TSA- JSS Joint Workshop on ‘Families and Migration in Taiwan’
Co-hosted by Global Asia Research Center (GARC), National Taiwan University, Kyoto University Asian Studies Unit (KUASU) and Asian Research Center for the Intimate and Public Spheres (ARCIP), Kyoto University
Date: December 3, 2018
Venue: Conference Room 1, International Science Innovation Building, Kyoto University
2:30pm Opening remarks
2:45-3:30pm
Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration and Class in Taiwan and the US
Pei-Chia Lan (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Discussion by Sachi Takaya (Osaka University)
3:30 -4:15pm
Being Part of ‘Asia to Japan’: Taiwanese Skilled Migration to Japan
Yen-Fen Tseng (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Discussion by Milos Debnar (Ryukoku University)
4:15-4:30pm Break
4:30-4:15pm
Formation and Dissolution of Romantic Relationships in Emerging Adulthood in Taiwan
Kuo-Hsien Su (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Discussion by Hachiro Iwai (Kyoto University)
5:15-6:00pm General discussions
ABSTRACTS
Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration and Class in Taiwan and the US
Pei-Chia Lan (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Public discourse on Asian parenting tends to fixate on ethnic culture as a static value set, disguising the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting. Such stereotypes also fail to account for the challenges of raising children in a rapidly modernizing world, full of globalizing values. My new book Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US (Stanford 2018) examines how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class inequality to raise children in the contexts of globalization and immigration. This book draws on a uniquely comparative, multi-sited research model with four groups of parents: middle-class and working-class parents in Taiwan, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston area. Despite sharing a similar ethnic cultural background, these parents develop class-specific, context-sensitive strategies for arranging their children’s education, care, and discipline, and coping with uncertainties provoked by their changing surroundings.
Being Part of ‘Asia to Japan’: Taiwanese Skilled Migration to Japan
Yen-Fen Tseng (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Taiwan has been one of the largest sending countries of skilled migrants. Among 720,000 Taiwanese working abroad, a majority are tertiary-educated, with age group of 25-35 being the largest cohort. Japan has recently emerged as a favorable destination for Taiwanese skilled migrants, with the number of Taiwanese residing in Japan (在留) growing from 36,965 in 2014 to 56,724 in 2017. Recent Taiwanese migration to Japan can be viewed as part of the migration drive of ‘Asia to Japan’, namely active recruitment strategies adopted by Japanese recruiters and employers to recruit graduates directly from top universities around Asia.Based on an ongoing research conducted between 2017 and 2018, this paper offers an analysis of the causes, processes, and consequences of recent Taiwanese skilled migration to Japan.
Major findings are as follow. First, for college-educated Taiwanese, finding jobs in foreign countries is a strategy to avoid under-employment at home, especially among those graduated with humanities and social sciences majors. Second, most Taiwanese entered Japan with working visa in the category of engineers/humanities/international business (技術/人文知識/国際業務) and working holiday maker. Third, ready access to information and matching mechanisms helps to facilitate Taiwanese to move to work in Japan. These include increasing social interactions between Taiwanese and Japanese via tourist visits and student exchanges, information available on internet for young people to assess way of work and life in Japan, and active role performed by global professional recruiters. Fourth, most of the interviewees, albeit consider themselves lucky to find good jobs, do not plan to work and live in Japan for long, despite immigration policy favors their application for permanent residency. Overtime culture, gender discrimination, and unique personnel system are listed as barriers to continue to work and settle in Japan. This paper concludes that without drastic reform in workplace practices and corporate culture, innovating immigration policy alone cannot retain skilled migrants
Formation and Dissolution of Romantic Relationships in Emerging Adulthood in Taiwan
Kuo-Hsien Su (Dept. of Sociology, NTU)
Although researchers have long been interested in pattern of assortative mating in Taiwan, relatively little research addresses how the different education and family background shape young adults’ early intimate relationship experiences, which have important consequences for their transitions into marriage and childbearing. In fact, the strong preference of status homogamy or female hypergamy, together with rapid education expansion, growing economic inequality and job insecurity, and stagnation of low wage, have been linked to delayed transition to marriage and gender differential of marriage rates in Taiwan. This study examines how status inequality within and between generations affects dating, mate selection and relationship stability in the early adulthood. We examine how homogamy at both individual and family levels affect rates of relationship formation and dissolution in Taiwan. The case of Taiwan is especially interesting because the Chinese family norms that feature frequent intergenerational interactions throughout the life course make the equivalence in status between a couple’s families of origin particularly important in shaping the couple’s romantic relationship. Using relationship histories of young adults from the Taiwan Educational Panel Survey and Beyond, the analysis shows that relationships formed at the early stage are more homogamous in age and education level, but are less homogamous in family economic background, compare to the relationship formed in the later stage. Moreover, homogamy in individual achieve status does not make a relationship more stable than homogamy in family origin. These results suggest that early relationship are less bounded by societal norms that prescribe unequal age and educational statuses within the union and similar economic conditions of the two families connected through the couple. These early experiences in relationship formation and dissolution help to shape preferences for intimate relationships and affect mate selection decisions in the later stage, and may have important consequences on the rate of transition to marriage and quality of relationship in the subsequent adult life.
