How to Become a Taiwanese:
On the long and short journey of
migrating to Taiwan
Yen-Fen Tseng
Department of Sociology
National Taiwan University
This presentation is about..
• Current situation of migrants in Taiwan
• Overview on immigration policy:
- lower-class exclusion
- family citizenship regime
• Implications for class selection
Who are potential migrants?
• Migrants come as workers or spouses
• Mostly likely women
Low-skilled guest workers in Taiwan
•
Number: 353,800
•
Major sending countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand
•
Gender: Male: 36.5% ; Female 63.5%
•
Types of works: Manufacturing, care work, and construction
•
Resident Status: three years per contract; allowed to renew contract only once and can
never come in as workers again.
•
Restrictions on changing employers: only under official recognitions on “mistreatments”
and need to obtain employer’s agreement to be released from post.
•
Immigration control: health check applied only to guest workers to determine the
continuity of residency (contracting 5 communicable diseases such as AIDS,
Tuberculosis will be ground for repatriating)
“Structural” Dependency
• Nearly one third of disable people in
Taiwan are cared for by foreign workers.
They work both at home and institutions.
Almost all of these workers were women.
Spousal migrants in Taiwan
• Number: 430,738; 18 % of total new couples in 2009.
• Major Sending countries: China(63%), Vietnam(19%), Indonesia(6%)
• Gender: 6.5% men, 93.5% women
• Socioeconomic profiles of their Taiwanese spouses: lower-to lower
middle class, unskilled as well as skilled workers, farmers…
• Demographic future: In 2008, one out of about ten newborns was
born to non-Taiwan origin mothers.
• Residence: metropolitan areas
• Marriage instability experienced: In 2008, divorce couples involving
spousal migrants accounted for 20% of all divorce cases.
Table1. Number of Foreign Spouses by nationality and gender
Foreign and
Chinese Spouses
Year
Total
Nationality (region)
Gender
Total number
of marriages
%in
total
marriages
Mainland
China
Hong
Kong & Macao
South East Asia
Other
regions
Male
Female
2001
46,202
27.10
26,516
281
17,512
1,893
3,400
42,802
170,515
2002
49,013
28.39
28,603
303
18,037
2,070
4,366
44,647
172,655
2003
54,634
31.86
34,685
306
17,351
2,292
6,001
48,633
171,483
2004
31,310
23.82
10,642
330
18,103
2,235
3,176
28,134
131,453
2005
28,427
20.14
14,258
361
11,454
2,354
3,139
25,288
141,140
2006
23,930
16.77
13,964
442
6,950
2,574
3,214
20,716
142,669
2007
24,700
18.29
14,721
425
6,952
2,602
3,141
21,599
135,041
2008
21,729
14.03
12,274
498
6,009
2,948
3,516
18,213
154,866
2009
21,914
18.71
12,796
498
5,696
2,924
3,673
18,241
117,099
Growth rate
(%)
0.85
4.68
4.25
--
-5.21
-0.81
4.47
0.15
-24.39
Source: National Immigration Agency, Foreign Spouses Statistics, various years.
(http://www.moi.gov.tw/files/news_file/week9903.doc), accessed on 2010/3/9
Guest workers policy:
Foreign workers as unwanted citizens
• When Taiwan policy makers created the
first policy scheme to legally import
workers from abroad in early 1990s,they
decided to reject the possibility of bringing
potential settlers, allowing only “guest
workers” .
Guest workers as non-members
• Foreign workers who are admitted should
be “guests,” not immigrants seeking a new
home and a new citizenship.
• The regulations that govern their admission
are designed to bar them from the
protection of citizenship.
The decline of guest workers
program in Europe
• Initially, we thought we brought in workers;
then we realized we brought in people.
• There is nothing more permanent than guest
workers.
Policy learning chain
• Starting mid-1980, guestworkers policy
gain its “new” life in Asia
• Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South
Korea, Japan….
• Guest workers policy is a compromise
between forces desiring and forces fearing
foreign workers. Such desires are
formulated in economic terms and the fears
are framed in foreigners’ social
“incompatibility”.
• With guest workers policy, the state led the
society to recognize foreign workers as
economically desirable but socially fearful.
• In Taiwan, guest workers policy creates a
legal category called “foreign workers (外
勞) that separates them from foreigners of
higher class background.
• 就業服務法第46條第1項第8款至11款規
定工作之外國人（外籍勞工）
immigration policy
• Currently, Taiwan government offer
permanent residency and eventual
naturalization, to long-term foreign
residents (living in Taiwan at least five
years), with “middle-class” qualifications
(i.e. monthly income at least twice as much
as minimum wage).
Guest workers excluded
• For those foreigners recruited as guest
workers(外勞), the years of their residence
can not be counted to fulfill the required
years of residence. Therefore, even though,
they may have lived in Taiwan for more
than five years and earn twice as much as
the minimum wage, they are disqualified
from applying for permanent residency.
Only “they” cannot be us
• Policy makers are determined to maintain a
solid line between lower-class foreign
workers who cannot change their status,
and the rest of foreigners who can
eventually apply for permanent residency
and naturalization.
• Even when they marry to Taiwan nationals, they
have to go back as guest workers, then apply to
come back as spouses.
• The old policy measure required female guest
workers to conduct pregnancy check every half
year; pregnancy was the ground for immediate
repatriation, even the father being Taiwan
nationals.
• Brokers are critical agents for employers
and governments to manage the timeline.
They help employers to recruit foreign
workers just in time and help the state
remove foreign workers just on time.
