Ethnocentrism or universal human rights norms? A comparative analysis of debate on the children of temporary immigrant workers in Israel and Taiwan

Abstract

This article applies discursive institutionalism to compare the debates on the children of temporary immigrant workers in Israel and Taiwan. Policymakers in both countries adopted a guestworker program that prevents the long-term settlement of foreign laborers, let alone that of their children. Over time, the increasing number of children born to these laborers triggered the debate on the proper treatment of these children. The debates in these two countries demonstrated varying discursive themes and led to different policy outcomes. Though primarily built on a particularistic, ethnocentric discourse, the discursive interactions around Israel’s Jewish identity resulted in two ad hoc, temporary decisions that legalized the status of hundreds of such children. In contrast, while the dominant narrative in Taiwan has been the supposedly more liberal idea of universal human rights norms, these children have been granted only temporary social service and education support, with no prospect of long-term legal settlement. To understand the seeming paradox in why the more ethnocentric discourse resulted in a degree of policy liberalization while a more universalistic discourse has not, this article shows how agents in the debate responded to the discursive opportunities, with each largely shaped by their respective national identity public philosophies.