Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221127495
Pei-Chia Lan
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified border control and disrupted international labor migration, but the complex consequences for migrant workers, including deepened marginalization and countervailing opportunities, have yet to receive sufficient scrutiny. Drawing on the case of Taiwan, this article examines how a host country reorganizes the multiple layers of physical and social borders for the purpose of sanitization, leading to an entanglement of mobilities and immobilities in migrant workers' lives. I illustrate how bordering practices have had uneven impacts on Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers across different circumstances of risk management. The findings highlight the geographic scales and temporal changes of shifting borders, which involve the negotiation of social membership for migrant workers in relation to the public health crisis and labor market shortage.
{"title":"Shifting borders and migrant workers' im/mobility: The case of Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic.","authors":"Pei-Chia Lan","doi":"10.1177/01171968221127495","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221127495","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic intensified border control and disrupted international labor migration, but the complex consequences for migrant workers, including deepened marginalization and countervailing opportunities, have yet to receive sufficient scrutiny. Drawing on the case of Taiwan, this article examines how a host country reorganizes the multiple layers of physical and social borders for the purpose of sanitization, leading to an entanglement of mobilities and immobilities in migrant workers' lives. I illustrate how bordering practices have had uneven impacts on Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers across different circumstances of risk management. The findings highlight the geographic scales and temporal changes of shifting borders, which involve the negotiation of social membership for migrant workers in relation to the public health crisis and labor market shortage.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490386/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84322699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221122986
T. Nguyen
to fulfil their aspirations, the author shows the complexity of migration as a phenomenon and process and highlights the importance of understanding the role of aspirations and emotions in migration-related research. With careful analyses of the interaction between the actors and factors at micro, meso and macro levels, the author gives voice to these conventionally-defined lowskilled, undereducated, and often socially disadvantaged and invisible migrant women and theorizes their lived experiences. Nonetheless, heterogeneity exists among Taiwanese-Chinese couples. There is a growing number of Taiwanese-Chinese couples who are highly educated and have different marital, employment, and migration experiences from those of the researched women. Thus, the empirical findings in this book represent the experiences of a portion, rather than the entire population of Chinese women who marry Taiwanese men. Unfortunately, the author does not provide an overview of the changing patterns in marriages across the Taiwan Strait. Nor does she discuss how the changing marriage patterns influence the reader’s interpretation of her findings or the implications of these changing patterns for research on migration across the Chinese border. In sum, this book is theoretically and empirically engaging despite the weaknesses mentioned above. I would recommend it to researchers in the field of migration studies, particularly those focusing on Asia. It is also a good read for non-academic readers interested in contemporary China and marriage migration in East Asia.
{"title":"Book review: Ethnic dissent and empowerment: Economic migration between Vietnam and Malaysia","authors":"T. Nguyen","doi":"10.1177/01171968221122986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968221122986","url":null,"abstract":"to fulfil their aspirations, the author shows the complexity of migration as a phenomenon and process and highlights the importance of understanding the role of aspirations and emotions in migration-related research. With careful analyses of the interaction between the actors and factors at micro, meso and macro levels, the author gives voice to these conventionally-defined lowskilled, undereducated, and often socially disadvantaged and invisible migrant women and theorizes their lived experiences. Nonetheless, heterogeneity exists among Taiwanese-Chinese couples. There is a growing number of Taiwanese-Chinese couples who are highly educated and have different marital, employment, and migration experiences from those of the researched women. Thus, the empirical findings in this book represent the experiences of a portion, rather than the entire population of Chinese women who marry Taiwanese men. Unfortunately, the author does not provide an overview of the changing patterns in marriages across the Taiwan Strait. Nor does she discuss how the changing marriage patterns influence the reader’s interpretation of her findings or the implications of these changing patterns for research on migration across the Chinese border. In sum, this book is theoretically and empirically engaging despite the weaknesses mentioned above. I would recommend it to researchers in the field of migration studies, particularly those focusing on Asia. It is also a good read for non-academic readers interested in contemporary China and marriage migration in East Asia.","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90992323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221126573
Yuk Wah Chan, Pei-Chia Lan
This concluding article serves as an epilogue summing up key issues about migration, labor migrants and development amid a crisis of public health. We predict the forging of an age of sanitization in which different kinds of sanitizing policies will still be in place, especially in Asia, to deal with the sporadic changes of the pandemic. Sanitization politics will continue to intersect with different policy sectors and powers, which will extend beyond the medical understanding of a pandemic and blur the division between science and politics. It will have varied impacts on the migration regime and global governance as a whole.
