Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Kam-Wah CHAN
Department of Applied Social Sciences,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Abstract
The dynamics of social exclusion and inclusion of certain groups of citizens
and migrant workers is a complex and multi-dimensional process, which is
shaped by institutional frameworks as well as informal practices. While
some of these frameworks are justied by economic rationality, migrants
with low socio-economic background are often excluded from aspects of
labour and social protection, therefore reinforcing hegemonic ideas about
insiderness and outsiderness. This paper argues that how readily government-enforced policies embrace migrants is crucial to the reinforcement
of social stratication. Specically, the article examines the immigration,
labour and social security policies aimed at low-skilled migrant workers
in Seoul and Taiwan, low-skilled cross-border migrants in Hong Kong
and rural to urban migrants in Beijing. It highlights how policies veer
towards the exclusionary when targeted towards low-income migrant
groups from Southeast and East Asia, which manifest racial discrimination
against them. The accumulation effect of their disadvantaged status has a
detrimental impact on both migrant workers quality of life and cohesion
of society as a whole.
* Correspondence concering this article may be addressed to be author, Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan, at:
llsngan@ied.edu.hk
2013 City University of Hong Kong
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Methodology
Data for this paper emerged from a larger international comparative study
that examined issues relating to the sustainability and governance of
social welfare and the impact on citizenship, well-being and social cohesion
in four East Asian societies, namely Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul.
Concerning the comparability between the four cities, we focused mainly
on issues in the designated cities instead of the whole country, as it
would be too complicated to handle in one study. The study highlighted
gender and the life-course as key variables in understanding the dynamics
of governance, citizenship and social policy.
In order to understand the challenges and contradictions confronting
these four cities, we gathered in-depth qualitative data through two main
strategies; rstly, interviews with key actors in the policy-making process
and secondly, focus groups with local citizens and migrants. The multilevel data collection method adopted aimed to enhance our understanding
about the social reality experienced by local citizens and migrants.
Fieldwork data collection was conducted between December 2008 and
July 2009. Organization interviews included individuals from government
departments responsible for areas of labour, social welfare, womens
rights and ethnic relations, advisory bodies and think tanks for the govern-
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Beijing
Taiwan
Seoul
Government departments
Trade unions
Academia
Private organizations
12
11
16
17
Total
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focus of our study. In Taiwan and Seoul, our emphasis was on overseas
blue-collar migrant workers as there has been an increasing demand to
import foreign workers into the country since the 1980s due to labour
shortages in certain segments of the economy.
In Hong Kong, while the major demand for importation of foreign
workers is for domestic helpers, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines,
the more conspicuous migrant issue concerns new arrivals from Mainland
China. The one-way permit (OWP) scheme, enforced since the 1990s,
has created much social tension between the locals and new arrivals. As
noted earlier, to a certain extent these migrants are internal migrants as
they are moving from one region in China to another.
Unlike Taiwan and South Korea, where there is a large demand for the
importation of foreign workers, in Beijing, the internal migration of workers
from rural to urban areas and their social welfare have been the major concerns of domestic policies. Therefore, in Beijing our focus was on internal
rural to urban migrants.
The qualitative nature and limitation in the sample size of our study
mean our ndings would not be representative of all experiences of lowskilled migrant workers in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong and Beijing. In this
respect, rather than making general conclusions about the social experience
of the community, this study explored the uncharted social realities of
specic disadvantaged migrant groups in each city through the everyday
experiences of migrants, their local counterparts and social policies.
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allowed to export labour into the country and a high proportion of foreign
workers have come from Southeast Asia, including countries like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
With the introduction of the Industrial Trainee Program (ITP) in 1993,
Korean rms were allowed to import foreign trainees. Until 2003, when
the law was extended to overseas workers, imported workers would enter
Korea as a trainee, not as a worker, and thus were excluded from the
basic workers rights under the Labour Standards Law and the Social Insurance System. A representative of a migrant welfare-focused NGO condemned the condition of workers under the ITP in this way:
As the name let us know, they are not labourers but trainees. Therefore, they were not covered by the Labour Standard Act in Korea.
