Foreign Workers and Social Integration: Focusing on Sport Participation

Date

2024-12-01

Author

Park, Mihwa
Na, Dongkyu

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This article focused on the process and aspects of social integration through sports participation experiences of foreign workers in South Korea. The findings show that migrant workers first voluntarily participated in sport for health and leisure, and their choice of sport was influenced by their home countries’ attributes and/or their interest in Korean society. Second, for foreign workers, sport participation was a place for learning (e.g. Korean and sports skills) without restrictions in spite of the lack of Korean-language ability. This thus pave the new way for the foreign workers to learn Korean. Third, foreign workers made use of sport participation as a practice to reproduce their identities by forming solidarity with other foreign workers from the same home countries. Fourth, foreign workers interacted with Korean people and other foreign workers both from their home and other countries by means of sport participation, thereby contributing to the formation of new social capital. Fifth, as the resident period of foreign workers increased, foreign workers seemed to transform themselves from the passive to active subjects in sport participation. In other words, sport participation and activity voluntarily undertaken by foreign workers became practice to interact with Korean people, culture, and society, and this in return manifested social integration which reproduced foreign workers’ own national and cultural identities, as well as gradually encouraging them to engage in Korean society. Given the fact that foreign workers are generally transformed into long-term residents in Korea, it would be necessary to move towards a broader mode of social integration, including sport and physical activity, from far beyond a narrow current social integration with an emphasis on language education.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116480

Collections

Department of Physical Education and Sports, Article