Who gains most? Korean language proficiency and compensatory psychosocial change in a multi-sport programme for multicultural children and youth in South Korea

Support programmes for immigrant and multicultural youth are often built around the very language those youth have not yet mastered, disadvantaging the least fluent. This study asks whether sports, which rely on movement and demonstration rather than verbal instruction, benefit them most. Multilevel growth models were fitted to pre- and post-programme surveys from 207 children and adolescents in a 30-session multicultural sports programme in South Korea spanning five sports, each delivered by one participating organization. Self-concept rose and social withdrawal fell on average. Gains were largest for youth reporting the lowest Korean proficiency – a catch-up pattern consistent with narrowing the proficiency-related gap, clearly for self-concept and more tentatively for social withdrawal. Because the design is single-group and two-wave, with a single-item proficiency measure, the findings describe differential change rather than causal effects. Sports may nonetheless act as an equalizer and an equity-oriented complement to, not substitute for, language-based support.