Extra Discussion

Crime

Many people believe that foreign workers are committing many serious crimes in Korea. The fear of crime is growing in general population these days. The official statistics, however, tell us that the fear and concern about foreigners as potential criminals are not on firm ground. This paper proposes that discrimination, community, and labor market are the crucial social contexts which explains and predicts the problem of crimes committed by foreigners or immigrants. Given the cultural and social structural characteristics of Korean society, these social contexts interact each other and produce social conditions such as deviant subculture, economic inequality, and segregation. These conditions will increase the crime rates in minority communities as well as in majority communities and reinforce the discrimination against foreigners and immigrants. A vicious cycle is completed when a high crime rate among foreigners and immigrants aggravates the discrimination and labeling on them. So this paper argues that good social policy for foreigners and immigrants would be the effective criminal policy for our multicultural society. This paper suggests several policies on the issue. First, we should make every effort to abolish discrimination on foreigners and immigrants. Second, we need to encourage the formation of the communities for foreigners and immigrants and their integration into mainstream communities. Third, we have to improve the foreigners" condition in labor market and control the new-coming unskilled labor from other countries at a reasonable level. Discrimination against foreigners will increase the crime rate among foreigners, and in turns intensify the labeling on them. To break the vicious cycle, we need the social policies for abolishing discrimination and facilitating social mobility for second-generation immigrants and children from multicultural families.