New multicultural education demands for the children with migrant background in Korea

Abstract

In the past years multicultural education policies in Korea have focused on the multiracial children who were born in Korea. However, the research on educational support strategies for accompanied/midway-arrival immigrant children holds also great importance. Accompanied/midway-arrival immigrant children are a policy target population who requires special attention rather than general attention at the national level. The past policies and research only looked at the marriage immigrant family students and labor immigrant family students when dealing with issues around multicultural (multiracial) or immigrant families. However, the accompanied/midway arrival immigrant children are different from them in that they were not born in Korea and have entered the country following their parents, or have come upon the invitation of their parents who have already been living in Korea. The educational issue around this particular population is a complex and specific one that cannot be explained by the existing dichotomous model of categorizing the multicultural population as either being marriage immigrants or labor immigrants. Multicultural education support policy for the midway-arrival children should also incorporate multilingual needs which will help them to develop more abundant cultural asset for themselves.