Long-Term Care and Migrant Labour: Comparing Migrant Care Worker Policies in Taiwan and South Korea

Care turns into a site of “crisis” with the ageing population, increasing women participation in the labour market, changes in family and gender relationships, and the restructuring of welfare states. As outsourcing of care is happening in tandem with the expansion of the global care labour market, international migration has become the solution to the “crisis of care”. East Asia is no exception to this global phenomenon. As East Asia welfare states expand social care provision, the increasing demands for care workers have led to reforms of immigration policies. The deeply intertwined policy mechanisms also highlight the critical roles that government plays in providing rights and protection for immigrants while providing essential care to those in need.

In this paper, I compare Taiwan and South Korea to examine how East Asian states negotiate their elderly care provision and border control. I explore how migrant care labour has become central to the provision of elder care in East Asia and how state’s long-term care provision and immigration controls would shape its migrant care worker policies. Also, I investigate how migrant care worker’s status as both “migrant” and “care worker” are shaped by the political and institutional framework of the state.

With the qualitative data I collected over seventeen months of fieldwork, I argue the institutional arrangements of elder care provision and development of immigration policies shape the diverging paths of migrant care worker policies. State’s social policy arrangements, policy sequences and migration legacies have not only shaped how elder care is organised but also affected how labour and membership rights of migrant care workers are negotiated and contested. The timing and policy sequence of elder care policy and immigration policy shape the composition of migrant care worker force, and the labour protections and access to membership rights for migrant care workers.