Care Migration in Asia: A Comparative Study

As some countries in Asia develop economically and experience major demographic challenges such as persistent below-replacement fertility, the issue of immigration and care provisions emerges.  It is particularly important in the Asian context where people have to rely on the market in the absence of effective welfare state. This Asian situation is called “liberal familialism.” In this paper, we try to answer the following questions relating to care migration by drawing on data from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam: Whether and how care provision is mediated by international migration or internal migration?  What are the working conditions – are the migrant care workers documented or undocumented?  Are they protected or covered under the local employment laws?  To what extent are they allowed to immigrate to the host countries?  What are their ethnicities and nationalities?  What is the history of employing care workers in different countries – for childcare and/or for elderly care??  What are the primary sites at which care is provided (for example, in the households via marriage migration or in institutional spaces via healthcare migration)?  What are the challenges faced by sending countries and receiving countries?  Finally, what are the ways in which care migration relates to various forms of social stratifications in Asia – in particular, gender, class, ethnicity, and urban-rural inequalities?