Union Responses to Migrant Workers in South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry

Against the backdrop of a recent boom in shipbuilding production, South Korean shipbuilders have increased their reliance on foreign migrant workers in the 2020s. By granting special visa status to migrant workers in shipyards, the Korean state has made efforts to secure the workforce, allowing for the long-term stay of labor migrants. This transformation in migration policies signals the emergence of a new migration-development regime in Korea, facilitating the settlement of foreign migrant workers in export-oriented manufacturing industries. This study explores how regular (formal) and non-regular (informal) workers, along with their unions in Korea’s shipyards, have responded differently to the growth of foreign migrant workers. The authors find that while regular workers and their unions sought to limit the influx of migrant workers, non-regular workers proactively organized migrants into a labor union. Additionally, the authors argue that these divergent responses to the influx of migrant workers have led to an increasing potential for intra-working class conflicts between regular and non-regular workers in Korea’s shipyards. These differing responses can be explained not by racial antagonism among workers or their attitudes toward labor migrants, but by the political ideologies of union leaders and activists, as well as the lived experiences of rank-and-file workers within the labor process.