Table 1 Number of foreign workers overstaying their visas by countries of origin (1992-2006)
Accumulated
Number
Deported
Number
Still in
Residence
Philippines
23,533
20,551
2,982
Indonesia
22,160
16,648
5,512
Thailand
30,624
28,785
1,839
Vietnam
25,466
14,755
10,711
Other
556
549
7
Total
102,339
81,288
21,051
Source: National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior
• Harsh working conditions and loss of
freedom to change employers are direct
result of intensive surveillance on their
mobility and residence.
Spousal migrants
Initiation and Perpetuation
• Initial stage: shortage of “brides” in rural areas due to rural
women’s ‘marrying out to city’ expectation
• Following period: Effective commercial brokers match
“foreign brides” with lower-middle class men living in
metropolitan areas.
• Current stage: Increasing significance of spousal migrants
from China as a result of intensifying economic and social
interactions across straits.
The supply side
• Cross-border marriages to men in more
developed countries perceived as
opportunities to better women’s livelihood.
• For women from Southeast Asia, “marrying
Taiwan men” are very often persuaded by
parents as part of family strategy .
Mechanisms that perpetuate
• Kin/village networks
• Transnational commercial brokers
• Tourist/business visits
• Internet
“Endogenous” marriages
Ethnic Selection:
• Hakka women from Indonesia and
Guandong, China
• Fujian women from China
The Road to Become Taiwan
nationals
An impossible journey
• Guest workers
A Long Journey
• Out of “national security” reason, Chinese
spouses are subject to more controls and
procedures to apply for residency as well as
citizenship.
• Family visit visa→family unification
residency→long-term residency→citizens
(minimum 6 years)
A Shorter One
• Other foreign spouses
Alien resident
(three years later) → citizens
or
(five years later) → permanent resident
•
Source: National Immigration Agency, 2010, http://www.immigration.gov.tw/aspcode/info9901.asp
Chinese Spouses
Total
Female%
Family
visit
visa
%
274,945
95.7
40.7
Resident
Naturalized %
Family
Unifi
cation
%
Longter
m
%
20.5
11.0
27.8
The “cost” of new citizenship
• The current law requires all foreigners to
give up their original nationalities before
application for naturalization.
• A double standard that recognizes dual
citizenship of Taiwan nationals
Naturalization is gendered
• Women outnumber men by a large margin
to naturalize
• In the case of foreign spouses, 62.8% of all
female and 4.8% of all male become
naturalized respectively.
•
Source: National Immigration Agency, 2010, http://www.immigration.gov.tw/aspcode/info9901.asp
Foreign Spouses
Total
Female%
143,995
91.9
Naturalization
% Naturalized
male
4.8
% Naturalized
Female
62.8
Marriages must keep going
• Along the process, the required qualification for
continued residency hinges upon the continuity of
their marrying to Taiwanese nationals.
• Before they obtain permanent residency, their
legal resident status will be canceled if the
marriage does not continue, except for the decease
of spouses.
• The divorcees’ residency right can only be
secured by obtaining the custody of
offspring. This same principle applies to
those who want to apply for citizenship.
• According to government survey,
significant proportion of spousal migrants
suffer abuses and even violence in
marriages.
New Taiwan Children
• A public discourse initiated by mass media
recognized the contribution of spousal
migrants by referring them as mothers of
“new Taiwan children.”
• To be caregivers to “new Taiwan children”
serves as the only justification for their
continued residency in the new country,
once they break away from the original
marital ties that granted their legal
immigration.
Exclusion of non-mothers
• This discourse excludes migrant women
who do not reproduce, from the politics of
recognition
Family citizenship regime
• A state as “a political organization that
creates intergenerational identities through
kinship rules that distinguish between
sacred and profane forms of sexuality and
reproduction.”
Free from fear
• After years of women rights activist efforts,
new regulation passed to protect those who
experienced domestic violence.
• They can break from their marriages
without having to lose their legal residency
right.
Conclusion
What matters most to be “qualified”?
• Race? Class? Nation?
The effect of race
• Most arguments on immigration exclusion focus
on racism in social constructions of “incompatible
others”.
• For example, in East Asia, racial homogeneity has
been considered as an important ideology in
rejecting immigration.
• Although racial ideologies have played a
major role in many countries’ immigration
screening, I found that classism offers very
powerful explanations towards Taiwan’s
immigration policies.
Class selection
• Immigration channel exists only for the
highly skilled.
Class superseding nationalism
• In DPP regime, such immigration
scheme ,for the first time, extended arms to
welcome Chinese highly skilled migrants
• “Modern notion of race, in so far as it is
invested in a discourse of contempt and
discrimination and serves to split humanity
up into a ‘super-humanity’ and a ‘subhumanity’, did not initially have a national
(or ethnic), but a class significance, or
even caste significance.” (Etienne Balibar)
Class, more than race
• I argue that in Taiwan, the “incompatible
others” are the lower-class foreigners, but
not foreigners in general.
• Among lower-class migrants, the Japanese
differentiate those who are of Japanese
descendant and confer them a more
privileged legal status over those who are
not, therefore, creating a stratified labor
market for foreign workers, based on race.
• In Taiwan, working class migrants have
become a pseudo-pariah, or an outcaste
among lowest social strata as someone
perceived to possess ‘sub-humanity’ as a
result. The immigration policy thus
becomes venues of marking or even
making social class.
• The children born to cross-border marriages
are at risk of stigma out of class marking,
for the majority of them are born to lower
socioeconomic migrant mothers.
What is behind the “worry”?
• Race? Class? Nation?