“I Came Here to Work, Not to Die”: Infrastructures of Migrant Labour Solidarity Across Taiwan's Urban Peripheries

Regulatory migration regimes and the production of space: The case of Nepalese workers in South Korea

China’s rapid urbanization over the past three decades has created a multifaceted social-spatial dynamic on the urban fringe – urbanized suburbs, wherein an influx of migrants juxtaposed with an outflow of the local population. Against this background, the extant migrant studies in China mainly focus on rural and urban migration, yet suburban migrants are relatively underrepresented. Suburban migrants have roots in the built-up urban, and they designate rural residents who have been resettled during the urbanization process and subsequently moved into other cities to live and work. As the complexities of governmental schemes, their household registrations ( hukou) may or may not be changed from rural to urban during neighborhood redevelopment. In migrant studies that use rural-urban hukou as a dichotomous statistical classification, their socio-demographic characteristics as a sample group are hard to capture. This paper examines the career development of suburban migrants in the manufacturing industry in Zhejiang China, where migrant workers are concentrated. It compares the career development of migrant workers from rural, suburban, and urban areas on four dimensions – unemployment risk, occupational skill level, income level, and occupational position. The study of 553 intra-provincial migrant workers finds that suburban migrants encountered comparable challenges in their career development as rural migrants did. Furthermore, the level of education attained by individuals has a noteworthy mediating effect, contributing to the disparities observed across urban, suburban, and rural groups. The gap in career development between suburban migrants and their urban counterparts – even in Zhejiang, a province with the smallest economic gap between urban and rural development in China and was relatively less impacted by the epidemic outbreak – is still significant. This research aims to enrich scholarly dialogues surrounding the field of migrant studies and the intricate socio-spatial dynamics prevalent within Chinese suburban areas.

Migrant workers sustain essential industries such as the food supply chain, construction, and domestic and care work. They tend to perform onerous and risk-laden tasks at low pay without employment or health protections, and often under exploitative terms (e.g., debt bonding, piecework). Current evidence on associations between migration, employment terms and conditions, and health indicates profound inequities in work-related health outcomes for migrant workers. Although the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted these disparities and their potential social and public health implications, migrant workers continue to be overlooked by public health scholars and policymakers. Supranational regulations (such as EU directives) and national policies rarely consider migrants in their role as workers, and little research is dedicated to questions at the intersection of migration, employment, and health. The invisibility of migrant workers is also a matter of disciplinary and sectoral silos, with different aspects of migrant labour regulated separately by Ministries of Immigration, Labour, Agriculture, Health, and others. These silos create incompatible, context-contingent definitions, terminologies, and administrative categorizations, leading to inconsistent data collection and data gaps which, in turn, translate into policy blind spots. Data that are comparable across contexts and that refer to migration, employment/work and health are generally scarce. For some sectors and contexts, virtually no data exist; e.g., for migrant workers in agriculture, construction, and domestic work, and for migrant workers in low- and middle-income countries. There is barely any evidence about interventions to improve the structures that dictate migrant workers’ employment conditions or obligations of employers. Given the limited participatory research with migrant workers, we have a very poor understanding of their views and viable intervention options, and migrant workers’ voices thus also remain absent from policymaking. This workshop aims to contribute to greater visibility of - and ultimately action on - migrant labour exploitation in research and policy. To this end, it will map current challenges and shortcomings in generating evidence on the links between migration, work/employment, and health; and it will suggest ways to improve research and interventions to address migrant workers’ health, based on the speakers’ experience in developing intervention-focused evidence in different contexts. The workshop will conclude with an open discussion to identify further relevant questions and elaborate steps towards better research and greater protections for mobile worker populations. Key messages • Harm from exploitative working conditions among migrant workers is substantial, yet data collection methods and intervention designs are limited. • For public health research to effectively help protect the health and rights of migrant workers, it is essential to share methods and insights across disciplines to drive research for action.

