The limits of “multiculturalism without diversity”: multi-ethnic students and the negotiation of “difference” in South Korean schools^*

* Parts of this article build on work published in a book chapter (Walton 2018).

ABSTRACT

Since 2006, although South Korean “multiculturalism” policies have attempted to grapple with increasing ethnic and cultural diversity within Korean society, a homogenous national imaginary continues to inform these policies. I refer to the government’s approach to multiculturalism as “multiculturalism without diversity” to describe the limits of a multiculturalism anchored within an ethnic nationalistic framing of “difference”. Based on findings from an ethnographic study in South Korean primary schools, this paper examines how tensions between the reality of increasing diversity and a multicultural policy approach that maintains homogenous representations of Korean identity played out among Grade 5/6 children from Korean mono-ethnic and multi-ethnic backgrounds. Although there were limits to the ways children could assert authority, this paper analyses the mundane everyday practices and strategies that multi-ethnic children used to attempt to reassert and reinsert themselves at school and more broadly, within the possibility of a more critical Korean multiculturalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiculturalism
• education
• student
• multicultural family
• migration
• diversity

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Deakin University Central Research Grant for 2015 and writing was supported by an Australian Research Council Fellowship (DE160100922). I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their engaged and constructive feedback during the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jessica Walton http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3876-2994

Notes

* Parts of this article build on work published in a book chapter (Walton 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Deakin University Central Research Grant for 2015 and writing was supported by an Australian Research Council Fellowship (DE160100922).