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Modular Transnationalism:
The View from East Asia*
Migrant Transnationalisms
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 21, No.2, 2012 149
150 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
The extremely uneven development within East Asia has witnessed the
acceleration and intensification of large numbers of population movements
and cross-border flows, both regular and unauthorized, occurring along-
side other forms of regional integration. Most movers are not, at least
officially, immigrants but temporary economic migrants (guest workers),
who are involved in various forms of flexible sojourning that meet the need
for various types of workers in the region’s destinations. This heteroge-
neous group can be differentiated based on origin/destination, occupation,
gender, and other variables. They include low-skilled contractual workers
(with substantial numbers commencing in the 1980s), who move from the
less- to the newly- and older-industrialized economies in the region, as well
as highly skilled labor (becoming visible in the 1990s) who move to coun-
tries with varying levels of economic development. More recent estimates
of the population of foreign workers in Asia peg the number at 5-6 million
(SMC, 2012).
It should be noted that, although individuals with varied levels of skill
migrate for economic reasons, highly-skilled migrants, usually profession-
als, have a career to speak of which lends their migration a creditable level
of security, flexibility, and high status. They move through three different
channels: internal corporate transfers, social networks, and placement
agencies (Wang, 2008). As valued human capital, they can be offered per-
manent residence and entitled to family reunification by states that other-
wise deny settlement to the less-skilled. In contrast, low-skilled labor
migrants will be happy to have a livelihood, but can hardly refer to their
overseas work as a career. An origin country like the Philippines sends out
professionals to a diverse range of destinations in the region, ranging from
Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia to Singapore and Japan. However, their
overall numbers pale in comparison to the magnitude of labor migrants
from the same source country. Undoubtedly labor migration is the over-
whelming component of mobility within the region. As Charles Stahl
(2003:29) puts it, “While migration out of, into and within the region takes
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 153
1
Following Japan’s lead, South Korea also implemented a trainee system to bring in
migrants to fill the need for less skilled workers in small- and medium-sized companies. The
system bred unauthorized migration and abusive working conditions. NGO efforts, among
others, led to the passage of a law in 2003 to establish a system for the hiring of foreign migrant
workers. The Employment Permit System was launched in August 2004.
154 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
the entry of jazz musicians from the Philippines who performed in clubs
exclusively for American soldiers at the end of the Second World War
(Ogawa, 2010:18–19). Falling officially in the category of Overseas Perform-
ing Artists, entertainers or hostesses are not unskilled as far as Japan’s
system of classification is concerned, although in this discussion, they are
regarded as low-skilled. In 1990, in the face of labor shortages but with the
ideology of ethnic homogeneity winning out, the Immigration Control Act
introduced severe penalties for unauthorized workers and their employers.
Nonetheless, while firmly closing the “front door” of unauthorized immi-
gration, it opened three “side doors”: to the Nikkei, the descendants of
Japanese immigrants in other parts of the world, with large concentrations
from Brazil and Peru; to “trainees,” an invented category through which
foreign workers could undergo on-the-job training in Japanese factories;
and to students in language schools, who are allowed to work (Mori, 1997).
Despite this measure, the illegal employment of workers without
proper documentation has persisted. Innumerable students and trainees
enter Japan and overstay their visas, and work as irregular migrants,
usually in 3K (kitanai, kiken, kitsui) jobs, the equivalent of the 3Ds (dirty,
dangerous, demeaning). How is unauthorized migration possible in a
strong state? Historically, most immigration to Japan after the Second
World War took the form of undocumented entry, mainly from Korea over
which Japan had been a former colonial ruler. The system “was highly
arbitrary: official responses to undocumented migrants varied, both indi-
vidual to individual and from one immigration office to another” (Morris-
Suzuki, 2006:139). A legacy of US-influenced Cold War policy, Japan
operates on “a policy under which official entry requirements remain
highly restrictive, while the government selectively turns a blind eye to the
. . . hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants whose presence serves
economic or other purposes” (Morris-Suzuki, 2006:151).
Once an unauthorized construction worker in Japan, Ventura (1992:
170–171) provides a graphic personal account of encountering the tolera-
tion of unauthorized migrants as an exercise of sovereign state power.
Having decided to “surrender” to the authorities, he still thought of dis-
simulating by pretending to be “like an illiterate”—only for the enforcement
officer to produce a highly detailed map of the neighborhood where he
thought he had lived a concealed existence:
I was shocked. Even though I had always suspected that we lived
in Koto on sufferance, I hadn’t fully appreciated that when we
thought we were hiding we were doing no such thing. All our
efforts to live invisibly were nothing more than a charade in which
the workers, the recruiters, the Mig-mig and the police all played
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 155
their part. We lived in hiding. They pretended not to see us. When
public opinion demanded, they made a token raid. For the rest of
the time, we were a necessary evil. We thought we were so clever.
We thought we knew the ropes. Whom did we think we were
kidding?
It is estimated that one out of every four irregular migrants who are
detained or arrested is subsequently given a provisional release order and
granted a special permission to stay, at the discretion of the immigration
officer (Jimenez, 2011a).
