The Limits of the Acculturation Model and Multicultural Policy Typologies: An Unclassifiable Case of Vietnamese Immigrants

초록

Migration research and policy in South Korea have explained migrants by dividing them into a few fixed types. Berry's acculturation model classifies migrants by two criteria—maintenance of heritage culture and participation in the mainstream—and Korean multicultural policy divides them into marriage-migrant women, children of multicultural families, later-arriving youth, and the like. This study analyzes a single case that fits none of these types. The participant is a second-generation member of a multicultural family who holds Korean nationality, yet was raised in Vietnam and came to Korea as an adult. In an in-depth interview, she divided her belonging by domain of life, treating Korea as where she lives while saying that Vietnam is her mother country. Such a case cannot be captured by an existing model that classifies migrants by a single attitude. This study adopts deviant-case analysis, taking one case as a counter-example to a general theory. Through this, it shows that this case is not a rare exception but a point that a type-based approach is bound to miss. It then proposes shifting the starting point for understanding multiculturality from "dividing people into types" to "recognizing an individuality that cannot be divided into types.“

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