Abstract
As of late, while other destinations exist, Thailand’s government condones international contract labor to Taiwan (through quota systems and private brokers), South Korea's EPS system, Japan's IM trainee system, Malaysia (private brokers through the Work Permit System), Singapore (Personalized Employment Pass-R1, R2), and the Thailand-Israel Cooperation on the Placement of Workers (TIC). However, one needs to consider the undocumented. The paper calls attention to capital’s growing demand for the supply of racialized undocumented workers to increase profits. Undocumented workers flexploitation includes extreme forms of labor extraction— from labor trafficking, being easily controlled, to overt forms of abuse and wage theft. Together, the racially marked documented and undocumented work in plastics, electronic, and automotive part industries, vegetable and animal farms, food processing, construction, massage and sexual services, restaurants, and day labor in Korea and Taiwan as forms of imported neocolonialism. The paper investigates:
1) What are the precarious everyday experiences of East Asian new racism specific to Thai migrant workers in South Korea and Taiwan?
2) How do varying levels of racialized precarity affect the right to housing, health, and of territorial presence, including mobility?
3) What are the victories gained by trade unions and migrant advocacy groups? Through ethnography and case study the paper redefines broad conceptualizations of migrant worker precarity into concrete vectors of analysis for understanding migrant workers rights: 1) housing, 2) health, and 3) territory. The paper argues for deeper understanding of dual structures in both receiving and sending country political-nationalist politics that temper and condition precarity.
Moderator: Ms. Sirinya Kaikeaw
August 15, 2018 at 12.30-13.30 hours at Rajawadee room (326)