Existing research on transnationalization of labor documents split labor markets between less-skilled (im)migrant workers and native workers in the host countries. But there is little research on how labor relations take shape when relatively skilled workers migrate from more developed countries to work temporarily in less-developed countries in the Global South. Based on ethnographic research on a Chinese state-sponsored construction project in Ecuador, this article explicates an understudied case. Although the temporary migrant Chinese workers come from a more developed country and hold higher status jobs, they are compensated at a lower rate and have fewer labor rights compared to their lower status Ecuadorian counterparts. By comparatively examining workers’ everyday interactions and boundary-making practices, this study develops a twofold argument. First, the development strategies and political interests of the home and host states interact to shape divergent recruitment processes and labor policies, which gives rise to disparate working conditions and labor rights between migrant and native workers. Second, the foreign migrant and native workers cope with labor disparities by invoking national stereotypes to draw social boundaries, which exacerbates their labor market splits. This analysis has theoretical implications for understanding labor relations under transnational state capitalism, workers’ strategies against labor control, and the future of labor solidarity in the Global South.

Contributors

This paper uses narrative analysis to explore how Alberta government Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) “constructed” migrant work and migrant workers in legislature and media statements between 2000 and 2011. Government MLAs asserted that migrant work (1) was economically necessary and (2) posed no threat to Canadian workers. Government MLAs also asserted that international migrant workers (3) had questionable occupational, linguistic or cultural skills and (4) caused negative social and economic impacts in Canada. Taken individually, these narratives appear contradictory, casting migrant work as good but migrant workers as bad. Viewed together, these narratives comprise an effort to dehumanize temporary and permanent international migrant workers. This (sometimes racialized) “othering” of migrant workers justifies migrant workers’ partial citizenship and suppresses criticism of their poor treatment. Cet article utilise l’analyse narrative pour explorer comment les membres du gouvernement de l’Assemblée législative de l’Alberta (députés) ont « construit » le travail des migrants et des travailleurs migrants avec leur déclarations dans la législature et les médias entre 2000 et 2011. Les députés du gouvernement ont affirmé que le travail migrant (1) était nécessaire économiquement et (2) ne représentait aucune menace pour les travailleurs canadiens. Les députés du gouvernement ont également affirmé que les travailleurs migrants internationaux (3) avaient des compétences professionnelles, linguistiques ou culturelles douteuse et (4) avaient des impacts négatifs sociaux et économiques au Canada. Pris individuellement, ces récits semblent contradictoires, décrivant le travail migrant comme bon, mais les travailleurs migrants comme mauvais. Prises ensemble, ces récits constituent un effort pour déshumaniser les travailleurs migrants internationaux temporaires et permanents. Cette « altérisation » (parfois racialisé) des travailleurs migrants justifie la citoyenneté partielle des travailleurs migrants et supprime la critique de leur mauvais traitement.

Most studies on inter-state migrant workers in Kerala focus on male migrants arriving in the state. Kerala began to receive migrant workers in 1950. There has been a significant shift in it since 1990. From the 1960s to the 1990s, migrant workers came to Kerala from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. During those times, women came to Kerala along with men. After the 1990s, migration from Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, and Haryana gained momentum. Many women have moved to Kerala since 2000, as opposed to male migrants from 1990 to 2000. Many human rights issues face migrant women in Kerala, including their workplaces, lifestyles, job searches, and travel. The consequences of not getting significant health interventions and being harassed at work are not well known in society. A study of migrant women begins in the public space, where they are not considered citizens but as objects of utility. My research revealed 516,000 migrant women in Kerala, based on a government document obtained through RTI. There are 25000 female migrant workers among them. It is estimated that around 34 lakh migrant workers work in Kerala, according to the Kerala Planning Board's 2021 report. Out of that, 20% of women work in many workplaces and enterprises in Kerala. According to surveys and a government assessment, Kerala's Ernakulam district has the highest concentration of migrant women workers. The female migrant workers in the Perumbavoor one of the cities of the Ernakulam district are the subject of this study. Female workers who work in plywood, bricks, baji, tailoring, pan shops, plastic manufacturing, textile manufacturing, and other industrial units are the subject of this study. Female migrant workers are personally met and interviewed during fieldwork to obtain data. For this study, qualitative ethnographic research methodology is employed. The findings of this study suggest the government's policy-making for social welfare, social security, job security, the prevention of sexual violence, and making sure that female migrants in Kerala receive equal pay for equal work. This study is being conducted with the human rights of women migrant workers in Kerala foremost in mind. Information is being directly collected from migrant women workers, labour department health department government representatives, trade union members, NGO representatives, etc.

