Multicultural at the Meso-Level: Governing Diversity within the Family in South Korea

Departing from extant studies that largely focus on gender roles, norm diffusion, or ethnonationalism, this paper highlights policy siting as one understudied factor in determining why and when states manage cultural diversity. Using the case of South Korea’s family-centred multicultural policy, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature on comparative policymaking, multiculturalism, and multi-level citizenship by foregrounding the processes by which governing elites target specific meso-level social institutions as privileged sites of diversity governance. The paper draws on immersive field research conducted between 2017 and 2023 to introduce and analyze the concept of familial multiculturalism to explain how the state locates diversity governance mainly within the family and between family and broader society. Siting diversity governance in powerful meso-level institutions like the nuclear family in shaping state multiculturalism is not unique to Korea. Rather, the paper contends that these institutions play a significant role in cultural management endeavours worldwide. While the content of a multicultural site depends on history and national context, states worldwide seek to mitigate social friction and political backlash by targeting certain intercultural relations and negating or delegitimizing others. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contemporary political ramifications of Korea’s multiculturalism and prospects for future broadening and deepening.