Abstract

This study assigns archival significance to the migrant culture, multicultural values, and social relationships that migrant women in Korea, including migrant workers and those in international marriages, establish during the settlement process. It explores methodological concepts and theories to reinterpret these as the value of multicultural living memory and records. The findings reveal that existing public record management practices have reproduced records from a narrow and limited perspective on marginalized social groups, particularly migrant women. An expanded discussion of provenance-based theory proposes a theoretical framework that considers “ethnicity” and “gender” as core provenances of migrant women’s archives, reflecting the social and cultural contexts surrounding their records. In addition, the archival concept of “stewardship” is introduced, emphasizing a symbiotic archiving approach in which the archives and the migrant women’s communities engage in continuous cooperation to develop archiving practices.