Precarity, gender and work : Vietnamese migrant workers in Asia

Precarity among low-skilled temporary migrant workers in Asia is well documented, particularly concerning migrant women in domestic work in countries of the Gulf region and in East Asia. In this paper, we first examine the intersection of gender and type of work by comparing men and women, but also by comparing women engaged in domestic work and those working in manufacturing. Second, we analyse indicators of precarity through the entire migration process: pre-departure, time abroad, and return. Based on descriptive analyses from survey data collected in 2009 from 499 former Vietnamese migrant workers who worked in Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan between 2000 and 2009, our results indicate differences in (1) moments of precarity, (2) types of precarity, and (3) levels of precarity. This paper unpacks how gender is central to an understanding of precariousness in migration but also how it may intersect with other important variables. research on legal temporary low-skilled migration flows has repeatedly shown that migrants are subject to structural precarity, given their limited rights in the destination countries (Piper 2004; Piché 2008; Goldring 2010). reports of abuse, failure to be paid expected salaries, arbitrary dismissal, and deportation are common in destination countries of East, Southeast and West Asia that import labour (Martin 2010). Structural precarity appears to be particularly acute for migrant women who migrate within patriarchal regimes and gendered labour markets (Danneker 2009). Studies on women migrant workers in domestic work, in particular, contain a wealth of vivid illustrations of the intrinsically gendered aspects of the migration process, migration experience, and migration policies (Constable 1997; Hondagneu Sotelo 2000; lan 2008; Constable 2010). 1 While gender clearly shapes precarity in 1 In this paper we do not discuss the important question of agency (see, for instance, Sim 2009; Hsia 2010). specific ways, we know little about when, how, and who is more or less precarious among these groups of migrants in the Asian context. This paper aims to address these questions in two ways. First, most accounts rely on the experiences of female domestic workers, and results are then often extrapolated to women migrants in general. yet, women migrants in low-skilled occupations work in other sectors, such as manufacturing and services. In this analysis, our objective is to unpack how gender matters by comparing not only men and women, but also women working in different jobs. Second, most research documents women migrants’ experiences while abroad, while less is known about what unfolds in the two other phases of the labour migration process: pre-departure and return. We therefore analyse experiences during the entire migration process. We pursue these two lines of inquiry as a way to further our understanding of precarity among low-skilled labour migrants within Asia using a gender approach. Diversities Vol. 15, No. 1, 2013 • ISSN 2079-6595 D. Bélanger, T. Giang Linh 6 This analysis is based on survey data collected in three provinces of Vietnam from 499 migrant returnees (former migrant workers) in 2009. The sample of former migrant workers used in this analysis had worked as domestic workers or factory workers in Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea between 2000 and 2009. Our findings show differences in (1) moments of precarity, (2) types of precarity, and (3) levels of precarity. During the pre-departure period, women surveyed were more at risk during training than men, while men endured the burden of larger pre-departure fees than women. While abroad, women former domestic workers reported the most positive experiences, compared to their female and male counterparts who worked in manufacturing. routes to return showed that domestic workers were the most likely to complete their contracts and return as planned, while factory workers, both men and women, were more likely to either be sent back early or to overstay their visas. Among women, levels of precarity show that, overall, female factory workers were at higher risk than women who laboured in domestic work. These findings must be situated within the policy and social environments of these migrants’ destination countries: Taiwan in the case of domestic workers, and Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia in the case of factory workers. likewise, precarity prior to migration and upon return is shaped by Vietnam’s political economy and social context. Precarity, gender, and work in the migration process To examine migrants’ experiences through the lens of rights (the objective of this special issue), we find the notion of precariousness or precarity (used interchangeably thereafter) particularly useful. Goldring et al. (2009) suggest that precariousness can be defined as a continuum upon which migrants’ vulnerabilities can be examined. Using this conceptualisation, Goldring