The Class Context of Temporary Immigration, Racism and Civic Nationalism in Taiwan

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal

2022

This paper probes how temporality is integral to the health examination regime that aims to protect citizens from infectious diseases in Taiwan. The paper finds that migrant workers in less-skilled occupations are examined more frequently than foreign professionals. Analyzing such differentiation, this paper argues that a hierarchy of sanitization is built on and increases the inequality between them and perpetuates instability in migrant workers’ circumstances. Applying a temporal approach to the study of health examination opens new inroads into our understanding of how a “migration state” achieves the exclusion of migrant workers by making them outsiders subject to permanent intrusion into their bodies.

Section: Health Examination and Temporalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Infection, temporality and inequality: Sanitizing foreign bodies and protecting public health in Taiwan

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal

2022

“…This worker‐cum‐victim identity is integral to a neoliberalist economy in which they do dirty, difficult and demeaning work (Aguiar and Herod, 2006) and receives wages that are paltry by local standards. Since migrant women suffer intersectional discrimination because of their gender, class and ethnicity (Liu, 2000; Loveband, 2004; Tierney, 2007, 2011; Lan, 2008; Wuo, 2010; Lin and Bélanger, 2012), they are seen as the undesirable other (Cheng, 2018). Their working conditions constituted by such discrimination could amount to ‘legal servitude’ (Lan, 2006).…”

Section: Entangled Identities: Workers Carers and Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

We want productive workers, not fertile women: The expediency of employing Southeast Asian caregivers in Taiwan

2020

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

The lives of Southeast Asian caregivers in Taiwan are regulated by a number of laws and policy measures that preclude them from naturalisation, deprive them of a family life, restrict their residency, mobility and employment, and, in the past, have suspended their fertility. They are thus excluded from Taiwanese society and alienated as temporary, supplementary and disposable outsiders in line with broad public opinion. ‘Bringing the state back in’ to its analysis, this article argues that this legislation is not only market‐driven but socio‐politically expedient in that it sanctions the continued employment of foreign caregivers as productive workers rather than as fertile women, while simultaneously casting them as the undesirable other. Taiwan thus becomes a ‘migration state’ with an open economy but a closed national community. Drawing on key government sources as well as longitudinal social surveys, the article demonstrates how this state‐anchored expediency enjoys consistent public endorsement. In focusing on how and why Southeast Asian caregivers' fertility was suspended, it introduces a much‐needed gender perspective to our understanding of how migrant women become ‘disenfranchised class’ in the hostile guest worker system.

“…In this regard, two specific strands have developed concerning the rights of migrant workers and migrant spouses. Regarding citizenship as a set of civil, political, socio-economic and cultural rights, one strand explores the differentiation of migrants' entitlement and access to substantive rights (Tierney 2011;Lee 2011;Lan 2006;Lee and Wang 1996;Chin 2013;Kaneko 2009;Tseng and Wang 2011). Viewing citizenship as a legal status, the other strand investigates the acquirement of citizenship as a membership of a national community and polity through naturalisation and integration (Cheng, Shih-ying 2013;Cheng, Isabelle 2013, 2014a, 2014bFriedman 2010a;Sheu 2013).…”

Section: Literature Review: Internal and External Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Look, the World is Watching how We Treat Migrants! The Making of the Anti-Trafficking Legislation during the Ma Administration

Journal of Current Chinese Affairs

Momesso

2017

Employing the spiral model, this research analyses how anti-human trafficking legislation was promulgated during the Ma Ying-jeou (Ma Yingjiu) presidency. This research found that the government of Taiwan was just as accountable for the violation of migrants’ human rights as the exploitive placement agencies and abusive employers. This research argues that, given its reliance on the United States for political and security support, Taiwan has made great efforts to improve its human rights records and meet US standards for protecting human rights. The reform was a result of multilevel inputs, including US pressure and collaboration between transnational and domestic advocacy groups. A major contribution of this research is to challenge the belief that human rights protection is intrinsic to democracy. In the same light, this research also cautions against Taiwan's subscription to US norms since the reform was achieved at the cost of stereotyping trafficking victimhood, legitimising state surveillance, and further marginalising sex workers.