Abstract

Politics of Foreign Labor Policy in Taiwan SAGE Publications, Inc.2000DOI: 10.1177/002190960003500107 Chien-YiLu Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC I. Introduction , Taiwan has recently become a major destination for international migrant workers. Similar to the experience of West European countries that resorted to the guestworker policy between the late 1950s and early 1970s, the influx of foreign workers to Taiwan was preceded by rapid economic growth and a corresponding labor shortage. Unlike these West European countries, however, Taiwan had the chance to learn from the mistakes made by pioneer guestworker countries and the labor importing countries in Middle East. Equally important is the fact that Taiwan introduced foreign labor at a time when scholars of international migration were finding that the gap between the goals and results of migration-control policies in the industrialized countries was widening. The bulk of current literature on foreign labor policy in Taiwan analyzes this issue from an economic point of view and focuses on the supply and demand of unskilled workers, or "push and pcrll factors," using the terminology from international migration literature. According to the push-pull theory, Taiwan's foreign labor policy can be explained by the severe shortage