{"title":"Rethinking the migration-development nexus in the post-COVID-19 era.","authors":"Yuk Wah Chan, Pei-Chia Lan","doi":"10.1177/01171968221126573","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221126573","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This concluding article serves as an epilogue summing up key issues about migration, labor migrants and development amid a crisis of public health. We predict the forging of an age of sanitization in which different kinds of sanitizing policies will still be in place, especially in Asia, to deal with the sporadic changes of the pandemic. Sanitization politics will continue to intersect with different policy sectors and powers, which will extend beyond the medical understanding of a pandemic and blur the division between science and politics. It will have varied impacts on the migration regime and global governance as a whole.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9482941/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80227271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221124346
Yuk Wah Chan, Nicola Piper
This paper explores the "sporadic hyper-precarity" encountered by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong when the city was hit by the Omicron outbreaks in early 2022. Migrant workers have long been suffering from job insecurity and structural vulnerability due to the contractization and flexibilization of work. The paper discusses how this structural vulnerability came to intersect with the health risks induced by the COVID pandemic. Adding to the debates of the structural precarity characterizing migrant work, we will further interrogate how workers are also susceptible to "sporadic hyper-precarity" - the kind of sporadic risks, uncertainty, vulnerabilities and stigmatization at times of crisis. The paper will elaborate on the "sanitized divide" and "care divide" between local families and domestic workers that has resulted in the unequal treatment of workers.
{"title":"Sanitized boundaries, sanitized homes: COVID-19 and the sporadic hyper-precarity of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong.","authors":"Yuk Wah Chan, Nicola Piper","doi":"10.1177/01171968221124346","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221124346","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper explores the \"sporadic hyper-precarity\" encountered by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong when the city was hit by the Omicron outbreaks in early 2022. Migrant workers have long been suffering from job insecurity and structural vulnerability due to the contractization and flexibilization of work. The paper discusses how this structural vulnerability came to intersect with the health risks induced by the COVID pandemic. Adding to the debates of the structural precarity characterizing migrant work, we will further interrogate how workers are also susceptible to \"sporadic hyper-precarity\" - the kind of sporadic risks, uncertainty, vulnerabilities and stigmatization at times of crisis. The paper will elaborate on the \"sanitized divide\" and \"care divide\" between local families and domestic workers that has resulted in the unequal treatment of workers.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490381/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79087395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221125482
Gabriele Vogt, Sian Qin
Japan's handling of border control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic has become known as sakoku-approach. Sakoku literally means "closed country" and generally refers to a historic period when the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868) kept Japan's borders shut because international contacts were feared to cause public upheaval and political instability. While these times have long passed, contemporary Japan, too, is known for its tight management of immigration avenues. In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of these avenues were cut off, and despite much criticism, have remained largely inaccessible for two years now. In this paper, we build on concepts from authoritarian populism and the performance of crisis to analyze how and why Japan revived its isolationist strategy. We decipher the discursive framings that Prime Minister Abe applied to illustrate the disruptive influence that open borders would have on Japan's public health, social stability and by extension, on the national body itself. We argue that from the onset of the pandemic on, the ethnic others were portrayed as a risk mainly for two intertwined reasons: Firstly, Japan's pandemic management relies on self-constraint rather than rules and sanctions, and the ethnic others' compliance was not fully trusted. Secondly, this exclusionary strategy fed into populist discourses and was presumed to result in favorable support rates for the administration.
{"title":"Sanitizing the national body: COVID-19 and the revival of Japan's \"Closed Country\" strategy.","authors":"Gabriele Vogt, Sian Qin","doi":"10.1177/01171968221125482","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221125482","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Japan's handling of border control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic has become known as <i>sakoku</i>-approach. <i>Sakoku</i> literally means \"closed country\" and generally refers to a historic period when the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868) kept Japan's borders shut because international contacts were feared to cause public upheaval and political instability. While these times have long passed, contemporary Japan, too, is known for its tight management of immigration avenues. In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of these avenues were cut off, and despite much criticism, have remained largely inaccessible for two years now. In this paper, we build on concepts from authoritarian populism and the performance of crisis to analyze how and why Japan revived its isolationist strategy. We decipher the discursive framings that Prime Minister Abe applied to illustrate the disruptive influence that open borders would have on Japan's public health, social stability and by extension, on the national body itself. We argue that from the onset of the pandemic on, the ethnic others were portrayed as a risk mainly for two intertwined reasons: Firstly, Japan's pandemic management relies on self-constraint rather than rules and sanctions, and the ethnic others' compliance was not fully trusted. Secondly, this exclusionary strategy fed into populist discourses and was presumed to result in favorable support rates for the administration.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9482887/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89005730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221122976
Chien-Wen Kung
{"title":"Book review: Coming home to a foreign country: Xiamen and returned overseas Chinese, 1843–1938","authors":"Chien-Wen Kung","doi":"10.1177/01171968221122976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968221122976","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79009668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221129382
Yuk Wah Chan, Pei-Chia Lan
COVID-19 has resulted in new anxieties about the risks and dangers involved in human mobility and forced governments to simultaneously re-engineer policies for temporary health control and longer-term border-crossing and migration policies; characterized by the sanitization of space and mobility. This special issue considers the policies, including health and non-health measures, that have impacts on migrant workers and migration. While COVID control measures are often phrased in medical language and policy discourses, they often serve multiple goals including political and social control. The papers in this issue cover different places in Asia and the Pacific. We propose the "politics of sanitization" as a conceptual framework to examine the multiple dimensions of state governance and the variegated impacts upon migrants, including: (1) sanitizing space and borders, (2) stigmatization and sanitizing migrants' bodies, (3) sanitizing ethnic borders and the national body, and (4) reorganizing the borders of sanitization and membership of society.