WKS 28: Migrant labour exploitation and health: How can research foster protection of migrant workers?, B203 (FCSH), September 5, 2025, 09:00 - 10:00ObjectiveThe health impact of work conditions on low-wage migrant workers—the world’s largest migrant group—remains under-researched. Lower-wage jobs often involve extensive hours, physically demanding tasks and exploitative employment terms, resulting in poor mental and physical health. Migrant workers experience high rates of labour exploitation, workplace morbidity and mortality, and increasing health inequalities, which are set to increase amidst impending social, technological, economic, environmental, and political transitions. Yet, migrant workers are frequently overlooked in global health measurements and national surveillance systems, and are neglected in health system interventions.Workshop PlanThis workshop aims to contribute to greater visibility of – and ultimately action on – migrant labour exploitation in research and policy. We will map current challenges and shortcomings in generating evidence on the links between migration, work/employment, and health with speakers; and with audience participation will explore ways to improve research and interventions to address migrant workers’ health, identify further relevant questions and elaborate steps towards better research and greater protections for mobile worker populations.SpeakersProf Cathy Zimmerman: How can we measure labour exploitation and develop interventions to protect migrant workers’ health? Insights from intervention-focused research on cattle ranching in Brazil and child domestic work in Liberia and Nigeria.Karen Lau: Labour exploitation as a social determinant of health: who are the migrants most at risk of deaths and injuries.Rosita Chai-Yin Lin: Understanding and responding to the health of migrant workers and their transnational families in the Asia-Pacific Region.Chair: Prof Sally Hargreaves; Prof Marie NorredamMain MessagesHarm from exploitative working conditions among migrant workers is substantial, yet data collection methods and intervention designs are limited.For public health research to effectively help protect the health and rights of migrant workers, it is essential to share methods and insights across disciplines to drive research for action.

Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents. Increasingly, these workers, their grassroots activist organizations, and the nongovernmental organizations with which they are affiliated frame their concerns in terms of global, transnational, and human rights, not merely local migrant worker rights. This article takes the “Consulate Hopping Protest and Hall of Shame Awards” event — part of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Hong Kong in 2005 — as an ethnographic example of domestic worker protest and as an entrée through which to ask what it is about Hong Kong and about the position of women migrant workers — whose mobility and voice is both a product and a symptom of globalization — that literally permits public protests and shapes their form and content. The article illustrates how migrant workers’ protests and activism have been shaped by domestic worker subjectivities, by the dynamics of inter-ethnic worker affiliations, and by the sociohistorical context of Hong Kong as a post-colonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception.”

The concept of integration is central for understanding the experiences of groups in marginalized positions in contemporary urban societies. Research on integration has primarily focused on international migrants, especially immigrants. Yet internal migrants like rural-urban migrant workers in China also face formidable institutional, economic, cultural, and social barriers in the host society. Informed by integration theory, and drawing on a questionnaire survey of 1,100 migrants conducted in Wuhan, this research effort examines how institutional barriers intersect with economic, social/cultural, and identity integration to explain the experiences of rural migrant workers in Chinese cities. The authors' analysis, based on OLS and logit regressions, shows that the hukou system is a persistent barrier to migrant workers, despite improvement over time of their economic, social/cultural, and identity integration into urban society. Their findings also indicate that human capital is important for migrants' economic and identity integration. Moreover, migrant workers who are socially and culturally adapted, speak the dialect of the host society, and have the financial resources to be self-employed (or buy an apartment in the city) are more likely to develop a sense of belonging in the city than other migrants.