The Industrial Trainee System was just like a modern slavery
system. (26 June 2009)
Criticized as a modern slavery system, the ITP did not allow foreign
workers to join or form any labour unions and although their visa status was
trainee, they actually worked in the factory without proper training and
were not allowed to change employment without the permission of their
employers. Studies have documented appalling working conditions, such
as often being laid off without payment, receiving much less than the
minimum wage and working extremely long hours (Kim, 2004; Seol,
2000). At the same time, because the government did not expand the industrial trainee quota despite a sharp increase in the demand for foreign
workers, it led to a rise in the number of undocumented workers in the
country (Rhee et al., 2005). Lim (2010) argues that the government
played a crucial role in institutionalizing and legitimizing a highly discriminatory labour system and helping to criminalize foreign workers.
The current Employment Permit System (EPS), implemented in 2004,
was a strategic move by the government to ultimately replace the problematic ITP with specic aims to legalize foreign migrant workers who had
already been in the illegal market through rehiring benets,2 develop
better tracking records to control illegal immigration as well as to better
protect their labour rights including the universal minimum wage (Rhee
et al., 2005). The government gave many undocumented workers the oppor2 Since 2007, the government has been extending the rehiring benet to not only those working
with an employment permit but also to those with industrial trainee and training employment
visas, although the benet is conned to certain nations.
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tunity to apply for a permit at the time and those who did not qualify were
given a chance to leave the country without paying any nes. This amnesty
boosted the registered foreign population to 73.4% between 2002 and 2003
(Y. Park, 2004).
Under the EPS foreign workers are restricted to employment in only
ve industries: manufacturing, agriculture and stockbreeding, shing, construction and service (including household service). However, the service
and construction industries are limited to only Korean ethnics. Workers
are only allowed to be employed for a maximum of three years (after
which they are subject to deportation and the accumulated duration of
employment cannot exceed a maximum of six years) and accompanying
family is banned. As such, workers remain on a need basis and are
treated as temporary guest workers. The continued intention of the government is to keep low-skilled migrants temporary, which directly implicates migrants social status as the outsider. One informant from a
labour welfare-focused NGO alluded to the continued problem of undocumented workers under the EPS:
Because theres a three-year time limit for migrant workers, illegal
emigration is an inevitable consequence. Even though they are a
little bit more generous for Korean-Chinese who migrated long
time ago, the problem of migrant workers from the Philippines,
Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, etc., is very serious. The government fails to protect them in human rights and social security.
(17 July 2009)
Korean-Chinese who enter under the Working Visit scheme are free to
shift workplace and thus have more bargaining power with their employers
and are less likely to be exploited. Our informant called this difference systematic discrimination. Foreign workers from the former USSR and ethnic
Koreans from China are entitled to enter under the less stringent visa. They
are permitted to enter via the Working Visit scheme which allows them to
work in more occupations and they can stay up to ve years. They are not
subject to the same restrictions as the workers under the EPS.
While there are no formal restrictions for low-skilled migrants to gain
permanent residence status (F5 visa), immigration criteria such as income
and years of legal residence make it very difcult for unskilled workers
whose employment is limited to three years to gain a permanent residence
visa. In 2010, the government announced a new F-2-7 visa programme
exclusively for foreign professionals in order to attract global talent and
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more than one year upon the expiration of contract6) (Her, 2007). The accumulated duration of employment cannot exceed a maximum of an accumulated nine years. Unlike foreign professional workers who can be hired by
two employers simultaneously and are free to change employers, they are
not allowed to change employers. Furthermore, unlike the hiring of professionals where employers do not need to publicly advertise the position,
it is a requirement for the recruitment of blue-collar workers. Under the
guest worker programme, the government has established policies and
implemented measures that effectively keep blue-collar workers in temporary status, preventing them from gaining permanent residency. Comparing
the differences in policy treatment between high- and low-skilled workers, a
Taipei-based migrant welfare NGO argued that from the policy level, it is
clear discrimination [towards blue-collar workers] is there (18 May 2009).
