Contested skills and constrained mobilities: migrant carework skill regimes in Taiwan and Japan

Abstract

This article compares the paradoxical conditions of migrant care workers in two major receiving countries in Asia: Taiwan’s policy regime has positioned live-in care workers as “unskilled” foreigners, who nevertheless have gained increasing desirability and mobility in the labor market. By contrast, Japan has maintained the regime of skilled migration but the recent expansion of the trainee program reinforces paternalistic control over migrant caregivers, who are considered culturally inadequate. Contesting the assumption that skills indicate desirability and mobility in the labor market, I argue that we must examine the context-dependent constitution of skills at the intersection of migration, care, and skill regimes. I propose a multifaced framework to examine how the state and intermediary agencies co-produce the skill regime of care migration, including the following dimensions: migrant skills as a political language and structure of governance, care work skills as social and cultural constructions, the infrastructure of recruitment and training, and the consequence of labor market mobility.