Using data from 2009 National Survey on Multicultural Families, this study explores the
structural relationships between determinants of international marriage migrant women's
participation in school activities at the elementary school level, and examines how the
relationships vary by their country of origin employing the structural equation modeling. The
results exhibit that socioeconomic status(SES) in Korea perceived by migrant women exerts both
a negative direct effect on and a positive indirect effect on participation in school activities. As
a result, the total effect of SES in Korea perceived by migrant women turns out to be more or
less trivial and statistically nonsignificant. In contrast, migrant women's SES during their stay in
their country of origin does have a positive impact on their participation in school activities.
Contrary to a priori expectations, fluency in Korean tends to dampen migrant women's
participation in school activities rather than facilitate it. As could be expected, however, the
stronger the migrant women's feeling of discrimination, the less likely they are to participate in
school activities. It is also found that those women with greater demand for educational support
are more likely to participate in school activities than those women with lesser demand for it.
Finally, the stronger the migrant women's tendency to mingle with their Korean neighbors, the
more likely they are to participate in school activities. Meanwhile, the results from multi-group
analysis show that those women from Japan are considerably less affected by their SES in
Korea and demand for educational support in participating in school activities than their
counterparts from other countries.