Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and “Multiculturalism” in Rural South Korea

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Minjeong Kimexamines Filipinas who married rural South Korean bachelors in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Against a backdrop of the South Korean government’s multicultural policies and projects aimed at integrating marriage im­migrants, Kimprovides a nuanced understanding of both the conflicts and emotional attachments of their relationships with marital families and communities. Her close-up accounts of the day-to-day operations of the state’s multicul­tural policies and public programs show inti­mate relationships between Filipinas, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, and how various emotions of love, care, anxiety, and gratitude affect immigrant women’s fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country.