This chapter uses ethnography, organizational archives, and interviews to discuss how Taiwan’s reliance on the brokerage system facilitates debt migration. Particularly revealing is how there is an official system, and an under-the-table system of paying for placement fees. At the same time, Taiwan allows migrant workers to organize trade unions. The last part returns to Somkhuan’s case of a worker’s suicide because he could not afford medical treatment and deportation due to permanent disability. Relying on an overview history of Thai workers’ contribution to Taiwan’s infrastructure evidence by an NGO’s archives of news articles and secondary articles, from 2005 to 2019, the chapter reveals the contradictions in the debt-migration regimes. The chapter also offers insight into the role of broker agencies, interviews with government officials, and broker companies in Thailand and Taiwan. The discussion on organizing, unionization, and community building are drawn from interviews with the Hope Worker’s Center, Taiwan International Worker Association, Serve the People Association, Kaohsiung City Union. Interviews with workers were predominantlyamong Thai and Filipino workers.

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

Debt Precarity in Taiwan

  • Sudarat Musikawong

摘要

This chapter uses ethnography, organizational archives, and interviews to discuss how Taiwan’s reliance on the brokerage system facilitates debt migration. Particularly revealing is how there is an official system, and an under-the-table system of paying for placement fees. At the same time, Taiwan allows migrant workers to organize trade unions. The last part returns to Somkhuan’s case of a worker’s suicide because he could not afford medical treatment and deportation due to permanent disability. Relying on an overview history of Thai workers’ contribution to Taiwan’s infrastructure evidence by an NGO’s archives of news articles and secondary articles, from 2005 to 2019, the chapter reveals the contradictions in the debt-migration regimes. The chapter also offers insight into the role of broker agencies, interviews with government officials, and broker companies in Thailand and Taiwan. The discussion on organizing, unionization, and community building are drawn from interviews with the Hope Worker’s Center, Taiwan International Worker Association, Serve the People Association, Kaohsiung City Union. Interviews with workers were predominantlyamong Thai and Filipino workers.