Exploring marriage migrants' citizenship acquisition in South Korea

There has been little research as yet that examines the citizenship acquisition of marriage migrants in South Korea. As such, this paper investigates the propensity of marriage migrants to seek Korean citizenship using data from the 2012 National Survey of Multicultural Families. Less than half of marriage migrants have acquired Korean citizenship. The study identified factors facilitating and deterring citizenship acquisition. The factors associated with acquiring Korean citizenship were origin country characteristics (i.e., migrants coming from poor or distant countries and those coming from countries which allow dual citizenship), high ethnic population in Korea and favorable experience in Korea. On the other hand, shorter length of stay in Korea, poor Korean language skills and lower levels of employment and household income were found to deter migrants from acquiring Korean citizenship.