Migration and the Church in East Asia

Paul Woods

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781913363659
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363666
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Ministère chrétien

The Asian church has begun to respond and reach out to migrants. However, this concern for the other is patchy and lacks robust theological foundations. This work is an adaptation of the author's major study, Theologising Migration: Otherness and Liminality in East Asia, using otherness and liminality as lenses to examine the scripture in order to understand God's heart for migrants and the responsibility of His people towards them. It ends with some pointers towards concrete action by the church.

Migration in East Asia

The World Migration Report of 2008 states that at least 200 million people live and work in a country other than their own. Half are women, the majority of whom work as temporary labour in the Middle East and East Asia.

Currently, Europe and Central Asia host more than 70 million migrants, North America 45 million, and Asia 25 million. The value of remittances sent home by migrant workers is around US$350 billion. In poorer countries, this plays a significant role in the income of families and the nation. In 2002, just under 10% of the Philippines GDP came from migrant workers.

Migrant labourers constitute 3% of the global labour force and take on a wide range of employment opportunities, from the highly educated and experienced white‐collar expatriate, down through skilled contract labour in construction and manufacturing, to semi‐skilled and unskilled workers. In many countries the highly skilled labour force can obtain work permits and even permanent residence with comparative ease whereas semi‐skilled workers usually have to return home on completion of fixed length contracts.

Most intra‐Asian migrants are on temporary employment, and in the more prosperous nations local people are increasingly unwilling to do the so‐called 3‐D jobs, ‘dirty, dangerous, and demeaning’.

Country Overview

Singapore

In Singapore migration is tightly controlled and policy is designed to combine economic development with social harmony for the nation. Highly skilled foreigners can bring their families to live and settle, while manual and low skilled workers are less welcome, unable to bring their families or apply for permanent residence. A female domestic worker who becomes pregnant is returned to her home country almost immediately. This difference in treatment has led to the term ‘bifurcated’ for the foreign labour system.

Malaysia

Malaysia controls unskilled foreign labour tightly and visas are given for short, fixed terms. When the economy is doing well foreign workers are relatively welcome, but in times of economic difficulty they may be encouraged and even required to leave.

In West Malaysia, out of a total of 1,200,000 legal short term contract foreign workers 60% are Indonesian, with one fifth of the total Malaysian workforce made up of foreign nationals. Migration in Malaysia is complex and notoriously difficult to document due to the porous border with Thailand and the ease with which Indonesians enter the country from Sumatra. Current estimates suggest that there may be more than 400,000 illegal workers in manufacturing and construction.

Malaysia now plays host to around 50,000 foreign students at the tertiary level, around 2% of the global total from neighbouring countries including China. The Malaysian government set a target of 100,000 overseas students for 2010.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s immigrant population is also bifurcated: a small portion of highly paid migrants comes from developed countries such as the US and Japan, while a large portion of low‐paid migrant labour is from Mainland China, the Philippines and Thailand.

Hong Kong gives visas for around 60,000 foreign domestic workers each year, and also welcomes around 16,000 foreign professionals. Among the quarter million foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong two thirds are from the Philippines and the most of the remainder from Indonesia. Where necessary, labour is brought in from China on a strictly short‐term basis. There are very small numbers of foreign students in Hong Kong and increasing numbers of Mainland Chinese live and work in Hong Kong.

Taiwan

Taiwan has large numbers of migrant labourers in its manufacturing and construction sectors and smaller amounts of foreign domestic workers and caregivers.

Foreign workers come from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand; half of all registered migrant Thai workers in the world work in Taiwan. In 2006, a quarter of the Vietnamese workers in the country worked in factories, while most of the remainder were domestic helpers and caregivers.

The national drive to a more knowledge‐based economy has also increased openness to foreign professionals. There is a small number of international students.

Korea

In recent decades Korea has become an industrial powerhouse. A very significant change in labour policy in 2003 saw the acceptance of unskilled foreign workers, who are mostly employed in manufacturing and construction, with smaller numbers in the service (including private nursing) and agricultural sectors. Labour regulations explicitly forbid the entrance of family members, to dissuade foreign workers from staying permanently.

In 2002, the largest group of immigrants in the country was Mainland Chinese, but more than 12,000 Vietnamese women go to Korea as brides every year, with four times as many foreign brides as foreign grooms.

Japan

Although Japan has had economic difficulties for some time and has seen rising unemployment, the number of migrant workers and permanent residents is increasing. Among Mainland Chinese alone, 70,000 have permanent resident status in Japan, which is viewed with growing concern by many Japanese. There appears to be no special category for unskilled foreign labour in the construction sector, while around 300,000 work in manufacturing. Many who enter the country as temporary visitors end up in various forms of illegal employment.

