Abstract
To address significant care deficits and the lowest birth rate in the world, foreign brides have been actively recruited and subsequently a series of state-initiated/nation-wide policies and services for marriage migrants and their families were implemented. Scholars criticize this Korean multicultural policy (that locates marriage migrants as reproductive labor force and their children as social capitals) as sexist, patriarchal, and pro-nationalistic. This study illustrates how the multicultural services devised to support marriage migrants, and their families reify cultural paternalism and xenoracism while inferiorizing their mothering practice and even legitimize the state surveillance in everyday institutional practice. Using ethnographic research as a method, one Multicultural Family Support Center was recruited as a field site in Seoul, Korea. After receiving Ethics approval, ten service providers, five marriage migrants, and a government officer participated in the study (N=16), along with various field observations of the research site and its programs. The findings illustrated through multiple forms in service delivery (e.g., service pledge forms and absence reports) and numerous scientific tests for program outcome measures, the surveillance of and intrusion into migrant mothers’ parenting were legitimized while promoting gendered intensive parenting as an unmarked norm; However, no frontline workers raised any concerns about some of the required tests that problematized multicultural children as ‘disabled’ or ‘inferior.’ Also, the intensification of multicultural children’s language education that was presented as cultivating and augmenting children’s development under the name of the national good, continued to maintain cultural hierarchy and marginalization between natives and migrants.
Presenters
Eunjung LeeProfessor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Vectors of Society and Culture
KEYWORDS
Female marriage migrants, Gendered nationalism, Multiculturalism, South Korea, Neoliberal Mothering