{"title":"The politics of sanitization: Pandemic crisis, migration and development in Asia-Pacific.","authors":"Yuk Wah Chan, Pei-Chia Lan","doi":"10.1177/01171968221129382","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221129382","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>COVID-19 has resulted in new anxieties about the risks and dangers involved in human mobility and forced governments to simultaneously re-engineer policies for temporary health control and longer-term border-crossing and migration policies; characterized by the sanitization of space and mobility. This special issue considers the policies, including health and non-health measures, that have impacts on migrant workers and migration. While COVID control measures are often phrased in medical language and policy discourses, they often serve multiple goals including political and social control. The papers in this issue cover different places in Asia and the Pacific. We propose the \"politics of sanitization\" as a conceptual framework to examine the multiple dimensions of state governance and the variegated impacts upon migrants, including: (1) sanitizing space and borders, (2) stigmatization and sanitizing migrants' bodies, (3) sanitizing ethnic borders and the national body, and (4) reorganizing the borders of sanitization and membership of society.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9494162/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80962147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221126206
Liangni Sally Liu, Guanyu Jason Ran, Xiaoyun Jia
In September 2021, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) announced the offer of a one-off residence visa category - the 2021 Resident Visa, to over 165,000 temporary migrant workers and their family members living in the country. The offer was a response to the backlog and growing numbers of applications that INZ was unable to attend to largely because of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on relevant statistical data, news media reports and available academic publications, this research note examines how New Zealand's sanitization policies during the pandemic affected the lives of temporary migrant workers who hold various work visas.
{"title":"New Zealand border restrictions amidst COVID-19 and their impacts on temporary migrant workers.","authors":"Liangni Sally Liu, Guanyu Jason Ran, Xiaoyun Jia","doi":"10.1177/01171968221126206","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221126206","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In September 2021, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) announced the offer of a one-off residence visa category - the 2021 Resident Visa, to over 165,000 temporary migrant workers and their family members living in the country. The offer was a response to the backlog and growing numbers of applications that INZ was unable to attend to largely because of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on relevant statistical data, news media reports and available academic publications, this research note examines how New Zealand's sanitization policies during the pandemic affected the lives of temporary migrant workers who hold various work visas.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490383/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72529241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221126193
Isabelle Cheng
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.
{"title":"Infection, temporality and inequality: Sanitizing foreign bodies and protecting public health in Taiwan.","authors":"Isabelle Cheng","doi":"10.1177/01171968221126193","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01171968221126193","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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 <i>hierarchy of sanitization</i> 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.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9510965/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74458904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1177/01171968221115259
S Irudaya Rajan, Balasubramanyam Pattath
Emigrants from Kerala, India, were among the international migrants affected by the displacing consequences of COVID-19 - job losses, decreasing wages, inadequate social protection systems, xenophobia and overall uncertainty - which led to large-scale return migration to India. Returning home due to exogenous shocks calls into question the voluntary nature of return, the ability of returnees to reintegrate and the sustainability of re-embedding in the home country. The role of return migrants in the development of their societies of origin is also unclear. In this commentary, we explore the circumstances of return migration since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on a case study of Kerala and provide insights on the future of emigration from this corridor along with policy suggestions. The role of return migrants in the development of their societies of origin requires further research and policy interventions.
{"title":"Distress return migration amid COVID-19: Kerala's response.","authors":"S Irudaya Rajan, Balasubramanyam Pattath","doi":"10.1177/01171968221115259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968221115259","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emigrants from Kerala, India, were among the international migrants affected by the displacing consequences of COVID-19 - job losses, decreasing wages, inadequate social protection systems, xenophobia and overall uncertainty - which led to large-scale return migration to India. Returning home due to exogenous shocks calls into question the voluntary nature of return, the ability of returnees to reintegrate and the sustainability of re-embedding in the home country. The role of return migrants in the development of their societies of origin is also unclear. In this commentary, we explore the circumstances of return migration since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on a case study of Kerala and provide insights on the future of emigration from this corridor along with policy suggestions. The role of return migrants in the development of their societies of origin requires further research and policy interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46248,"journal":{"name":"Asian and Pacific Migration Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9379595/pdf/10.1177_01171968221115259.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40432100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}