Exploring residential experiences of female immigrants in Korea

ABSTRACT

Despite the rapid growth of multicultural families, few studies have been undertaken about the residential experiences of foreign-born residents. As examining the residential experiences of migrants allows better understanding the assimilation processes of foreign-born residents, this study examines housing satisfaction and factors affecting residential location choices of female immigrants and their families. By interviewing 25 female immigrants living around Ansan, an ethnically diverse city in Korea, this study finds that there was a large gap between current housing status and preferred housing, thereby leading to low levels of housing satisfaction among female immigrants. Regarding, residential location choices, proximity to co-ethnics, neighborhood ethnic composition, services for multicultural families, job opportunities, and availability of low-cost housing were related to residential location choices of female immigrants. Additionally, given finding that female immigrants preferred living in an apartment (i.e., a housing complex with high-rise residential buildings in Korea) and in an integrated neighborhood, this study predicts that boundaries between where foreign-born residents are concentrated will shift toward where native Korean residents are concentrated.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing satisfaction
• residential location choice
• multicultural family
• female immigrant

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Korean Statistical Information Service does not distinguish female immigrants’ families from the whole multicultural families that include migrant workers and other types of foreign-born residents. To form a group that is the closest to female immigrants’ families, I excluded single-person households from the whole multicultural families. For the Korean family group, I also excluded single-person households for comparison. This exclusion of single-person households was applied for Tables 2 and 3 as well.

2. When the Soviet Union existed, Uzbekistan and Russia used to be one country.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No.NRF-2017R1C1B5073822).

Notes on contributors

Hee-Jung Jun

Hee-Jung Jun is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Graduate School of Governance at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea. She has published in the Journal of American Planning Association, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Housing Studies, and so on. Her research interests include migrant, housing, community development, social capital, and public health.