Her comments coincide with Tseng and Wangs (2011) observation that
restrictive immigration policies targeted at these workers make them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and marginalization.
Foreign low-skilled workers in Taiwan and South Korea are part of an
increasing number of guest workers who are working under dangerous
and difcult conditions. Restrictions on blue-collar migrant workers in
Taiwan are similar to those set in South Korea. As will be discussed, as outsiders, blue-collar migrants in South Korea and Taiwan face similar problems which originate from national policies that keep unskilled workers
temporary and therefore easily disposable.
In Hong Kong, low-skilled foreign labour is largely concentrated in
domestic work and is dominated by Southeast Asians. In 2006, of a total
of 342,198 ethnic minorities living in Hong Kong, 32.9% were Filipinos
and 25.7% were Indonesians, of which 93.8% and 98.3% respectively
were engaged in elementary occupations (Census Statistics Department,
2006). Unlike professional foreign workers who are eligible to apply for
permanent residency after having ordinarily resided in the city for
seven years, foreign domestic workers are not entitled to become permanent
residents. Under the immigration ordinance, the denition of ordinary residency excludes domestic workers and various other occupational categories
even if they have resided in Hong Kong for many years. Recently, as a result
of a landmark case, there has been widespread debate on equal treatment for
foreign workers. In 2011, the Hong Kong High Court ruled that a Filipino
6 In special circumstances, employers may apply for an additional extension of a maximum
length of six months.
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domestic worker who had lived in Hong Kong since 1986 should be
allowed to apply for permanent residency in the city. It was suggested
that the ruling could lead to more than 100,000 other foreign maids
winning rights to residency (Hunt, 2011). In 2012 the government won
an appeal against the ruling. In 2014, the Court of Final Appeal ruled
that the domestic worker was not entitled to permanent residency, ending
the controversial legal battle over the migration rights of foreign domestic
workers.
Mainland China has an abundance of low-skilled labour and as such
does not rely on the import of foreign labour supplies. Rural to urban
migration of low-skilled workers has been the main form of labour
supply. However, as will be discussed, due to the restrictions under the
household registration (hukou), rural migrants are treated as outsiders and
are deprived of their entitlement of basic welfare and government-provided
services.
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during the early 1980s and older low-income working men who are increasingly involved in cross-border marriages. According to the Hong Kong
Census and Statistic Department, marriages by male Hong Kong residents
registered in Hong Kong, which involved Mainland Chinese women,
increased around 23 times from 703 in 1986 to 15,978 in 2007, and there
has also been a gradual increase of Hong Kong women marrying Mainland
Chinese men.
Historically the OWP scheme had required signicant waiting time,
and some spouses and children waited over a decade to be reunited with
their families in Hong Kong. However, the situation has improved recently
where all spouses who have waited for at least ve years are eligible to enter
the city under the OWP scheme (Bacon-Shone, Lam, & Yip, 2008). Moreover, new arrivals often experience difculties in adapting to life in Hong
Kong, particularly in employment and living environment (Home Affairs
Departments, 2008).
The OWP is not the only way Mainland Chinese can gain residence
status in Hong Kong. For those in the privileged groups such as professionals, they can enter by employment through various channels. One
such method is through the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talent and
Professionals which came into effect in 2003. Unlike the OWP scheme,
there is no set quota or restrictions on employment sectors and the
spouse and unmarried dependent children may be admitted with the applicant to stay in Hong Kong (Immigration Department, 2009).
The treatment of Mainland Chinese spouses and dependent children
under the OWP scheme is clearly different from the treatment of spouses
and dependent children of skilled professionals. The differential treatment
between migrants from poor and rich countries is more obvious. Family
reunion for Hong Kong people with spouses and children in economically
developed countries like the USA, UK and Australia is not subject to such
tight control. Migrants from these rich countries can apply for a work permit
and work in Hong Kong as long as they can nd a job there. They do not
need to be professionals, specialists or have special talents. While the governments agreed human rights obligations involve facilitating family
reunication at a rate that Hong Kongs economic and social infrastructure
can absorb without excessive strain, the OWP scheme and policies targeted at new Mainland Chinese immigrants have been justied in terms
of excessive economic and social strain (Bacon-Shone et al., 2008, p. 3).