Exploitative working conditions for migrant workers in industrial fisheries have recently drawn considerable attention among activists and scholars, often with a focus on Asian fisheries. Even so, fish work can offer a better livelihood option than migrant workers might have in their home countries. These contradictions are apparent in fisheries around the world, including those based in Europe and North America. In this paper we explore the incongruities and patterns of working conditions for migrant workers in Irish fisheries, situating how the global seafood industry relies on a racialised labour force that is devalued to produce raw materials for high-value seafood products, before turning to an analysis of a decades-long campaign to improve Ireland’s legal framework for migrant fish workers. Persistent campaign work illustrates how a multi-pronged approach, including legal strategies and actions to make the injustices in Irish fisheries more visible, is critical to provoking change, even as working conditions remain far short of most land-based sectors in that country.

This chapter considers how labor market flexibilization in Mae Sot has inadvertently created conditions for social cohesion and class recomposition among migrant garment workers. The chapter recounts scenes from a religious festival where Myanmar migrants, despite exploitative working conditions, engage in collective celebration, signaling enduring ties of solidarity. The chapter provides ethnographic accounts that contrast narratives of social atomization under neoliberal labor regimes. The chapter reveals how employer strategies aimed at controlling a precarious workforce have enabled new forms of worker socialization. These interactions, though informal, are shaped by everyday cooperation and mutual aid. The chapter also engages theoretical perspectives on class recomposition to frame how flexible labor regimes paradoxically generate possibilities for renewed working-class formation. It draws from fieldwork to show that fragmentation under flexibilization is not absolute, as social bonds continue to emerge within shared spaces of work and residence. By mapping these dynamics, the chapter notes how migrant workers, even in conditions of vulnerability, sustain forms of relationality that underpin collective struggle.

This paper presents an analysis of the everyday practices of individuality among the migrant workers with whom I worked at “Lamb Buddha”, a hotpot restaurant in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, during the summer of 2007. The majority of the data comes from four young men, meaning that the analysis complements extant studies of Chinese female migrant workers by allowing male-gendered inflections of discourse prominence. The paper examines the internal structure of “symbolic boundaries” drawn and managed in judgements, positioning statements, and so forth, attempting to regress the modalities by which these migrants assert themselves, thus showing how individuality arises from a discursive environment structured by relation to similar peers and distinctly different others.

Bulldozer urbanism, fraught with violent demolition and forced relocation, exemplifies China’s urban transformation. Rural-to-urban migrant workers are particularly vulnerable during the process because of their in-between position in the socialist, territorialised hukou (residential registration) and land tenure systems. This paper presents in ethnographic details the practice of turning shipping containers into rental units for migrants seeking cheap housing alternatives to continue to live on Shanghai’s urban fringe. It reveals the nature and constraints of container housing that emerge out of the interplay between China’s socialist land tenure system, real estate marketisation, top-down population control and urban governance. Despite the neglected appearance of container housing, its existence and operation entail the acquiescence and surveillance of local state agents as well as entrepreneurs’ tactics of conformation, which results in formal informality and sustains structural inequality in state-led development. Container housing also contributes to the deterritorialisation of homemaking among migrant workers, who are channelled by hukou-related policies to invest and retire in their registered home places and feel removed from their urban dwelling in both time and space. The decreased significance of urban residence to migrant workers’ everyday life, as exemplified by container housing, facilitates bulldozer urbanism and perpetuates urban exclusion.

Migrant workers – especially migrant women – form a critical component of care infrastructures and workforces around the world. However labour migration governance frameworks and protection regimes do not always effectively respond to labour market and employer needs, or sufficiently protect migrant care workers’ rights. This policy brief provides an overview of transformations shaping the growing global demand for care workers, the decent work and labour migration governance challenges which shape outcomes for migrant care workers, and provides recommended policy actions.