overlapping with one another resulting in waste of the limited resources. The current programs are concentrated in welfare divisions and overwhelmingly focus on training lecturers. By contrast, programs are not enough for counselors to communicate with migrants. Common curriculums with basic concepts and programs for multicultural counselling should be developed with the cooperation of ministries related to multicultural policy.

Third, inconsistency of education and employment can be found in the process of training and job-searching. Many of them expect job opportunities right after training, but failed to find one to satisfy their expectations. For example, immigrant bilingual lecturers who completed a 6-month course work as an international education lecturer, a teaching assistant of the after-school programs, and a counselor for students of multicultural families.

Fourth, there are few courses for professionals who need extra training in furtherance of professional skills. They demand a high level of programs to improve communication and counselling skills to fully understand the current status and difficulties of migrants. The professionals evaluate their current status and finds them remaining at the medium level without further opportunities to upgrade their multicultural competency.

Finally, it is strongly recommended to train migrants as multicultural service professionals. By having migrants serve as multicultural service professionals, new immigrants may easily settle in Korea, and the service professionals may contribute to the social integration by understanding their potential participation in the Korean society as Korean citizens.

 

Keywords: multicultural service professionals, multicultural society, training program, multicultrual competency,
multicultural policies