Pei-Chia Lan,
"Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestic Workers in Asia"
(page 4 of 4)
Policy and Activist Suggestions
Asian governments have introduced migrant domestic workers as a
privatized welfare program that solve deficits in caring labor and to
push their female citizens into the labor market as part of national
development. In the meantime, state regulations, in particular the
"guest worker" program, have maintained the status of migrant workers as
disposable labor and as transient residents. States ensure the
dependency and subordination of migrant workers to facilitate extraction
of flexible labor and to sustain their marginal status in host
societies.
As feminists have argued for decades in various contexts around the
world, to change this situation, we should first challenge the
public/private dichotomy and advocate the publicizing of care. To
counteract the privatized, familistic model of care, the public should
support tax reforms that aim for social justice, while the government
should provide affordable institutional care and establish universal
welfare programs such as pensions and child allowances.
The second action item is to formalize and professionalize domestic
and care work. Because employers do not recognize domestic work as real
work, they tend to impose unreasonable demands upon their surrogates
(rather than treating them like "employees") and ignore the
contract-bound nature of employment. Without adequate social recognition
and institutional protection for paid domestic service, a personalized
employment relationship can only reproduce an oppressive, family-like
hierarchy for these fictive-kin employees.
The project of professionalizing domestic work needs to be grounded
in changes in the institutional regulations that legitimize domestic
work as an occupation. Otherwise, the rhetoric of professionalism could
turn into a form of self-discipline in accordance with the discourses of
labor brokers. In Taiwan and other Asian host countries, domestic
workers are not covered by the Labor Standards Law. Such legal exclusion
has intensified the vulnerability of foreign domestic workers in
comparison with migrant workers (mostly men) employed in formal sectors.
This, again, reflects the state ideology about the feminized and
privatized nature of domestic work. In the eyes of the state, the
foreign domestic worker is not a worker in the national economy but "an
appendage of the household."[16]
In addition to legal reform, it is also vital to seek effective
strategies to mobilize and unionize domestic workers, whose workplaces
are scattered across individual households. Another barrier to the
organization of migrant domestic workers is their transient status and
limited duration of stay in host countries. This point leads to the
third political agenda for the labor rights of migrant workers. Some
inappropriate interventions by the state, such as the regulation of job
transfers in the local labor market, should be abolished. Migrant
workers should be allowed to change employers and extend their
residency, conditional upon job availability. In the meantime, the state
should strengthen its protection of migrant rights and better enforce
its own regulations.
In conclusion, we need a new framework for the regulation of
citizenship and membership. In reality, the presence of "guest" workers
has become relatively permanent in Taiwan and other Asian countries,
contributing greatly to the welfare of the host societies. The receiving
states should consider opening the possibility of naturalization to
migrant manual laborers, or else relax the dichotomous model of
citizenship. Migrants could be granted economic, social, and local
political rights based on a "membership
without citizenship"[17]. In the
era of globalization, we need to reformulate the idea of sovereignty on
the grounds of human rights and moral obligations. After all, the
essential values of membership are not based on blood ties or formal
identifications but are constituted by equality, solidarity and
participation of members in a community, be it a society or the globe.
Endnotes
1. Graziano Battistella, "International Migration
in Asia vis-á-vis Europe: An Introduction," Asian and Pacific
Migration Journal 2.4 (2002): 405-414. [Return to text]
2. Keiko Yamanaka and Nicola Piper, "An
Introductory Overview," Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 12.1-2
(2003): 1-19. [Return to text]
3. John C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A
Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, (New York and London:
Routledge, 1993): 180. [Return to text]
4. Byung Hyun Park and Han Oak Lee, "A Comparative
Study on Housing Welfare Policies for the Elderly between Korea and
JapanÑfocused on the Policy for Home Residence," available at
www.welfareasia.org (PDF). [Return to text]
5. This article is based on my book, Global
Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). [Return to text]
6. Nana Oishi, Women in Motion: Globalization,
State Politics, and Labor Migration in Asia (California: Stanford
University Press, 2005). [Return to text]
7. Douglas Massey et al., Worlds in Motion:
Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). [Return to text]
8. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, "Migrant Women Domestic
Workers in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan: A Comparative Analysis,"
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 5.1 (1996): 139-152. [Return to text]
9. Michael Burawoy, "The Functions and
Reproduction of Migrant Labor: Comparative Material from Southern Africa
and the United States," American Journal of Sociology 81.5
(1976): 1050-1087. [Return to text]
10. Premachandra Athukorala, "Improving the
Contribution of Migrant Remittances to Development: The Experience of
Asian Labor-Exporting Countries," Migration Review 24 (1993):
323-346. [Return to text]
11. David Martin, "Labor Contractors: A
Conceptual Overview," Asian Pacific Migration Journal 5.2-3
(1996): 201-218; Yoshi Okunishi, "Labor Contracting in International
Migration: The Japanese Case And Implications for Asia," Asian and
Pacific Migration Journal 5.2-3 (1996): 219-240. [Return to text]
12. This amount will cover expenses for the
preparation of a passport and other documents, as well as a medical
checkup. According to the Philippine law, brokers are only allowed to
charge one month's salary as placement fee. The actually charged amount
is usually more than that. [Return to text]
13. In 2009, the minimum monthly wage for a
migrant worker in Taiwan was NT$17,280, or around $540 USD. [Return to text]
14. "Five-six" is a short-cut expression
referring to loans borrowed from loan sharks in the Philippines: If one
borrows 5,000 pesos, he or she has to return 6,000 pesos in a month
(with a monthly interest rate equal to 20 percent). [Return to text]
15. See Pei-Chia Lan, "Legal Servitude, Free
Illegality: Migrant 'Guest' Workers in Taiwan," in Rhacel Parreñas and
Lok Siu, ed., Asian Diasporas: New Conceptions, New Frameworks
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007): 253-277. [Return to text]
16. Shirlena Huang and Brenda Yeoh, "The
Difference Gender Makes: State Policy and Contract Migrant Workers in
Singapore," Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 12.1-2
(2003): 93. [Return to text]
17. Brubaker, W. Rogers, "Membership without
Citizenship: The Economic and Social Rights of Noncitiznes," in
Brubaker, ed., Immigration and Politics of Citizenship in Europe and
North America (Lanfam, Md.: University Press of America, 1989):
145-162. [Return to text]
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