et al., along with a growing number of researchers, question the dichotomous categories – legal and illegal, documented and undocumented – that are used to classify migrants and claim, rather, that it proves more fruitful to use a spectrum of precariousness. Goldring and her colleagues argue that: [. ] precarious migratory status, like citizenship, is multi-dimensional and constructed by specific state policies, regulations, practices of policy implementation, activism, discourses and so forth, and that there may be multiple pathways to precarious status, depending on the context at various levels. To explore the implications of precarious status for differential inclusion, we link forms of precarious status to the presence/absence of rights and entitlements (Goldring et al. 2009: 240). Goldring et al. show how precarity is legally produced by temporary migrant workers’ programs, whereby employers and receiving states can easily dispose of migrants. In other words, temporary foreign workers are, in essence, in a precarious state due to their limited entitlement to social protection and their mandatory return, which prevents them from accessing legal and social citizenship. This approach, thus, shows the usefulness of studying migrants along a continuum of ‘precariousness’, rather than within binary conceptualisations of legality. Moreover, as raghuram (2010) shows, this precarity is not limited to the lesser skilled. Using the example of migrants skilled in medicine in the UK, she shows how temporariness and precarity are different and how ‘precarity and vulnerability, the hallmarks of temporariness, are not limited to the lesser skilled’ (raghuram, forthcoming: 26). The concept of precariousness, developed from examples taken from the Canadian case (Goldring et al. 2009), and the unpacking of the relationship between temporariness and precarity, in the case of the UK (raghuram, 2010), are both particularly useful for the Asian context. Indeed, international temporary labour migration in Asia, for the most part, consists of legal migration flows. Migrants are documented and legally enter the borders of receiving countries. Despite their legal status, they face high degrees of precarity that may lead to voluntary or involuntary slippage into the illegal sector (Bélanger et al. 2011). In other words, being legal and documented does not mean that migrants work and live in safe and fair conditions. Compulsory return, combined with limited social protection Vietnamese Migrant Workers in Asia DiVersities Vol. 15, No. 1, 2013 • ISSN 2079-6595 7 and the near impossibility of appealing an early contract termination, create a high degree of precarity in itself. This situation is, in turn, conducive to the development of an illegal sector in which migrants may, in fact, feel freer and more empowered, as illustrated by the research of lan (2007) on undocumented domestic workers in Taiwan, and by Bélanger et al. (2001) on undocumented factory workers in Japan. In some extreme cases, migrants suffer from forced labour and human trafficking (Bélanger, forthcoming). research paying attention to migrants’ rights has especially focused on migrants’ lives in the destination country where they have limited rights and entitlements (Constable 1997; Piper 2004; Oishi 2005; le 2010). Temporary labour migrant workers have limited ‘bundles of rights’ and are often constructed by employers and governments of receiving countries as cheap, flexible, and disposable labour. lack of respect for labour contracts, arbitrary dismissal, passport confiscation, lack of health benefits, abusive working conditions, physical abuse, and confinement are among the numerous problems repeatedly identified by researchers and migrants’ advocates (Piper 2004; Bélanger et al. 2010; Martin 2010). Studies on women migrants highlight the additional vulnerabilities that women (relative to men) face due to the global gendered job market that confines them to sectors such as domestic work. Women migrants are also situated in a global patriarchal order that often puts them in a subordinate position as aspiring migrants, migrants abroad, and returnees. Studies into the lives of domestic workers, in particular, have underscored the vulnerabilities of those working in private homes, where they can be particularly at risk for various types of abuse. Studies on Singapore (Ueno 2009), Taiwan (lan 2006), Hong Kong (Constable 1997) and the Gulf countries (Bélanger and rahman 2013) show similarities, despite differences in the intensity of these problems and the scope for resistance and contestation. In this literature on women migrants, however, quantitative analyses are lacking and a gender approach – rather than a focus on women – is rarely adopted. In this paper, we push this line of inquiry by exploring the experiences of migrants, both men and women, to unpack how gender is intertwined with other aspects of migrants’ experiences. We examine how gender is related to precariousness among low-skilled labour migr