Gendered migration processes and outcomes of migration from Southeast Asia to East Asia

Yen-Fen TsengDepartment of Sociology

National Taiwan University

Focus of the talk

The focus of my talk is about how gender-specific migration channels and mechanisms at play in motivating women to migrate as well as facilitating actual migration flows.

My empirical reference is to the migration flow from Southeast Asia to East Asia, placing emphasis on women in motion.

In talking about Asian migration, two changes have been identified as distinctive in historical perspectives.

Increase in Intra-Asia migration

First, since 1970s, Asia has been the site of intra-regional migration. Before that, Asia was largely a region of out-migration. Currently, about one third of total Asian migrants move to other Asian countries.

Women in motion

Second, in the last two decades, increased involvement of women in international migration is salient.

As a result, in some sending countries, women have outnumbered men in outmigration.

While in some receiving countries, women are the majority of migrants.

Gender-specific mechanisms

Gender-specific mechanisms exist to serve as catalysts to motivate and perpetuate women migration.

Woman move as Workers and Wives

Asian countries are the major origin of paid domestic workers and care workers to other Asian countries and the rest.

International marriage migration within Asia predominantly involved women.

Demand-induced: women migrating as workers

In 1980’s, Hong Kong and Singapore started to recruit woman migrants from Philippines and Indonesians to fill in jobs as domestic workers. In 1990s, Taiwan became new destination of such migration flow.

The prominent presence of Women migrants

In the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, female migrants outnumber male migrations among the new workers legally deployed every year.

Persistent need for domestic workers

The demand for female migrants in care and domestic works is more constant and resilient to economic swings, as compared to job sectors filled by male migrants, such as construction, and manufacturing, are sensitive to economic weathers.

Demand-induced: women migrating as wives

1. changes in the domestic marriage market—particularly by women postponing or forgoing marriages

2. the demography of some rural towns and villages that become seriously under-populated

Destinations and Origins

Destinations Top Origins of marriage migrants

Hong Kong

Taiwan

Korea

Japan

Mainland China

Mainland China, Vietnam, Indonesia (Hakka)

Korean Chinese

Philippines, China

Feminization of survival

Saskia Sassen used the notion of feminization of survival to refer to the fact that households and whole communities of sending countries are increasingly dependent on women for their survival. Foremost, women, as compared with men, are more reliable remitters.

Almost all remittances in Asia are sent to families and individuals so that this flow of money is received and used at grass-roots level and hence has considerable potential for poverty reduction.

Overview of Current Trends

What drives female migration?

How is such migration sustained?

What are the major difficulties experienced by woman migrants as wives and as workers in the host society? (with special reference to Taiwan)

Gendered processes of migration

motivations, social organizations, state policies that initiate and sustain women’s migration are all gendered

Women in Motion

Nana Oishi, in her work, Women in Motion, points out that the great majority of female migrants in Asia come from just three countries—The Philippines, Indonesia,and Sri Lanka.

Gendered process at every level

To account for such high levels of female migration from these countries, and its absence or negligible levels in other Asian countries, she look at how macro and micro mechanisms are gendered.

For example, state policies vary in their degree of openness in allowing female migration.

Also, women differ in their autonomy and agency in decision-making, as a result, such differences produce different decision making processes across these countries.

Woman migrants as wives

Marrying to improve life chances

The marriage for migration involves a process encouraged, in part, by the interest of potential migrants (mainly females) in marriage to a foreigner in order to improve their life chances and to help their families get out of hardships.

Sustaining migration stream

Two mechanisms involving intermediaries have been especially influential in sustaining the marriage migration flow around Asia.

Networks

The first is the proliferation of social networks. The growing numbers of Asians living outside their country of birth comprise anchors in a rapidly spreading network of connections facilitating migration.

The chain migration became a female migratory chain in which women brought over other women--sisters, nieces, friends to marry future spouses whom they usually know as network members.

Commercial Matching

The intermediaries in linking the prospect couples take many forms, but with most involving intermediated brokers or match makers via networks and the courtship between future brides and grooms is nonexistent or very short.

Woman migrants as Workers

Woman migrants as caregivers

In Taiwan as well as in Japan, migrant workers are in great demand in care facilities and home cares. Foreign workers in caring jobs are growing without much controversies.

Increasing dependency of foreign care workers

Nearly one third of disable people in Taiwan are cared for by foreign workers. They work both at home and institutions. Almost all of these workers were women.

Motivations

Accumulation for others :

Most women went abroad to work mainly to accumulate income for spending to their family members, and they are the most reliable in sending remittances.

Family type of workers

Workers are heavily drawn from married women who need to support not only her parents and siblings but also her husband and children.

Findings in Taiwan show that employers even prefer hiring married women from abroad since they are more tied up by obligations so that they will work hard and go home when the time is up.

Commercial Brokers

The major facilitator is the vast migration industry comprising migration agents, recruiters, travel providers, immigration officials etc. who form chains linking Asian communities with overseas destinations. This industry has greatly expanded and become increasingly sophisticated with globalization.

The vulnerable invisibility

As compared with the visibility of foreign workers working in farmlands and factories, care workers, mostly women, are less visible, because they work in confined space such as homes, hospitals, and care facilities.

Troubling working conditions

Compared to other types of jobs, foreign workers in care jobs tend to work in worst working conditions, therefore, woman workers suffer the most. The most common-seen abuses include no time-off, overworked, and sexual harassments.

For those working at home, the situations are the worst. They are often required to take care of domestic works plus caring for the sick and disabled. Some of them are prone to sexual harassments by their male employers.

No protection

For those domestic workers and care workers working at home, they are not protected by standard labor laws in Taiwan. Such legal inferior status further makes them vulnerable for abuses.

Producing, not Reproducing

In many host countries that brought in foreign woman workers, the policy makers are afraid of women’s reproductive bodies.

Taiwan used to implement a policy to immediately deport woman workers who were found pregnant during their very intensive pregnancy check-up. Still now, women are required to take pregnancy check-up before their departure and right after their arrival.

Pressing research issues

Understanding Migration options in relation to each other

Placing migration options in relation to each other would help us understand the motivations and the constraints for women to migrate.

For example, marriage migration can be viewed as a response to constraints on women migrating as workers.

State Prohibitions on Exit

Sending countries in Southeast Asia implement various kinds of regulations to restrict women’s moving abroad as workers. For example, Thailand government used to prohibit Thai women to work abroad as domestic maids.

High brokers fees

In sending countries such as Vietnam, it is found that women cannot afford to pay the high brokers fees for placing them to overseas jobs, so the chance of their migration as workers is hindered.

Another example showing the relation between migration options is certain host countries such as Japan recruit women in occupations mainly working to cater men’s needs. Women came as workers and transferred to wives.

Social stigmas

In some sending countries, women migrate to work overseas are stigmatized as without good virtue.