Governmentality in Asian Migration Regimes: the Case of Labour Migration from Vietnam to Taiwan
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: The phenomenon of ‘runaway’ migrant contract workers in Asia has attracted considerable media attention. Drawing on a qualitative study in Vietnam and Taiwan, I examine the critical links between the neoliberal governmentality rationalities and technologies, the structural vulnerabilities that they produce, and the migrant worker's ‘technologies of the self’. In so doing, I point out that the ‘manufacturing’ of the ‘ideal’ migrant subject is a multi-actor and multilayered process that involves not only state and market actors but also the migrants themselves through their internalisation of subordination. I emphasise that illegality is not just a legal status but also a political tool for the state and its proxies to discipline neoliberal subjects and a social image that informs individual practice in the context of transnational labour migration. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Source: Population Space and Place
DOI: 10.1002/psp.2019
Author: Lan Anh Hoang
Institution: The University of Melbourne
Language: English
Topic: Migration and Labor Dynamics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2293927753