22 August 2024. WBI article and policy briefs are featured in the joint publication by the Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF), one of the most influential Taiwan policy think tanks on Asian regional affairs, and the Institute of Developing Economies of Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO).
The publication, “Migrant Workers in Taiwan and Japan: Patterns, Issues, and Policies,” comparatively explores migration to Taiwan and Japan by examining similarities in labour challenges and migration management systems. This international publication is the result of the symposium “Migrant Workers in Asia: Patterns, Issues and Policies,” held in August 2023 in Taipei, where our Executor Director Dr Bonny Ling presented her talk, “Framing the Regional Context for Taiwan’s Labour Migration: Challenges and Opportunities.”
By the end of June 2024, there were 785,760 migrant workers from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, compared to 739,496 at the same time last year. Having only four labour migration corridors, Taiwan has one of the most straightforward labour flows in contrast with Japan or other economies in the Asia Pacific. A new corridor from India is expected to open up in 2025 with a bilateral memorandum signed in 2023.
This important Taiwan-Japan publication features papers from scholars from the UK, Japan, and Taiwan. The first paper setting out the volume, “Framing the Regional Context for Taiwan’s Labor Migration: Challenges and Opportunities,” was written by Dr. Bonny Ling and Nicholas Haggerty, WBI Editor and Juris Doctor Candidate, Rutgers Law School.
On behalf of TAEF and IDE-JETRO, we would also like to give our special thanks to Work Better Innovations, a social enterprise established during the pandemic in the UK. The two appendices were first published in Work Better Innovations’ Policy Briefs and, with its permission, are now included here for readers’ further references.
– Publication preface by Editors, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Yukihito Sato.
Additionally, the report includes two WBI policy briefs, which offers reflections and feedback on Taiwan’s migrant worker policies, and speak to our expertise and solid research on this topic:
- “Labor Migration to Taiwan: Leveraging Responsible Recruitment for Sustainable Development,” authored by Shuhan Lin and Bonny Ling. This brief quantifies the negative impact on the sustainable development migrant workers contributing to their countries of origin due to Taiwan’s flawed recruitment system.
- “Recruitment Fees and Related Costs in Taiwan: Dictionary of English-Chinese Terms,” authored by Bonny Ling. This brief clarifies the English-Chinese terms for various recruitment fees, related costs and other illegitimate costs in the process of labour migration.
We are honoured to present our research alongside other scholars, Isabelle Cockel, Yuko Tsujita, Naomi Hatsukano and An-Chun Cheng (鄭安君). We are grateful to the TAEF for featuring our work in this publication and look forward to future collaboration.
Read full publication here: https://www.taef.org/doc/1183
