Deferential Surrogates and Professional Others: Recruitment and Training Of Migrant Care Workers In Taiwan and Japan

When outsourcing care to foreign workers, a society must engage in discursive reconstruction and institutional reorganization of intimate labor: Should care be seen as a family duty or professional work? Should care be characterized as a culturally embedded practice or a market form of labor that can be easily outsourced to foreigners? This paper examines the operation of transnational care regimes in Asia by comparing the recruitment and training of migrant care workers in Taiwan and Japan. Although both countries seek migrant workers as a solution to the similar problems in aging population and care deficit, Japan and Taiwan have adopted distinct models which demonstrate varied ways of intersecting migration regime and care regime: Migrant care workers in Taiwan are positioned as “deferential surrogates” while their counterparts in Japan are seen as “professional others.” It is often assumed that East Asian societies share substantial cultural affinity due to their intersecting histories and common tradition of Confucianism. This comparative study not only shows varied institutional parameters of care that organize the family, market and state in distinct patterns, but it also demonstrates that cultural values and social practices such as familism and gendered division of care are subject to transformation under the influence of state intervention and global market.