Japan operates a policy under which foreign workers come for vocational training. Foreign trainees are found in manufacturing, agriculture, and nursing, and many suffer significant exploitation.

Major Sending Countries

As early as 2003, Mainland China had already sent 2.45 million migrant workers abroad. The bifurcation or double standard in receiving territories such as Hong Kong and Singapore is also found at the sending end. Mainland Chinese going abroad for extended periods are either the highly qualified who may decide to live abroad indefinitely, or unskilled or semi‐skilled labourers who work in tough circumstances to earn more than they can in China.

Most Vietnamese migrants are unskilled contract labourers from relatively poor rural areas who work in domestic service, construction and manufacturing. The majority of Indonesians working abroad are female, the top destinations being Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

In 2003, around one quarter of Filipinos working overseas were in manufacturing, transport, or manual labour. Another quarter are described as entertainers and just under 20% work as domestic helpers. Thailand still sends a significant numbers of migrant workers abroad.

Migration Theory

Overview

In their 2003 seminal work The Age of Migration, Stephen Castles and Mark Miller argued that movements of people are normally based on pre‐existing relationships between sending and receiving territories, which may exist for reasons of history, politics, culture or trade. As examples, they mention people flows from the Caribbean to former colonial powers and connections between France and North Africa.

They suggest that the migration process involves different structures at different levels. Macro‐structures operate between nation states in the areas of economics and policy, while at the other end of the scale micro‐structures facilitate migration primarily through personal and family relationships. The latter provide a safety net for new arrivals and an element of home‐from‐home in the host country. In most situations a meso‐structure of middlemen and brokers helps meet the demand for semi‐skilled labour. Decent companies and reliable brokers are precious, and their details are shared among prospective migrants to maintain links between people in the home and destination countries. In Asia, the extended family often selects a young person to work abroad. In agricultural societies, the greater physical strength of men and the greater financial reliability of women, especially in the matter of sending remittances, mean that young women are often sent abroad.

In many East Asian cities, diaspora people run small shops selling foodstuffs and other products from their home countries. Although they exist primarily for commercial purposes, they often serve as de facto cultural outposts and become magnets for migrants.

A Cultural and Historical Sketch of the Host Nations

Overview

Because migration creates physical, cultural, and social distance, it is important to consider not only the migration process but also the host territories for migrants. When churches undertake mission to migrants the number of Christians in contact with foreigners is usually greater than the number of traditional cross‐cultural missionaries sent abroad. Migrants may meet a relatively larger cross‐section of church members, attend church events, and even visit church members’ homes. Ministry to migrants is challenging because the church community is ‘on display’ while remaining a product of the broader culture. It is important to understand the attitudes and worldview of the host nations.

The following anecdote illustrates this point. A female church member met her pastor while at church with her domestic helper. The man shook hands with the church member enthusiastically and noticed the helper but did not even offer to shake her hand. The church member confessed that few Christians are willing to spend time with foreign domestic workers or contract labourers even in the church or among believers. It would be unlikely for traditional missionaries in the field to harbour such attitudes and let them be seen; mission at home has particular challenges of its own.

Of the six territories, those in the North, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,) are effectively linguistically and culturally monolithic. This is in contrast to the two nations in the South, Singapore and Malaysia, which are ethnically diverse. In all six territories, the church is dominated by Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese and the principal shared philosophical paradigm of Confucianism has influenced the church, including its attitudes to migrants. Furthermore, all three cultures have demonstrated isolationism and ethnocentrism. At the same time, the six territories share experiences of migration, colonialism, and alienation which might suggest a relative openness and compassion towards migrants.

The Recent History of the Six Territories as it Relates to Migration

Singapore is an immigrant nation; many of the Chinese and Indians and even some of the Malay people are comparatively recent arrivals in the island, although the vast majority of the dominant Chinese group are descendants of people who came to Singapore from South China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The island was a British colony from 1819 until 1963, becoming independent of Malaysia in 1965, and suffered ruthless Japanese rule during the Second World War. It might be thought that Singapore’s own immigration heritage and its dual experience of colonisation from the British and Japanese would bring empathy for the outsider, the Other, but such concern is not obvious in the literature.

Like Singapore, Malaysia is a former British colony, also occupied by the Japanese during the Second...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Migration in East Asia
• Existing Scholarship Relevant to Migration
• Migration and the Ancient Faith Community
• Migration and the Expanding Faith Community
• Towards a Response to Migration in East Asia
• Conclusions, Implications, and Suggestions