The Politics of Population Aging in Singapore and Taiwan

Sciubba, Jennifer Dabbs; Chen, Chien-Kai

doi:10.1525/as.2017.57.4.641

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…(Wei Dong, Hope Workers' Centre (HWC), 18 January 2022). Taiwan is well-known for being the 'democratic capital' of Asia since its post-2000 regime change when the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) achieved a historic win over the ruling Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party; this high turnover rate between the two rotating parties in power every four years is a political flip-flop that Singapore has no equivalent of, because its ruling People's Action Party (PAP) has gone uninterrupted since 1965 (Sciubba & Chen, 2017). That said, recruitment agencies' marketing content and promotional material had equally intense effects on employers' attitudes and perceptions of 'foreign maids'.…”

Section: Owning the 'Maid's' Body And Personhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgotten and Invisible Laborers: Domestic Workers in Singapore and Taiwan

Ng¹

2022

HRGS

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This paper is about legal yet unjust systems of domestic servitude; the oppressive circumstances that ‘foreign maids’ the world over face as unappreciated, unrecognized, and undervalued workers in the invisible domestic space. Regardless of political culture and regime - liberal democracies to authoritarian governance – ‘maids’ are excluded from normal labor standards. The author explains and discusses the legal blind spots, loopholes, and oversight of labor clauses for foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in the East Asian states of Singapore and Taiwan. This paper aims to spark critical conversations about the public/private divide, also the feasibility of enacting home-based legislation for private household workers. It uses the reviewed literature – relevant research studies, government websites, and news sources – and interview findings to advance its main claims. Between May 2021 and July 2022, the author conducted online semi-structured interviews on WhatsApp/Zoom with 61 people who were directly or indirectly involved in eldercare provision: FDWs, domestic employers, recruitment agency managers, unpaid family caregivers, and NGO workers. The author’s analysis shows that FDWs, called ‘maids’ in the local parlance, face a myriad of shocking abuses by sending/receiving governments, unscrupulous recruitment agencies, and host employers who view them as private property (owned) rather than human beings with needs. This paper argues that FDWs deserve to be respected and included in formal labor laws like the rest of the workforce, to better safeguard their physical safety, mental wellbeing, and personal dignity

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Section: Owning the 'Maid's' Body And Personhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgotten and Invisible Laborers: Domestic Workers in Singapore and Taiwan

Ng¹

2022

HRGS

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“…As previously mentioned, we argue that policies and legislation make a stronger case than culture in explaining the trajectory and the degree to which institutional care is developed and made available even under different regime types. That said, regime type does influence how the political struggle is structured, how policies are made, and how they are implemented (Sciubba and Chen, 2017). For example, when a social crisis erupts as a result of past policies' unintended consequences, authoritarian states are faced with a regime crisis, while democracies are faced with a crisis of government.…”

Section: Research Design and Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the increasing political challenges (both internal and external) to its legitimacy, the KMT government responded by introducing the Three Acts on Social Welfare in 1980 (Sciubba and Chen, 2017). At the same time, the KMT government tailored these social policies to its main supporters who were mostly school teachers, public servants, and military personnel.…”

Section: Taiwan: Competition Over Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Culture or Context?

Payette

Chien

2020

Asian J. Soc. Sci.

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Policy legacies are an important factor explaining how, regardless of the nontraditional discourse, previously implemented laws and policies have greatly influenced the state of eldercare arrangements in both China and Taiwan. On the one hand, Taiwan has been shifting eldercare responsibilities from the family to the public through a series of social policy reforms fueled by political demands from the civil society since its democratic transition, whereas the Chinese Party-State enacted a series of filial laws in addition to reform policies, which inflated the demand and supply for familial care while at the same time impacting the development of institutional eldercare. While the issue often framed as the prevalence of filial culture in Chinese societies, this article argues, through a path dependency-based perspective, that legal provisions, policies and the structure of the political competition are largely responsible for shaping current eldercare arrangements on both sides of the strait.

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“…By the late 1980s, however, conditions in Taiwan were such that the move to import low-wage labor was widely seen as necessary. Fertility had recently fallen to below the replacement level, and population aging was becoming a serious concern (Sciubba and Chen 2017). Taiwan’s labor-intensive, export-oriented growth strategies had been deemed a success (Cheng 2002), and the newly educated Taiwan domestic workforce 6 was increasingly moving into more capital- and human capital–intensive industries (Selya 1992).…”

Section: The Rise and Decline Of The Thailand-taiwan Migration Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thai Guestworker Export in Decline: The Rise and Fall of the Thailand-Taiwan Migration System

Rainwater

Williams

2018

International Migration Review

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For decades, rural Thais have been employed as “guestworkers” in the Middle East and Asia. Once the predominate source of guest labor in Taiwan, Thais are being replaced by migrants from other countries. Building on the migration systems literature, we examine this transition. We find that Thais are increasingly deciding against work in Taiwan because of a diminishing wage gap between the two states. We argue that one outcome of the maturation of guestworker programs in Asia and the Middle East is the succession of migrant groups, especially a decline among those from relatively prosperous labor-sending states.

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The Politics of Population Aging in Singapore and Taiwan

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Forgotten and Invisible Laborers: Domestic Workers in Singapore and Taiwan

Forgotten and Invisible Laborers: Domestic Workers in Singapore and Taiwan

Culture or Context?

Thai Guestworker Export in Decline: The Rise and Fall of the Thailand-Taiwan Migration System

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