Multiculturalism and Social Policies Regarding Migrant Women in the European Union

Through the increase of global movement and the activation of inter-regional economic cooperation, major metropolises and nations across the globe find themselves confronted by a new social concept, multiculturalism. Since the inception of the EU in 1993, European nations have exhaustively separated and institutionalized the free movement between Member Nations and migration from outside the EU. After the expansion to include Central and Eastern Europe in the EU in 2004, the free movement of EU nationals has become a new subject of analysis: migration within the community. It may be interpreted that migrants were no longer a policy issue to be dealt with by the receiving nation, but necessitated an integrated policy from the community of nations as a whole. This research judges that the EU’s policy of inclusive categorization has a positive influence on the social adaptation of minorities, and predicts that through these policies, multiculturalism in the EU will potentially be intensified. In order to conduct this research, this research attempts to grasp the social support aspect through social policy classification during the Lisbon Strategy period, focusing on migrant women as targets of complex discrimination. The results of this research have implications for Korea, which is currently orienting itself toward a multicultural society. Through the various troubles concerning immigrant policies that the EU had to encounter, unlike nations which form a multicultural society from a multiethnic nation, at present, Korea is attempting to advocate an attitude of recognition from the drafting to execution stages of a multiculturalism-oriented policy and guidelines that it must now introduce.