This in effect has created not only a barrier to social cohesion and
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331
national award can apply for a Beijing hukou but there is currently no
ofcial policy on this (Sina, 2009).
While there are special considerations such as for people who live with
spouses, parents or offspring, demobilized soldiers or those who are above
the age of 45 and have been married to a person with Beijing hukou for over
ten years, urban registration is still beyond reach for the majority of rural
migrants (Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, 2008b). These new
regulations are more of an immigration scheme to attract the high-skilled
workers, while maintaining signicant barriers against the majority of
migrants who are employed in low-income jobs.
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Table 2 Main Forms of National Social Security for Migrants in East Asia
Beijing
Hong Kong
Employment
Unemployment
Insurance
Labour
Others
Maternity Insurance
Pension
Pension/Old Age
Insurance
Housing Fund
Housing Accumulation
Fund
Main Public
Assistance
Seoul
Blue-collar
migrant workers
Blue-collar migrant
workers (legal)
National Health
Insurance
Programme
National Medical
Insurance
Blue-collar migrant
workers (illegal)
Employment Insurance
Labour Insurance
Mandatory Provident
Fund
Industrial Accident
Compensation
Insurance
National Pension
Industrial Accident
Compensation
Insurance
Health
Taipei
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injury insurance are mandatory, pension insurance is reciprocal8 and unemployment insurance is voluntary. In addition, employers of foreign workers
hired under the EPS have to contribute to additional insurance programmes
which provide labour protection to these workers. Illegal foreigner workers
who have no valid working permits are not protected by the labour law and
are excluded from social protection benets because they do not contribute
to the system (Kim, 2004; Seol, 2000). However, since 1993 they have been
covered by the work injury insurance which includes bottom-line protection
of human rights.
In Taiwan, similar to South Korea, the labour contract offers non-discrimination and legitimate protection in minimum wages, working hours
and working conditions for blue-collar workers. The basic wage is stipulated at TW$959 per hour (approximately US$3.12) (Council of Labour
Affairs, 2008). Employers are required to register foreign labourers in
their company for labour insurance and national health insurance (NHI).
The standard workday of 8 hours and overtime is similar to South Korea
and is also regulated under the labour laws.
While the labour and social rights of low-skilled migrant workers are
protected at the policy level, in reality there are many violations. In our
focus groups in Seoul and Taipei, blue-collar migrant workers similarly
expressed that the above-mentioned labour protection policies are only
practised in large companies, and many employers of small companies
still breach the law. One of the main issues presented in both cities was
related to the implementation of policies. Our informant from a migrant
welfare NGO in Taipei explained the difculty of enforcing the policies:
Actually there is always a contract between the employer and the
worker, everyone has to have contract, but its only a procedure.
Employers dont implement their contract. No worker will ght
for one day off to go through the courts, I mean its impossible
for them!
Although theres an article in the Constitution in the Labour
Standard Law saying that people cannot be discriminated by races,
gender, blah blah blah. But nobody takes it seriously. (18 May
2009)
8 According to the reciprocity principle, this is applicable only to those foreign workers from
countries where National Pension mandatorily applies to foreigners.
9 Exchange rate: US$1 = TW$30.35 approximately in November 2011.
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services whereas in South Korea workers are not allowed to work in domestic service (except for ethnic Koreans). The estimated number of illegal
workers in Korea is 200,489,10 compared with 34,00011 in Taiwan. While
illegal workers in South Korea arguably receive better protection than
workers in Taiwan as they are covered by the industrial accident compensation insurance, the effectiveness of this measure is doubtful because
they could be deported if they request treatment for injury from accidents.
