Immigration: Regulation and cultural representation

This chapter offers an examination of contemporary labour and marriage migration to Taiwan from Southeast Asia and China. This examination aims to answer two critical questions: How is the migration legislation differentiated between foreign workers and migrant spouses and within each group? How has civil society responded to this differentiation with regards to literary and cinematic creations? To answer these questions, the first half of the chapter analyses how the two patterns of population movement are regulated by the state. The second half investigates how labour and marriage migration in the past three decades led to the flourishing development of migration-themed literature and films, which signifies the progressiveness and strength of civil society in Taiwan. This chapter will demonstrate how cultural production is utilised to challenge power relations between the Taiwanese state and the migrants, particularly with regards to how civil society attempts to mitigate migrants’ experiences of marginalisation, inequality and exclusion, as imparted by the state’s legislation.