결혼이주여성의 성공적 적응과정에 관한 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth understanding of the successful adjusting process of the immigrant wives and their spouses. The authors have followed the procedure of the ‘Grounded Theory’ suggested by Strauss & Corbin (1998) with four couples who were introduced by the Multi Cultural Family Center staffs as couples ‘successfully settled’ into the community. In-depth interviews with semi-structured questionnaires were conducted and the collected data rendered 164 concepts and 27 sub-categories which was deduced to 11 categories. The followings are the key categories resulted by the paradigm axial coding. International marriage was suggested as the casual condition, ‘cultural difference’ and ‘conflict’ as the central phenomena. Contextural conditions that influenced the result were ‘advance information’ and ‘cultural similarity.’ Mediating conditions were ‘spouse support’, ‘family support’ and ‘community support.’ the Action/Interaction strategies were ‘multi-cultural understanding’ and ‘adjusting to each other.’ The end result ‘adaptation with stability’, and the key category ‘adjusting with understanding each others’ difference’ were also deduced from the data. The authors have induced the four stages to successful adjust of immigrant wives which follows: the stage of cultural differences and conflict; the stage of understanding and trying, the stage of adjusting to each other, and the stage of adjustment with stability. We also found two types of adjustment, ‘early adjusting group’ and ‘adjusting after some conflicts group.’ The result has shown that ‘cultural differences’ and ‘conflict’ was influenced by ‘advance information’ and ‘cultural similarity.’ The ‘multi-cultural understanding’ which is respecting each other’s culture, understanding and accepting each other as is was the key factor of the couple for the wives to adapt into the society.