중남미 이주노동자의 이주과정과 사회문화적 적응: 한국과 일본의 비교연구

Latin American migrant workers in Korea have kept many unique characteristics in their migration history and process, and their patterns of adaptation can be compared with their counterparts in Japan. The workers’ migration from Latin American to Korea is made difficult by long distances and linguistic and cultural differences. Nevertheless,after following the international labor migration of Nikkeijin and other Latin Americans to Japan, some workers were able to come to Korea to find work. However, unlike their counterparts in Japan, Latin American migrant workers in Korea did not become an object of attention in the society and they could not exert an extensive influence in Korea because their population is too small. Moreover, Korean immigrants in Latin America have formed different types of transnational communities in Latin America compared with Nikkeijin, so they were unable to help the migrant workers to adapt themselves smoothly to the Korean society. Accordingly Latin American migrant workers in Korea have taken a different route in their efforts to participate in local economic and sociocultural activities. For example, they hesitate to be exposed to the wider society and they hide their cultural differences as much as possible. Nevertheless, they have been included in the Korean sociocultural structure and are even evaluated positively by some distinctive Korean cultural elements. Frequently it may not be useful in economic terms to predict or evaluate problems related with causes, processes and historical backgrounds, patterns, contents, effects and results of labor migration. Even though labor migration can take place where significant economic differences exist between the migrant-sending and migrant-receiving societies, the decision-making processes of labor migration and the adaptive processes of migrants are tremendously affected by diverse sociocultural factors. In part, migrant workers from Latin America share similar features with migrants from China or other parts of Asia. However, Latin American migrants maintain their own unique characteristics because of the earlier migrants’ prior experiences in Japan and their ways of accepting or declining new cultural elements in Korea.