• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.6.2-6
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• 2001

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.159-183
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• 2012

This study intends to explore structural characteristics of social networks for female immigrants married to Korean men, and to analyze the relationship between the characteristics and types of social supports provided by their social networks and the differences between support-giving and support-receiving networks. Ego-centered network analysis is used for collecting network data on fifty-three migrant wives selected by a snowball sampling method. Results show that social support receiving and giving networks of female immigrants have similarities rather than differences, which implied that they play roles not only as support receivers, but also as support givers in their social networks. Also the study suggests that there are correlations between networks' characteristics, such as density and effective size of ego network, and types of supports. The result indicates that the less cohesive and less redundant ties female immigrants had, the more diverse and more informational and emotional supports they obtained from their social networks. Due to the sampling method and size, this study has a limitation to generalize the results for the whole population of female immigrants in Korea. However, it provides a basic understanding of female immigrants' social networks.