Experience of Korean women who have foreign immigrant sisters-in-law as family members through their husbands’ brothers’ international marriage: A ethnographic study

Abstract

This was a qualitative study designed to explore the daily lives of Korean sister-in-laws who took an immigrant woman through an international marriage as their new family member. The focus of this study was to discover what difficulties they had and what experiences affected them. Subjects were six Korean sister-in-laws, selected by snowball sampling. Data were collected from May 1 through August 31, 2013, using the ethnographic research method. A 1-to 2-hour session of in-depth, face-to-face interviews and informatory observation were conducted for each subject. The data were analyzed by an ethnographic study through an ongoing process. As a result, the data were organized into 6 categories, 14 main thematic domains and 31 properties. The categories included: “Blaming the sister-in-law who is different from what was expected,” “Afraid of suffering damage from her,” “Acknowledging the way of life of her own,” “Understanding her as the same woman,” “Accepting her as my family member” and “Being in harmony with her through trust and love.” The Korean sisters-in-law in this study turned out to accept the immigrant woman as their family member through 14 main thematic domains. Korean sister-in-laws empathize with their foreign sister-in-laws because they are in the same circumstances as women, and love for the foreign sisters-in-law begins to germinate in the sisters-in-law as supporters through a stage of accepting them as their new family members. It is noted that this experience leads the families to healthy and stable harmony.