‘한국인’ 정체성, 사회적 소속감: 이주여성과 자녀의 관계성을 중심으로

This article examines how migrant women construct and shape their relationships with their children through various practices that negotiate and challenge the idea of ‘Koreanness’ - the idea that produces social anxiety in multicultural children in Korea. By closely analysing the social and cultural contexts, this article explores various ways in which migrant women exercise agency to create everyday social and relational spaces for belonging. Migrant women, through various practices, negotiate and challenge social prejudices and norms. They attempt to break the social division between ‘right’ citizens and ‘dysfunctional’ citizens so as to make a respectable and alternative life space for themselves and for their children. Migrant women as mothers are not helpless victims of social discrimination and inequality. Rather their vulnerable experiences of marginaliation in Korea are used as resources to form an equal relationship with their children and to shape alternative family practices. This paper argues that migrant women and their relationships to their children question and challenge the concept of a homogeneous ‘Korean’ identity, culture and nation.