Social capital access and depression among female marriage migrants in Korea: The influence of the country of origin

This study investigated the relationship between social capital access and depression among female marriage migrants in South Korea. Assuming that the country of origin could play a role as a context in assessing the value of social capital, this study attempted to examine the varying degrees of association between social capital access and depression across countries of origin. Using the National Survey of Multicultural Families 2018, the responses of 5,514 female marriage migrants from China, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and Korean-Chinese migrants were analyzed. Descriptive statistics and ordered logit models were utilized for analyses. It was found that, in general, only Korean-Chinese females had higher social capital access to Koreans than that to people from the same country of origin. There was a significantly negative association between social capital access to Koreans and depression only for Korean-Chinese female migrants. On the contrary, there was a significantly negative association between depression and social capital access to people from the same country for all female marriage migrants. Among the control variables, negative influences of the satisfaction of couple relationship and that of the parent-child relationship, household income, and subjective health were revealed. Participation in religious activities was positively related to depression. These results imply that there were varying influences of the country of origin as the context for determining the use-value of social capital for female marriage migrants.