At a community level, our informants in Seoul reported that church-based
groups provide much support (including medial, counselling and social networks) to both legal and illegal workers. This point is supported by the fact
that many websites of such organizations openly offer assistance to both
categories of migrant workers.
However, what is particularly interesting is that some participants in
our Seoul focus groups expressed their preference to be undocumented
workers. During our interviews with both legal and undocumented
migrants, participants expressed the benet of being illegal is that they
could evade employment restrictions forced upon legal blue-collar
migrant workers. In particular, the biggest advantage of an undocumented
migrant is the freedom to change employers:
If you are legal, even if you dont like the job, you cannot change
jobs. But if you are illegal and you dont like the job, you can quit
anytime. Its very difcult when I am engaged to the factory. So
even if the salary is not satisfactory, I cannot quit because of the
contract (Female Indonesian legal migrant worker in Seoul,
aged 1830, 5 July 2009)
Nevertheless, our informants also noted the downside of being illegal; the
main disadvantage is the constant fear of being caught and sent back home.
At the everyday level, foreign workers in both Seoul and Taipei frequently
encountered social discrimination and marginalization in the workplace. Much
media coverage has reported discrimination towards them, particularly exposing differential treatment from local workers. Our informants in both cities
alluded to such experiences. The following are some of their comments:
Everyone has their own jobs, theyre all different but I think our
jobs are a bit tougher than theirs We are the migrant worker,
10 2008 gure from the South Korea Ministry of Labour.
11 2010 gure (Huang, 2010).
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we should be a little more tired than they are, this is for sure. (Male
Vietnamese migrant worker in Taipei, aged 1830, 17 May 2009)
We, foreigners, foreign workers including illegal workers, work in
the 3D industry: Dirty, Difcult and Dangerous. If I can give a suggestion to the Department of Labour: they should standardize
working safety procedures. Especially for foreign workers, they
should put in the contract all the terms about working conditions.
My working condition in my rst company was really dirty and
really dangerous and really hard! (Male Indonesian migrant
worker in Seoul, 5 July 2009)
Although migrant workers often feel that they are not being treated equally
to locals, many have learned to internalize discrimination by believing that
their status as outsiders is subordinate and justies ill-treatment.
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for at least one year immediately before the date of application. Beginning
from 2004, as a result of the governments 2003 report of the Task Force on
Population Policy that pointed to the need to ensure a rational basis on
which Hong Kongs social resources are allocated, new immigrants are
not eligible for CSSA until they have resided in Hong Kong for over
seven years, unless under very special circumstances.
The seven-year requirement is also a condition for the allocation of
public rental housing and purchase of Home Ownership Scheme (HOS)
ats. In addition to income and asset limits, at the time of allocation of
public rental housing and at the application of HOS, at least half of the
family members included in the application must have lived in the city
for seven years. In effect, families of new immigrants are in a disadvantaged
position.
While the economic rationality behind the seven-year residence
requirement has been legitimized by the government (Labour and
Welfare Bureau, 2009), without tackling issues faced by new immigrants
such as work, childcare and family violence, these immigrants are left
with little social protection. For example, many victims of domestic violence are women from Mainland China who are married to older Hong
Kong men. Due to prolonged duration of separation between the
husband and wife before they arrive, disparity in age and disillusionment
upon arrival, they often nd it hard to adapt to the new environment and
conicts occur frequently between the couple (Wong & Hu, 2006). If they
have resided there for less than seven years, they are ineligible to apply
for CSSA and public housing. Consequently it is not possible for them
to leave their spouses even when the couples may be facing intense disputes.
In our female new arrivals focus group, a number of informants were
victims of domestic abuse. For example, one woman who left her
husband with her seven-year old daughter after being constantly abused
could only live on her childs CSSA allowance for survival. It was impossible for her to nd any full-time employment as there was no one to take
care of her daughter:
I could not nd a job. My daughter has many holidays. How could
a job offer me so many holidays? It is impossible. I have to accommodate myself for the job, no job would accommodate itself for me
You could not apply for anything with the time limit [residence
requirement] of seven years My life was pathetic. I was
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nancial support according to the number of school children with permanent residence permits, rural migrants children receive no governmental
subsidies, thus obliging many schools to either go on collecting tuition
fees or charge miscellaneous fees (Eastday.com, 2006).
