Shifting borders and migrant workers’ im/mobility: The case of Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

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.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic border control migrant workers labor migration Taiwan

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agamben

(2020) HOMO SACER: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

Allen

(2016) Topologies of Power: Beyond Territory and Networks. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Allen

Axelsson

(2019) Border topologies: the time-spaces of labor migrant regulation. Political Geography 72: 116–123.

Anderson

Poeschel

Ruhs

(2021) Rethinking labor migration: COVID-19, essential work, and systematic resilience. Comparative Migration Studies 9: 45. DOI: 10.1186/s40878-021-00252-2.

Antona

(2022) The new normal, or the same old? The experiences of domestic workers in Singapore. In: Shin

Mckenzie

(eds) COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-Pandemic World. London: LSE Press, 141–149.

Apple Daily (2021) SPLI employees got COVID! Migrant workers still gather to do laundry (in Chinese), 10 June. Available at: https://www.google.com.tw/amp/s/today.line.me/tw/v2/amp/article/eyVG7Z

Axelsson

Hedberg

Pettersson

, et al. (2022) Re-visiting the ‘black box’ of migration: state-intermediary co-production of regulatory spaces of labour migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(3): 594–612. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2021.1978285.

Bialasiewicz

(2012) Off-shoring and out-sourcing the borders of Europe: Libya and EU border work in the Mediterranean. Geopolitics 17(4): 843–866.

Carling

(2002) Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: theoretical reflections and Cape Verdean experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28(1): 5–42.

10.

Chang

(2021) Foreign caregivers “wash jobs” against the hardship of employers (in Chinese). UDN, 01 Sept. Available at: https://udn.com/news/story/7339/5713327

11.

Central New Agency (2021) 43 Cases more in Miaoli. Hsu: No human rights when you are Covid-positive and perhaps dead, 10 June. Available at: https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202106100279.aspx

12.

Guadagno

(2020) Migrants and the COVID-19 pandemic: an initial analysis. IOM (International Organization for Migration) Publisher. Available at: https://publications.iom.int/books/mrs-no-60-migrants-and-covid-19-pandemic-initial-analysis

13.

Humi

(2022) Exposing the transnational precarity of Filipino workers, healthcare regimes, and nation states. In: Shin

Mckenzie

(eds) COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-Pandemic World. London, UK: LSE Press, pp. 162–171.

14.

Koh

(2022) Emergent bordering tactics, logics of injustice, and the new hierarchies of mobility deservingness. In: Shin

Mckenzie

(eds) COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-Pandemic World. London, UK: LSE Press, 183–192.

15.

Lan

(2006) Global Cinderellas: Migrant domestics and newly rich employers in Taiwan. Durham: Duke University Press.

16.

Lan

(2022) Contested skills and constrained mobilty: Migrant carework skill regimes in Taiwan and Japan. Comparative Migration Studies. In press. 10:37. DOI: 10.1186/s40878-022-00311-2.

17.

Lan

Chien

(2022) Vietnamese recruiters and taiwanese brokers: flexible restructuring of transnational labor recruitment networks (in Chinese). Taiwanese Sociology. in press.

18.

Lan

(2021) Competing for workers across Taiwan! Foreign workers escape and transfer en masse (in Chinese). TVBS, 19 Aug. Available at: https://news.tvbs.com.tw/life/1568829

19.

Lin

Yeoh

(2021) Pathological (im) mobilities: managing risk in a time of pandemics. Mobilities 16(1): 96–112.

20.

Lin

(2021) Infection control breach! The pandemic pushed out 13,000 undocumented migrants and still 67,000 out there (in Chinese). The Journalist, 20 Aug. Available at: https://new7.storm.mg/article/3889858

21.

Liu

(2022) Health Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections on Taiwan’s Guest Worker Policy. In: van der Veere

Schneider

(eds) Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 154–165.

22.

Liu

Bennett

(2020) Viral borders: COVID-19’s effects on securitization, surveillance, and identity in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Dialogues in Human Geography 10(2): 158–163.

23.

Macklin

(2022) (In)Essential Bordering: Canada, COVID, and mobility. In: Triandafyllidou

(ed) Migration and Pandemics: Spaces of Solidarity and Spaces of Exception. New York, NY: Springer, 23–44.

