Resisting linguistic and ethnic marginalization: voices of Southeast Asian marriage-migrant women in Korea

ABSTRACT

This study explores linguistic and ethnic marginalization faced by Southeast Asian marriage-migrant women in a rural city of Korea and the ways in which they resist and negotiate the identities imposed on them by others. The findings show that the women were marginalized and had limited meaningful contact and intercultural communication with Koreans in various interethnic contexts. They were stigmatized for their linguistic and cultural backgrounds; the nature of their marriage/migration; and their class, gender, and race. The three-generation households in which they lived were sites of oppression where they were pressured to strictly adhere to traditional Korean linguistic and cultural norms. In the workplace, they were positioned as incompetent second-language (L2) speakers on account of their regional dialects and lack of sociolinguistic competence. Additionally, they experienced racial discrimination in the larger community, based on their language and ethnicity. Despite various types of marginalization, the participants resisted their families’ impositions and stereotypes from mainstream society. They sought to gain legitimacy through enhancing their linguistic capital valued in professional settings. The study suggests that narratives can be a powerful means to reveal processes of marginalization and the impact of marginalization on L2 learning and identity.

본 연구는 한국의 농촌에 거주하는 동남아시아 결혼이주여성들이 언어적, 인종적으로 주변화되는 과정과 이 여성들이 자신들에게 강요된 정체성에 대해 저항, 협상하는 방법에 대해 고찰한다. 본 연구에 따르면 결혼이주여성들은 여러 가지 사회적 영역에서 매우 소외되고 있으며 한국인들과의 의미 있는 대인 관계와 문화적 교류가 극히 제한적으로 이루어지는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 언어 및 문화적 배경, 결혼과 이주의 이유, 그리고, 계층과 성별, 인종 등에 따른 사회적 편견에 부딪혀야 했다. 결혼이주여성들이 함께 거주하게 된 한국의 3 세대 가구는 전통적인 한국의 언어문화적 관습을 엄격하게 따르도록 강요당하는 압력의 현장이 되었다. 작업장에서는 해당 지역의 방언과 사회언어적 능력의 부족으로 인해 무능한 제 2 언어 사용자의 취급을 받았으며, 이 외에도 공개적으로 인종적 차별을 받는 경험을 하기도 하였다. 그러나, 이러한 여러 가지 유형의 차별에도 불구하고 본 연구의 참가자들은 현지 가족들의 강요와 주류 사회의 고정관념에 저항한 것으로 나타났다. 결혼이주여성들은 직업 현장에서 가치를 평가받는 기준이 되는 언어 자원을 계발함으로써 자신들의 정당성을 인정받고자 하였다. 아울러 본 연구는 개인적인 내러티브가 주변화의 과정과 제 2 언어 학습 및 학습자 정체성에 대한 주변화의 영향을 밝히는 매우 효과적인 연구방법이 될 수 있다고 제안한다.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• second-language learning
• Korean
• ethnic minorities
• marginalization
• migration

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Alec Redvers-Hill, Choongil Yoon, and Prem Phyak for their helpful feedback, as well as Laurie Durand for her editorial assistance. All remaining errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mi Yung Park is a postdoctoral researcher in Asian Studies, School of Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics, at the University of Auckland. Her major research interests focus on classroom discourse, sociolinguistics, and language and identity. She has published in Classroom Discourse, Journal of Pragmatics, Japanese/Korean Linguistics, The Korean Language in America, and other edited volumes.

Notes

1. The most popular foreign brides for Korean men are those from China – followed by those from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Cambodia, with much smaller numbers from Japan, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan. Southeast Asian marriage-migrant women, the focus of this study, make up approximately 35 percent of all marriage-migrant women in Korea (Korean Ministry of Gender Equality & Family, 2015).

2. The TOPIK is administered by the state-run National Institute for International Education (‘Basic Korean proficiency’, 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Arts Faculty Research Development Fund grant from the University of Auckland and by an Academy of Korean Studies Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST) (AKS-2012-BAA-2101).