Marginal Mobilities and Social Inequalities: The Migration Experience to Inner China for Taiwanese Expatriates and Chinese Skilled Workers

After twenty years of conducting operations in China, many Taiwanese manufacturing companies are facing a problem of transformation, particularly in terms of the change in the socio-economic environment surrounding the area of the Pearl River Delta. However, recent developments in Inner China have given Taiwanese manufacturing companies new opportunities, enticing them to migrate inward, towards the middle and western regions of China. This paper explores the inward migration of Taiwanese manufacturing companies and the mobility of Taiwanese and Chinese skilled workers to Inner China.

 Three research questions will be addressed: 1) How did the process of Taiwanese manufacturing companies, moving from Taiwan to China’s Pearl River Delta area, develop and also how did Inner China’s development contribute to the inward movement of these companies in the past recent years? 2) What kind of new relationships, in terms of the workplace regime, are created between migrant (Taiwanese and Chinese) skilled workers and local Chinese employees? 3) What is the migration experience to inland provinces of China like for Taiwanese and Chinese skilled workers, and how these (highly) skilled migrants negotiate social inequalities during their migration and mobility to Inner China?