24.

Martin

Bergmann

(2021) Im)mobility in the age of COVID-19. International Migration Review 55(3): 660–687.

25.

Mezzadra

Neilson

(2012) Between inclusion and exclusion: on the topology of global space and borders. Theory, Culture & Society 29(4–5): 58–75.

26.

Mezzadra

Neilson

(2013) Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

27.

Ministry of Labor (2021a) 1955E-Line. Available at: https://fw.wda.gov.tw/wda-employer/home/activity/2c95efb379799a7e01797a4316950085

28.

Ministry of Labor (2021b) Foreign worker employment guidelines in response to severe pneumonia with novel pathogens (COVID-19): managing the work, life and outdoor activities of foreign workers. Available at: https://ws.wda.gov.tw/001/Upload/299/relfile/7769/128829/a96503da-0d8b-4441-9b47-7af223451982.pdf

29.

Ministry of Labor (2022) Labor Statistics Website. Available at: https://statdb.mol.gov.tw/evta/jspProxy.aspx?sys=100&kind=10&type=1&funid=wqrymenu2&cparm1=wq14&rdm=I4y9dcIi

30.

National Immigration Agency ROC (2022) Statistics. Available at: https://www.immigration.gov.tw/5385/7344/7350/8943/

31.

One-Forty (2021) One-Forty Care. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/onefortytaiwan/posts/2551278668514245/

32.

Satzewich

(1991) Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour. London, UK: Routledge.

33.

Shachar

(2020) The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

34.

Taiwan International Workers’ Association (2021a) The pandemic reveals we are one island sharing one fate The general review should not only focus on the immediate crisis. Available at: https://www.tiwa.org.tw/%E3%80%90press-release%E3%80%91-the-pandemic-reveals-we-are-one-island-sharing-one-fate-the-general-review-should-not-only-focus-on-the-immediate-crisis/

35.

Taiwan International Workers’ Association (2021b) Against Miaoli Government’s restriction on migrant workers’ movements. Available at: https://bit.ly/3vsaKvf

36.

Triandafyllidou

(2022) Spaces of solidarity and spaces of exception: migration and membership during pandemic times. In: Triandafyllidou

(ed) Migration and Pandemics: Spaces of Solidarity and Spaces of Exception. New York, NY: Springer, 3–22.

37.

Tseng

(2021) Public Facebook page of Miaoli County Councilor Wen-hsueh Tseng, 8 June 2021. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/tsengwenhsueh/posts/1838198256350120/

38.

Tseng

Wang

(2011) Governing migrant workers at a distance: managing the temporary status of guest workers in Taiwan. International Migration 51(4): 1–19.

39.

Wang

Lan

Tseng

, et al. (2020) Reaching out to undocumented workers is necessary to contain COVID-19 outbreak. Taiwan Insight, 6 March. Available at: https://taiwaninsight.org/2020/03/06/reaching-out-to-undocumented-workers-the-best-way-to-contain-coid-19-outbreak/

40.

Wong

(2020) Can migrant workers purchase face masks with their photo IDs? Taiwan Insight, 6 March. Available at: https://taiwaninsight.org/2020/03/06/can-migrant-workers-purchase-face-masks-with-their-photo-ids/

41.

Mazzetta

(2021) Taiwan imposes curbs on migrant worker job changes across sectors. Focus Taiwan, 28 Aug. Available at: https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202108280011

42.

Xiang

(2012) Labor transplant: “point-to-point” transnational labor migration in East Asia. South Atlantic Quarterly 111(4): 721–739.

43.

Xiang

Sørensen

(2020) SHOCK MOBILITY: Long-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lock-Down. Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish Institute for International Studies.

44.

Yea

(2020) This is why Singapore’s coronavirus cases are growing: a look inside the dismal living conditions of migrant workers. The Conversation, 29 April. Available at: https://perma.cc/47A3-JUDG

45.

Yoon

Feyissa

Suk

(2021) Panic and trust during Covid-19: a cross-sectional study on immigrants in South Korea. Healthcare 9(2): 199.