In this study, the author aimed to identify the factors that influence marriage immigrant women’s resilience and its process when facing difficulties. In doing so, factors relating to seeking professional help were also identified. The findings indicated that the order of the resilience process follows: enduring difficulties, collapse of stability, access to professional help, satisfaction of desire, and experience of growth. A combination of the absence of support from a partner, a child driving change, the need for economic activity, and the satisfaction of desire all affect difference in growth, and therefore may influence marriage immigrant women’s resilience. Common difficulties that these women face are cultural differences and communication problems due to the lack of language proficiency. It should be noted that often, marriage immigrant women are passive in seeking help for mental health problems, as described in a previous study [18]. As support from the home country family weakened while living in Korea, their vulnerability to mental health problems heightened. Thus, accessibility to professional help becomes extremely important in this context.
In general, immigrants are evaluated as vulnerable due to a lack of access to health information compared to indigenous peoples [19]. Marriage immigrant women experience structural barriers when accessing professional services as a result of their position as immigrants in society. The women lack information about public services and are often reliant on other immigrant women for information. These circumstances delay intervention and cause more complex mental health problems, forcing marriage immigrant women into a subordinate position with less control over their own lives. Migrants are often also unfamiliar with the overall system and language of the immigration country, so experience significant difficulty obtaining necessary health information [20]. It is imperative that access to professional services is improved to empower immigrant women. According to this study’s findings, this professional help should be available within two years of migration. This supports research from other countries that suggests intervention should not be delayed over three years [21]. How and when marriage immigrant women receive service information and professional help is important since mental health problems can be easily resolved at an early stage [22].
Meeting marriage immigrant women’s needs for recognition, respect, and reward, in the form of happiness, well-being, encouragement, and financial independence, and strengthening supportive spousal relationships are the key intervention strategies for improved resilience. Many of the participants in this study find a supportive relationship with consultants and therapists where they can discuss their concerns, thoughts, and feelings and are encouraged to learn communication skills. However, although this type of intervention is effective, the role of the partner is a lot bigger in resilience. The degree of respect, acceptance, and attention received from others who are considered to be important has the greatest impact on the development of self-esteem [23]. Since their Korean spouses are usually the most important and meaningful people to marriage immigrant women, being recognized, respected, and rewarded by the spouse and building a strong supportive relationship with them decreases the resilience process time and leads the women to a high level of growth. As such, partner intervention should be addressed at the system level.
This is the first study, to the author’s knowledge, that found that the children can be the driving force in tackling the difficulties of marriage immigrant women. Psychological resources, such as child-care responsibility and the tight bond with a child, play a role as catalysts for improvements to immigrants’ mental health and buffers to mediate stressors [24]. These results confirm that the desire for a relationship plays an important role in promoting intrinsic motivation [25]. Personality traits and psychological resources have been the main emphasis in existing resilience research [26–30], however, the results of this study show that the protective factors of resources at the family and community level are more influential on resilience than individual resources with regard to the mental health of marriage immigrant women. Another noteworthy finding is that economic activity plays positive and negative roles on the mental health of these immigrant women as it is both a means of solving financial difficulties and a stressor that makes it difficult to balance work and family life. The resilience factor, therefore, needs to be interpreted in a way that reflects this cultural and social context [31], and economic activities should be supported structurally for the independence and autonomy of these women.
Opinions of scholars vary on whether to view positive results after difficulty as a recovery to the previous state or an improved state [32]. The discoveries of this study suggest that for marriage immigrant women, resilience results should be regarded as growth beyond recovery to the stable state, in that they overcame difficulties and then achieved further internal growth through various protective factors, such as strengthening their support system. In this process, their attitudes, thoughts, coping styles, and communication styles changed positively. These positive changes correspond to areas of growth that include appreciation of life, intimacy of relationships, and personal strengths [33]. [16]. To sustain and strengthen growth in resilience in marriage immigrant women, interventions should be considered for individuals to undertake meaningful activities in a supportive and collaborative environment in the community [34]. In turn, the positive results of resilience may then spread through the community.
One limitation of this qualitative research could be that marriage immigrant women who participated in the in-depth interviews may have more resources at their disposal than other marriage immigrant women in that they had already experienced positive resilience results. However, as the purpose of this study was to analyze marriage immigrant women who experienced positive results of resilience, and to identify resilience factors, processes, and its context, it is not necessary to consider the possibility of selective bias against the study results. Further studies should address the resilience of the mental health of marriage immigrant women who have few protective factors in the early stages of migration. Another limitation of this research is that the fieldwork was conducted three to four years ago, there has now been a policy change in South Korea that basic Korean proficiency is required for marriage immigration. Since this policy change may affect immigrant women’s resilience process, further study should be addressed to identify the effect of language proficiency in resilience.