Vulnerability and Precarity of Single Pareting, Cases of Migrant Wormen in South Korea

Government policies and social discourses concerning international migration and 'multiculturalism' in South Korea tend to remain predominantly anchored in state-led perspectives of 'social integration' or assimilation. Migrants are often excluded from the policymaking processes that directly impact their lives, which can be interpreted as a deficit in democratic representation. Within this context, evaluating migration policies through the articulations of migrants themselves is imperative not only for academia but also for policymakers.
Existing research paradigms primarily focus on immigrant women's experiences through the lens of specific incidents such as familial conflicts or domestic violence, and subsequently seek policy alternatives for these individual occurrences. It is crucial to comprehensively analyze the underlying conditions of 'vulnerability', 'precarity', and 'intersectionality' that form the backdrop for these individual incidents in immigrant women's lives, and to examine how these conditions are contextualized within broader social structures.
This study aims to elucidate the circumstances of vulnerability and precarity experienced by single-parent immigrant women residing in Korea, and to identify the socio-structural conditions that engender these situations. Specifically, the research seeks to achieve this objective by analyzing how not only economic and social conditions, but also institutional frameworks at the local government level, influence the lived experiences of immigrant women.