Since 2006, to ensure the right to education for children of migrant
workers, the law was amended with a new provision which stipulates that
when both parents or legal guardians are migrant workers living with
their children in locations other than where the family is registered, the
local governments where they live and work must provide for the childrens
education (Xinhua News Agency, 2006). Nevertheless, in practice, extra
fees for migrants children continue to be collected by schools.
Our respondents acknowledged that additional fees were still being collected by schools and they felt that the main problem is due to the
implementation process:
The government has special requirements to protect migrant
workers, but it is useless. The lower level does not follow the
order of the upper level they collect heavy fees from us. (Age
3145, married male, self-employed, 16 March 2009)
In addition, they criticized the poor quality of education in many
private schools for migrants children and they pointed to the difculty
for their children to enrol in good quality public schools because of their
migrant status. For example, one migrant worker encountered great challenges to enrol her child to a local school:
Our home is close to XY12 Primary School. However, the school
prefers local students to those who come from the rural area. The
school rejected my childs application. He is forced to study at a
school far away from home. It is discrimination! (Age 3145,
married female, self-employed, 6 March 2009)
The restrictions and loopholes of the hukou system have created not
only an institutional divide between rural and urban citizens, but have
also contributed to the social stigma towards internal migrants at the everyday level. While ofcial Chinese press statements portray recent hukou
reforms as eliminating discrimination in the household registration
system, in reality, as Chan and Buckingham (2008, p. 604) rightly
suggest, the hukou directly and indirectly continues to be a major wall
12 Pseudonym is used to maintain condentiality.
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in preventing Chinas rural population from settling in the city and in maintaining the ruralurban apartheid. These regulations have created institutional barriers preventing vulnerable citizens from receiving basic
social services on an equal basis as their urban counterparts.
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segmenting the rural and urban sectors of the pre-reform period. The central
government has tried to create order in rural to urban migration through
inter-governmental co-operative arrangements and has taken a more positive view of inclusive urbanization, resulting in surges in population mobility and expansion of industrial production in the rural areas, thus placing
the ruralurban divide on a new footing (Chan, 1994; Lei, 2001).
However, in practice, not all rural to urban migrants can enjoy equal opportunities of acquiring urban hukou. Those with higher income or with better
social networks enjoy much higher chances, while it is virtually impossible
for low-income casual workers.
In Beijing, issues related to the foreign blue-collar workers are relatively minor as Mainland China does not rely on foreign workers. Unlike
Seoul and Taipei where foreign workers are heavily concentrated in the
manufacturing industries, in Hong Kong they are mainly employed as domestic helpers. In principle, foreign workers in Seoul and Taipei enjoy the
same minimum wage and full protection under labour legislation as the
local workers, while in Hong Kong foreign domestic workers are not
entitled to the statutory minimum wage because of the non-interventionist
attitude of the government. While at the policy level there has been
improvement in the labour conditions of foreign migrant workers, in
reality many migrant workers in all three cities fail to enjoy full benets
compared with the local workers. The exclusionary frameworks, including
practical arrangements and regulations governing change of employer and
maximum years of stay, make these protections ineffective or inoperative
and institutionalize the foreign migrant workers as outsiders. The actions
of the government in these three places has reinforced low-skilled migrants
temporary status. In particular, these exclusionary frameworks have contributed to the problem of illegal/undocumented workers in Korea (Kim,
2004; Seol, 2000).
