NCJ Number
199670
Journal
Gender & Society Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2003 Pages: 166-186
Date Published
April 2003
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the globalization of domestic service using Taiwan as a case study.
Abstract
Taiwan has become one of the major labor-receiving countries in Asia. The government legalized a labor importation scheme in 1991. Migrant women were first legalized to work as domestics in 1992. Since then, domestic service, as a State sanctioned legal occupation, has been under State control. Most studies of the globalization of domestic service have come from three major theoretical paradigms. The first is the international division of labor perspective. The second is the transnational nature of female labor migration. The third stresses the intervention of the State and the impact of State policies. In the present study, a six-month ethnographic research project on the experience of Filipina domestics was conducted in Taiwan. Multiple methodologies were used, including firsthand sources and formal in-depth interviews. The study demonstrated how the State shapes the experience of foreign domestics through examining State practices, popular discourse, and the rhetoric and practices of Taiwanese employers. The complex fusion of racial and nationalist politics embedded in the process of labor importation was examined. Wailao is a generic term for foreign workers of both sexes, and does not refer to all foreigners working in Taiwan. This term emerged during the expansion of foreigners from South and Southeast Asia, which occurred at the same time that the struggle for an independent Taiwanese national identity intensified. Reflecting a deep-seated concern over the development of national identity, Taiwan’s foreign labor policy required foreign workers to obtain records of good health and conduct; prevented them from bringing their family members or marrying other foreigners or locals; and required deportation of pregnant women. In Taiwan, the management of foreign domestics is not only important for labor control but also central to the State’s administration of its alien subjects. It ensures their exclusion from the nation as well as from the society as a whole. The case of Taiwan shows the necessity of bringing the State into the analysis of gender and carework. 3 notes, 23 references