After 1990s, the marriage immigrant is increasing rapidly, and the number of marriage immigrants living in South Korea has reached 139,050 by 2010. It is obviously that in as little as 10 years the number of resident foreigners is dramatically increas...
After 1990s, the marriage immigrant is increasing rapidly, and the number of marriage immigrants living in South Korea has reached 139,050 by 2010. It is obviously that in as little as 10 years the number of resident foreigners is dramatically increasing. With the advent of the globalization era, the multicultural phenomenon and the rights of vulnerable groups began attracted much attention and one of the issues is the citizenship of immigrant. Although the female marriage immigrants have become new members of Korean society, they still can not become the real Korean citizen actually.
Under such a background, centered on the Chinese females, this paper analyzes the citizenship status of the female marriage immigrants with T.H. Marshall’s citizenship theory. That is, this paper through dividing the citizenship of the female marriage immigrants into civil right, political right and social right, investigates the difficulties and the degree to achieve the citizenship in their process to get the legal citizenship.
In this paper, through interviewing 10 Chinese female marriage migrants and the results are as follows: First, during the process to obtain the legal citizenship, the female marriage immigrants confronted with many difficulties. In extending their resident visa, especially for applying for permanent residence and naturalization, they have to get the assistance and approval from their husbands.
Second, the female marriage immigrants are restricted by many factors in the process of enjoying the civil right, political right and social right, so the rights they enjoyed are the restricted citizenship. As for the civil right, although they have confronted with a lot of difficulties in melting into Korean society, the basic rights involving individual freedom has been guaranteed. In the political rights, Korean society has offered political right to the female marriage immigrants who have held the permanent residency and citizenship, but they are not active in enjoying the political right. As for the social right, it is manly attached to their husband and children. Owing to the economic discrimination, social and culture exclusion as well as other reasons, the female marriage immigrants in Korean society still can not achieve their full citizenship.
As new members of Korean society, the female marriage immigrants are beginning to realize their civil rights, and they are also starting to take a series of activities. In order to solve the immigration problems in Korean society, the government should take some measures to protect the citizenship of these female marriage immigrants.