Shinyoung Lee is a senior concentrating in Applied Math - Economics graduating in December 2021. All throughout her years at Brown, she took classes that would prepare me to better understand people whose voices were silenced and unheard. Soon after, she took a gap semester and had the opportunity to volunteer at a migrants assistance center in South Korea, the country she grew up in, where she acquainted a group of migrants who were marginalized and were bearing the impacts of discrimination. shinyoung decided to channel her knowledge and passion toward seeking for effective ways to contribute to the well-being of these people. Although she concentrates in economics and plans to write an economics thesis on this topic, her desire to interact with and hear the voices of the people who may be merely represented as numbers in a dataset has led her to propose this research project.

Project:

Increasing volumes of immigration in the past thirty years have led the South Korean government to implement more accommodating immigration policies and welfare programs. These efforts were insufficient to eliminate discriminatory government practices and address societal discrimination in everyday life. Marriage migrants, a predominantly female group of migrants married to Korean nationals, have experienced both unfair policies and societal prejudices in public and private spheres. To establish a framework to understand South Korea’s public perception of immigration and national identity, she will conduct interviews with both marriage migrants and native Koreans while coordinating with local organizations to raise awareness of immigrant rights.

Advisor: Professor Lisa Di Carlo