author/ Chi Chu
It is difficult for migrant workers, especially illegal workers, to obtain a better life (Utopia) because of social values and inadequate migrant policy. This reaction paper considers how the restriction of individual sovereignty by biopolitics imprisons migrant workers’ bodies and features perspectives from Rodriguez, Graham, Puar and other scholars. The significant observation is that ‘the system of colonial racial differentiation established a modern hierarchical system through historical identities discerned by a new global structure of the control of labour associated with specific social roles’ (Rodriguez 2018:24). In some developed countries and regions of Asia, such as Taiwan, Japan, China and Hong Kong, as a result of racism and colonisation, Southeast Asian (SEA) migrant workers have faced discrimination and exploitation. Hence, this reaction paper will outline the phenomenon through Taiwan cases.
The interaction effect of gender and racism by global capitalism generates migrant policy as ‘a biopolitical tool of governance’(Ibid:21). It means that binary relationships, such as between insiders (citizens) and outsiders (migrants), are embedded within ‘social relations shaped by the long-term implications of colonial power’ (Ibid:35). This results in the classification of ethnic groups in the social structure. This situation has been observed in Taiwan. Numerous SEA migrants, including illegal migrants, have sought a better life in Taiwan because of higher wages. Migrants respond to the demand for workers prepared to undertake dirty, dangerous and difficult labour (the ‘3Ds’). Nevertheless, concern over the influx of SEA workers has grown in Taiwanese society because these workers have become one of the leading groups in the social structure. One reason is that migrant workers replace local citizens who are not willing to work for lower wages. As a consequence, the labour structure is redistributed. Another reason is that due to ‘moral panic’ (Hall et al. 1978, cited in Rodriguez 2018:17–18) caused by the media, the stereotype of impoverished and undeveloped SEA countries is exacerbated and ingrained in public perceptions and local society. Hence, SEA migrants are classified as second-class and labelled as inferior and uncivilized. The situation is similar to the one described in Resisting Borders: A Conversation on the Daily Struggles of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon ‘there is no one listening to or helping migrant workers. Those workers labelled as the poor group experience discriminations and social exclusion’ (Gemma, Rose, Mala, Meriam, and Julia 2016). Thus it tends to be that the racial and class boundaries under social ideology enhance the discrimination of SEA migrants in Taiwan as well. Migrants’ bodies and actions are imprisoned by social consciousness and, as Fassin (2001:4) states using Foucauldian terminology, ‘the body has become the site of inscription for the politics of immigration — biopolitics of otherness’.
Furthermore, the phenomenon of exploitation and physical maltreatment is on the rise, especially in the Taiwanese fishing industry, not only because of social values and stereotypes about SEA migrants but also because of Taiwanese migrant policy — ‘Regulations on the Authorization and Management of Overseas Employment of Foreign Crew Members’ (FA, 2019). Taiwan, as the biggest distant water vessels economy in Asia, has an oligopoly of the whole trade from catching yield to the employment of fishery workers. Also, it is one of the leading countries in the trafficking of illegal SEA migrants. In 2018, the documentary Exploitation and Lawlessness: The Dark Side of Taiwan’s Fishing Fleet, filmed by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), not only revealed that Taiwanese distant water vessels plunder the ocean’s resources but denounced the trafficking of illegal SEA migrants in the Pacific Ocean. The documentary also highlighted the fact that issues of maltreatment and exploitation are hidden in sophisticated transnational illegal trades. There are two factors that cause dehumanisation. Firstly, the systematic classification of fishery workers is the result of racism and colonisation. One agent (cited in The Reporter in 2018) said, ‘we buy cheap and obedient fishery workers from the margins of the world, such as Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand’. Fishery workers are classified by ethnic group and purchasing price. Also, according to the captains’ training book produced by the Fisheries Agency (FA), fishery workers are classified by nationality and ethnic characteristics (Ibid). Some description in the training book portrays Indonesians as less able to adapt to hard work compared to Vietnamese. These classifications not only enhance racism through subjective evaluations of different ethnic groups but also present southern countries (southeast Asian /fishery workers /poor) as colonised and oppressed by northern countries (Taiwan /captain /wealthy). These inequalities discipline fishery workers’ bodies.
Secondly, the conditions for and treatment of fishery workers on the sea are described as inhumane. According to the documentary by EJF(2018), migrants are mistreated or beaten savagely like animals and cannot receive a regular salary because employers dominate all resources. The purpose of exploitation or maltreatment is ‘maiming manifested’ (Puar 2017: 129). Puar (2017:52), studying a similar situation in Palestine, states, ‘it is another aspect of this biopolitical tactic that seeks to render impotent any future resistance’. It will be seen from this that most fishery workers have difficulties redeeming themselves or leaving the boats because of a lack of sovereignty and resources. As a result, workers stay on the sea for their entire lives. Inequality and inhumanity imprison and maim fishery workers’ bodies in an endless vicious reincarnation.
Overall, the space of migrancy, such as boats, present a dystopia for migrant workers affected by biopolitics. The testimony by migrant workers unswervingly delivers the grim praxis of exploitation, immobilisation and criminalisation in order to survive in the (in)formal economy (Graham 2011:120). It interprets symbolically ‘the position of the global migrant in this purgatorial space of a post-colonial global market economy’ (Ibid). The oppressed migrant workers often desire to escape long-term suffering and the imprisoned body rather than survive in purgatory. Death tends to become a way for migrants to emancipate themselves from discrimination and exploitation. Nevertheless, it is critical to review the biopolitics and transparency in migrant policy to improve the unequal human rights and end long-term exploitation and maltreatment.
Reference
Environmental Justice Foundation. 2018. Exploitation and Lawlessness: The Dark Side of Taiwan’s Fishing Fleet. <https://vimeo.com/258117796>.
Fassin, Didier. 2001. The biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented foreigners and racial discrimination in French public debate. Anthropology Today 17(1): 3–7.
Fisheries Agency 2019. Regulations on the Authorization and Management of Overseas Employment of Foreign Crew Members. < https://www.fa.gov.tw/en/LegalsRegulation/content.aspx?id=31&chk=1ab5d1ef-2c1f-4df7-92db-6db044616ec9¶m=pn%3d1>.
Graham, James. 2011. Postcolonial Purgatory: The Spaces of Migrancy in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things. In Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture, edited by Andrew Teverson & Sara Upstone, 112–128. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gemma, Rose, Mala, Meriam, and Julia 2016, Resisting borders: A conversation on the daily struggles of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, 2(2), 141–153.
Puar, Jasbir K. 2017. The Right to Maim. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rodriguez, Encarnación G. 2018. The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism. Refuge 34(1): 16–28.
The Reporter (2018). The trades of fisheries workers of the world — why does Taiwan become an accomplice of trafficking in person? [In Chinese] <Retrieved from: https://www.twreporter.org/i/slave-fishermen-human-trafficking-gcs>.
