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Gender, Care and Migration in East Asia pp 157–179Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Who Pays the Cost and Who Receives the Benefit? Comparing Migration Policies for Care Workers in Japan and Taiwan

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Part of the book series: Series in Asian Labor and Welfare Policies ((Series in Asian Labor and Welfare Policies))

Abstract

Facing a shortage of care workers, industrial countries have resorted to migrant care workers (MCWs) for a quick fix. They have applied different regulatory measures, which generate different patterns of costs/benefits among stakeholders. This chapter compares the costs/benefits between Taiwan and Japan, which accepted MCWs from the same sending countries. Taiwan’s indirect and tactical control allowed all stakeholders to tap considerable benefits from the massive influx of MCWs. Japan’s tight migration policies enabled a few select candidates to enjoy handsome benefits while forcing employers and the government to bear high costs for investment. Both regimes, however, would be unsustainable. With the low fertility rates, only a half of Taiwan’s working-class parents will be supported under this regime. Japan’s snowballing financial burdens would choke the Long-Term Care Insurance without drastic changes. In the super-aging society, everybody will have to pay the costs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Many theoretical models exist to explain what causes international migration but none of them deny that gaps in wages (or standard of living) are a major cause. For example, see Massey et al. (1993).

  2. 2.

    For instance, see Ohno (2011), and Miyamato (2015).

  3. 3.

    Yuriarto (2015) also discussed the cost issue of the “migration industry” in Taiwan.

  4. 4.

    Since the year 2000, care facilities have been allowed to hire MCWs as well.

  5. 5.

    These data are derived from interviews with government officials (mostly those associated with the Ministry of Labor) and recruiting agents in Taiwan in 2012, 2014, and 2016, and various publications and websites from the Japanese government.

  6. 6.

    However, 46% of live-in MCWs in Taiwan have an educational background of high school or above (MOL 2012).

  7. 7.

    A government report says that Indonesian care workers received 381 hours of language training on average before arriving in Taiwan (MOL 2014a), but our interviews often found much shorter training hours.

  8. 8.

    Eighty-nine percent of employers recruited MCWs through brokers or directly but with the assistant of brokers (MOL 2014b).

  9. 9.

    These figures include a small number (1% of the total) of migrant home helpers.

  10. 10.

    Apart from the EPA candidates, a few thousand foreign nationals may be working in care facilities throughout Japan (JICWELS 2015).

  11. 11.

    The share from Vietnam was small because acceptance only began in 2014.

  12. 12.

    Computed from the accumulated number of entry and departure of EPA candidates and kaigo fukushishi (MHLW 2016c).

  13. 13.

    The average monthly salary paid to MCWs was NT$16,245 in June 2012 (MOL 2012). This is lower than the minimum wage of NT$18,780 and much lower than NT$28,497 for care/nursing workers derived from MOL online queries. In reality, owners of care facilities in Taipei had to pay NT$32,000–35,000 per month for hiring Taiwanese care workers (interviews 2012).

  14. 14.

    See Ogawa (2012) for the background of this odd compromise.

  15. 15.

    In addition, beneficiaries have to pay 10% of the actual costs when they receive services.

  16. 16.

    This number increased in 2016 to 1533, including 250 who stayed as certified caregivers in Japan after passing the national exam.

  17. 17.

    Would-be migrant workers to Taiwan are eligible for the loans from the China Trust Bank in Indonesia.

  18. 18.

    Estimated with the value equal to the incremental food expenditure when a family’s size increases from five to six persons (DGBAS 2013).

  19. 19.

    The comparable salary of a local care worker was estimated based on the minimum wages for regular working hours and overtime and actual working time reported in the Survey on Foreign Workers (MOL 2012). The formula used was {(NT$103/hr × 8 hr + NT$137/hr × 2.4 hr) × 25 days} + NT$137 × 10.4 hr × 2.5 days.

  20. 20.

    The average expenditures of single member households in Taiwan in 2012 for clothes, public transport, communications, and miscellaneous amounted to NT$3208 per month (DGBAS 2016). Expenditures for food, housing, electricity, furniture, health, and leisure are excluded, reflecting the nature of the live-in care workers.

  21. 21.

    If a candidate quits and returns home, this figure may rise by the amount of reimbursement from the pension schemes, which is close to the amount that they paid for the pension schemes.

  22. 22.

    The average monthly expenditure for the necessity goods and services (food, housing, clothing, electricity and gas, transport, telecommunication, and medical services) in a single person household was 83,000 yen (MOGA 2012). Based on the results of our questionnaire survey, it is assumed that living expenses for a caregiver candidate is 70,000 yen per month, provided that employers subsidized accommodation and food by 13,000 yen.

  23. 23.

    But these costs are the ones designed to protect candidates from the damages of accidents, illness, and unemployment, and so they provide benefits as well.

  24. 24.

    The yen exchange rates recorded a historic high of 79.8 yen/US$ in 2012 but moved around 100–120 yen/US$ in other years since the late 1990s.

  25. 25.

    The sum of salary (13,119), health insurance (387), and food allowance (998).

  26. 26.

    Based on the results of our questionnaire survey, the average annual gross salary of Japanese female care workers whose age was 25–29 was 2.75 million yen (MHLW 2012), which is close to the 2.61 million yen for EPA caregiver candidates.

  27. 27.

    In 2012, the expenditure for the promotion of Taiwanese employment accounted for 91% of the total expenditure in the Fund (ESF 2013).

  28. 28.

    The 2012 budgetary expenditure for the six-month training after arrival was 524 million yen for 202 candidates (MOFA 2014; METI 2013). As the exact budgetary expenditures for training before arrival were not available from the open data, the author estimated the amount to be 268 million yen by applying the rule of cost-sharing between MOF and METI, and other indirect information. These budget data include costs for nurse candidates but the unit cost is not affected because the 202 candidates include these too.

  29. 29.

    Interviews in Indonesia in 2012 indicate that the monthly salary was 1,310,000 rupiah (US$140) for hotel workers and 1,800,000 (US$192) for “nurses by honorarium,” which are one-quarter to one-third of the salaries paid to MCWs in Taiwan.

  30. 30.

    Report of the visit survey on care institutions (JICWELS 2014).

  31. 31.

    The MLHW is proposing the introduction of a similar control system to the technical intern program for foreigners (MHLW 2016b).

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 15 K03844 and 26293113.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meiji-university, Tokyo, Japan

    Kunio Tsubota

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  1. Kunio Tsubota
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Reiko Ogawa

  2. City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Raymond K.H. Chan

  3. Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Akiko S. Oishi

  4. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Lih-Rong Wang

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Tsubota, K. (2018). Who Pays the Cost and Who Receives the Benefit? Comparing Migration Policies for Care Workers in Japan and Taiwan. In: Ogawa, R., Chan, R., Oishi, A., Wang, LR. (eds) Gender, Care and Migration in East Asia. Series in Asian Labor and Welfare Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7025-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7025-9_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-7024-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-7025-9

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