Changes in Ego-Centered Network of Female Immigrants Married to Korean Men

Background and Purpose: This study intends to explore structural characteristics of social network of female immigrants married to Korean men, whose number has been drastically increasing in Korea since the late 1990s. The purpose of this study is to acquire a general understanding of characteristics and types of social network that female immigrants created in Korea since their marriage to Korean men. Also, the study is to explore how their social networks changes.

Methods: Ego-centered network approach is used for collect data on social network of migrant wives in Korea. This study simplifies some of ego-centered network questions developed by Burt(1984) for General Social Survey. Also in order to explore characteristics and change of social networks of migrant wives in Korea, this study used the two-wave panel of 459 migrant wives in Korea. The comparison of network indicators, including density, network constraints, effective size, of two waves carries out.

Results: The results suggest that network size of the first wave is significantly bigger than the one of the second wave. However, there are no significant differences between other network indicators, such as density, effective size, and network constraints, of two waves. The study shows that social support receiving and giving networks for each wave have similarities rather than differences, which implied that migrant wives play roles not only as support receivers, but also as support givers in their social networks. In addition, the result indicates that the less cohesive and less redundant ties female immigrants had, the more diverse supports they obtained from their social networks.

Conclusions and implications: Female immigrants usually come to Korea through the marriage to Korean men and have been considered as not only socially vulnerables in need, but also recipients of informal and formal assistances. However this study concludes that migrant wives play a active roles of support givers, rather than passive roles of just support recipients in their networks and their networks ultimately become a very important social capital for themselves and other migrant wives. Due to the use of two-wave panel data, it has a limitation to provide a result of longitudinal analysis, which is to show how social network of female immigrants married to Korean men have been changing. However, it provides a basic understanding of female immigrants' social networks.