The Impact of Multicultural Family Support Center on Social Integration of Marriage Immigrant Women in Korea

The purpose of this paper is to examine that the Multicultural Family Support Center(MFSC), which is a major implementing governmental organization of the Korea’s immigration policy that provides supportive programs and projects for marriage immigrant women and their families in Korea. The analysis focuses on the impact of MFSC programs on the social integration process of marriage immigrant women. Using the dataset from National Survey of Multicultural Families (2012), the analysis has been proceeded with two perspectives. From the program service receiver perspective, the analysis aims to scrutinize current status of marriage immigrant women in Korea, such as general profile of foreign brides and problems that they have living in Korea. From the service provider perspective, the analysis focused on the relationship between use of MFSCs’ programs and the degree of social integration within a conceptual framework of various measurement of immigrant integration. The results show that the role of MFSCs is limited for social integration of marriage immigrant women since their programs are mostly focused on the initial stage of their adaptation, i.e., Korean language programs, and family affairs, such as conflict between the husband and the wife. These findings led to the conclusion that multidimensional and two-way approaches are required for social integration of marriage immigrant women in the process of social integration rather than one-way process that only urging immigrants’ assimilation.