earticle

영어

Reflecting such a rapid growth of immigration, EU nations selected immigration as the most important issue of the EU in a public opinion survey. This issue is followed by the economic situation, unemployment, and the state of Member States’ finances. It is noteworthy that immigration is viewed more important than economic problems. All EU Member States put immigration and migrant integration high on the policy agenda and make efforts to facilitate the incorporation of immigrants and their children into a host society. Migrant integration is also an increasingly important issue in Northeast Asia. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have experienced decrease in population and a weakening of growth engine, due to low fertility and aging society. Migrant integration and multiculturalism are two major perspectives of racial and ethnic relations between minority and majority groups in multicultural societies. I would like to suggest multicultural migrant integration as a coexistence model of multicultural society. Multicultural immigrant integration is defined as "a process in which immigrants become members of a host society while maintaining their own culture and identity, and develop a stable life, a sense of belonging and developing ties with the indigenous people". I propose a 'multicultural migrant integration index' as an index that measures this concept empirically. The multicultural migrant integration index combines the socio-psychological dimension such as a sense of belonging and solidarity (I call this "value integration") as well as material and institutional dimensions such as economic adjustment and access to educational opportunities (I call this "system integration"). This index provides a standardized basis for objectively measuring and comparing the degree of social integration among Korea’s multicultural minority groups.