Us vs. Them: Taiwanese Society’s role in stopping migrant worker abuse

• Main Authors: McGuffin, Rachel, 馬瑞秋
• Other Authors: Guan, Dawei
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35kp6r

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 亞太研究英語碩士學位學程(IMAS) === 104 === With a rising aging population and labor shortages across its key fishing and factory industries, the importation of migrant labor is more crucial than ever in keeping Taiwan’s small but impressive economy propelling forward. With over half a million migrant workers and rising, Taiwan is increasingly facing social, legal, and institutional issues that arise when a temporary labor force is mixed in with the status quo population. A small number of grassroots organizations (NGOs) have sprung up in helping these workers, especially when handling human rights violations such as invasions of privacy and discrimination from employers, but progress has been haltingly slow because change has only been enacted on the macro-level, and not within society where prejudice persists. This research argues that those involved must focus their efforts on changing society’s perceptions of these migrant workers in order to stop the cycle of labor abuse. Through quantitative data collection and literature analysis, this research explores Taiwanese attitudes towards migrant workers as people, migrant workers’ rights, social norms, rule of law, and the correlations between these variables. The results from this research show that attitudes towards migrant workers are associated with the support of social norms that inhibit migrant workers’ rights and found that these attitudes, social norms, and weakness of rule of law all contribute to the marginalization of the migrant worker population.