One inherent factor leading to the development of exclusionary policies
is the under-valuation of migrants contribution in the four East Asian
societies. These four cities have gone through rapid economic growth in
the past two decades. While the contribution of relatively cheap foreign
labour is one of the essential elements of economic success, workers
effort is largely unrecognized. Temporary migration schemes for bluecollar workers and immigration restrictions on internal migrants that
discourage their settlement in the host societies often have the effect of
excluding them from equal rights as well as carving hegemonic notions
that migrant workers and their families impose a burden on the host
343
societies. For example, new arrival families in Hong Kong are stigmatized
as greedy and welfare dependent, rural to urban migrant communities in
Beijing are blamed for aggravating hygienic problem in urban areas, and
blue-collar migrant workers in Taiwan and South Korea are accused of
snapping up the jobs of local people. These biased perceptions help to
rationalize the exclusionary policies against low-income migrants.
Another important observation in our research is the differential treatment
of migrants with different social status, reecting social inequality along class
cleavage, urbanrural divisions, and inequalities in global status between rich
and poor countries. In the four societies we studied, the respective governments have placed very stringent restrictions on low-income migrant
workers and migrant families. In general, they do not enjoy the full social
welfare benets of local people in one way or another. However, each of
the four cities has policies to attract investment migrants, professionals and
people with special skills, or at least there are fewer restrictions on working
permits, years of stay, change of employers, right of abode, and even naturalization. Very often, even the relatively less well-off and less skilled workers
from economically well-off developed countries are welcomed. Similarly
observed by a number of scholars, highly skilled workers are given special
consideration under the international policy, while measures to protect and
facilitate the movement of low-skilled workers are virtually non-existent
(Hugo, 2009; Stahl, 2003). Beijing seems to be a little bit different from the
other three cities as it is still under a socialist regime, and foreigners from
Western countries still face some restrictions. However, as we have pointed
out earlier, higher income rural to urban migrants are enjoying more opportunities in transferring their hukous to the city. On the other hand, workers from
Asia, especially low-income Asian countries like the Philippines, Indonesia
and Pakistan have to face exclusionary policies. The high presence of Southeast and East Asians in 3D jobs, where protection is often inadequate, manifests racial discrimination against migrant workers from these regions.
Ironically, they are discriminated against by Asians who have become rich
only in recent decades, like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
This paper has clearly demonstrated that the marginalized status of lowskilled migrants can be connected to patterns of disparity in terms of their
immigration conditions, labour rights and social welfare. All four societies
have policies to prevent migrant workers from obtaining full citizenship,
and thus maintain their outsider status. Even with internal migration
such as in Beijing or Hong Kong, there are great disparities between the
opportunities and social rights of the low-income workers and the higher
344
income group. For those who have obtained full citizenship, they still have
to face discrimination in everyday life. Their unequal and inferior access to
social rights compared with local citizens accrues and proliferates by discriminatory and stigmatizing discourses. In particular, it is the lack of multicultural policy and the anti-migrant sentiment that cultivated the
migration policy of these societies. From these experiences, we can see
that while legislation for the protection of migrant workers is crucial in alleviating marginalization, the sincerity in implementing these policies and
promoting a multicultural society is equally important.
To a certain extent, the governments of these four cities tend to put more
emphasis on economic development and productivity than on human rights
and labour welfare. Maintaining a pool of low-paid migrant workers seems
benecial to economic competitiveness. However, government policy planners frequently play down the negative effect of marginalizing migrants and
cultivating an exclusionary ethos in society. Understanding the institutional
frameworks of immigration and social policies allow us to concretely recognize the extent of marginalization of certain migrant groups and dynamics of
inclusion and exclusion of community relations. More importantly, we
should be aware of the accumulation of the detrimental impacts of class
inequality, disadvantaged global status of Asians and ruralurban divisions
on both migrant workers quality of life and cohesion in society as a
whole. Although some of these exclusionary migrant policies may seem
economically rational in the short term, they will create conicts and problems within the city which is costly to remedy in the long run.
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Books, 2007), Gender and Social Work Theory and Practice (co-edited;
The Chinese University Press, 2006, in Chinese). He has published in
various academic journals such as International Social Work, British
Journal of Social Work, Journal of Asian Public Policy, International
Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Critical Social Policy, and
Housing Studies.