Social Exclusion of Multicultural Families in Korea

In recent years, Korea has experienced an increase in the number of international marriages and multicultural families, and the treatment of these families has become an important social policy issue for the Korean government. Adopting a social exclusion perspective and employing comprehensive micro-level datasets, this study examined the exclusion of multicultural families in Korea and compared them with ethnic Korean families. Largely based on indicators developed in the EU, this paper examined the extent of social exclusion across six dimensions: income, employment, housing, education, health and social networks. Comparison of social exclusion showed that multicultural families tend to experience a higher level of social exclusion in general than Korean families do. A multivariate analysis using a zero-inflated Poisson regression model revealed that females, elderly marriage migrants and those with lower social status were exposed to particularly higher risks of exclusion, whereas those who spoke fluent Korean or possessed fertile social networks were less likely to face social exclusion. This paper’s findings underscore the need to provide a wider and more demand-oriented social policy to support immigrants and also emphasises the role of Korean language proficiency and social networks in integrating multicultural families.