Given this policy context in East Asia, the theoretical optic cannot be on
immigrants, who have been the overwhelming focus of the literature on
transnationalism issuing from the Americas. In East Asia, the theoretical
orientation, by necessity, must focus on forms of mobile labor—whose
journeys take the homeland as the final destination, although this end can
be deferred or avoided by journeying on to another destination. Migrants
may opt to overstay their nonworking visa and engage in illegal employ-
ment in the hope of dodging the authorities and postponing the day of
return to the homeland or migration to another country, but the threat of
deportability haunts the unauthorized. Whether their stay is legal or not,
they are bound to leave their current destination. Yet, the timeframe of such
a journey cannot be predetermined.
Contract labor migration can last for a short period, but very often
migrant workers spend many years overseas, some in a single destination,
while others move and find opportunities elsewhere. The transience of
labor migration can be highly indeterminate, rendering temporary as a
descriptor of labor migration rather vacuous. One study of irregular mi-
grants from the Philippines found one such migrant to have stayed unde-
tected in the destination for as long as seventeen years; some migrant
workers in Japan have overstayed their visas for eleven years (Battistella
and Asis, 2003:71, 100). Jimenez (2011b) has encountered a Filipino who has
been an irregular migrant in Japan for twenty-six years now.
The stages of labor migration, starting from desiring to work overseas
through to the period of overseas employment until the putative return to
the homeland, can be cast in terms of a ritual journey, a secular pilgrimage
that requires personal sacrifices and an element of gambling. This experi-
ence puts the migrant in a position of double liminality in relation to two
societies, the origin and the destination (Aguilar, 1999). Even in reaping the
rewards of overseas work, the worker also contends with and acts on the
156 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
basis of a dual frame of reference that holds the “here” and “there” in
creative tension until the sojourn reaches some sort of resolution. On
completing a contract of employment, the migrant worker may return to the
homeland and there attain a prestigious new status as a generous financial
savior to the kin group; a trustworthy kin, friend, or fellow villager; and an
enviable role model in the local community. The migrant’s personal agenda
may be subsumed in the outward journey, but “earning money for the
family” based in the origin is often the justification for working abroad and
the source of meaning for what many migrants frame as a life of sacrifices.
The journey eventuates in the marked transformation of migrant
subjectivities, which makes them adept at repeat migrations.
Under these circumstances, the hard distinction between labor mi-
grants and immigrants is difficult to sustain. Even when the duration of
overseas work is not protracted, labor migrants exemplify bifocal con-
sciousness and orientation and conduct their lives across state borders.
Research in an upland Philippine village called Barangay Paraiso shows
that migrant workers do engage in the types of activities associated with
immigrant transnationalism (Aguilar, 2009; Aguilar et al., 2009). In advocat-
ing the significance of immigrant transnationalism, for instance, Portes
(2001:188) states that it is possible for “successful transnational entrepre-
neurs [to] eventually return home, taking their families along. The common
practice among immigrants of investing in land and ‘retirement homes’ in
their communities of origin points in this direction.” The landscape of
Barangay Paraiso and countless other Philippine villages have been dra-
matically transformed through the investment of precious resources in
house construction, an investment in memory and ritual of belonging and
anticipation of return pursued by labor migrants, including seafarers
(Aguilar, 2009).
Portes (2001:188) also mentions the importance of language acquisition:
“The process of assimilation has been conventionally described as the
gradual learning and adoption of the language, culture, and behavioural
patterns of the receiving society and corresponding abandonment of those
of the countries of origin. This process was traditionally regarded as a
precondition for the socio-economic advancement of immigrants.” Labor
migrants do acquire a level of proficiency in the language of the destination;
although this may be rudimentary, this functional literacy aids them in their
day-to-day working lives, although it may not enable them to find better
employment. This is often the case of Filipino labor migrants who generally
have a facility for acquiring the language of their destination. They thus
exhibit a trait of conventional immigrant behavior without being immi-
grants and definitely without abandoning their mother tongue.
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 157
daily earnings; they regularly send text messages and make phone calls,
usually using prepaid cards. They may scout for a better club or better
placement agency for the hoped-for return trip to Japan. When in the
Philippines, they strategize for the life they will lead anew overseas. They
may maintain contact with some regular Japanese customers to retain their
patronage in the future, or some of these men may be the ones to seek out
the entertainers while they are in the Philippines. These workers may take
singing or dancing lessons for visa application purposes and to enhance
their trade on their return to Japan. At any given place, they lead their lives
both here and there, but the here and there alternate and switch places. Their
modular transnationalism is evinced by the transportability of their
transnational practices between the origin and the destination, arising from
their state-enforced pendular mobility.2
The situation of entertainers finds a parallel in the domestic workers in
Taiwan, who are legally allowed to work there for at most three three-year
contracts (for a maximum stay of nine years), with compulsory return to the
homeland at the end of each contract. This policy has bred extralegal
measures to ensure that, once in the homeland, migrant workers can return
to Taiwan, even beyond the legally allowed number of years (Lan, 2006:52–
53). The situation of other migrants in East Asia may not be as stark as the
case of these workers in Taiwan insofar as they may not be required to
return, periodically and after a set period permanently, to the homeland;
nonetheless, other labor migrants live with an imminent sense of departure
from the destination. The extreme cases of entertainers in Japan and
domestic workers in Taiwan, in fact, amplify the situation of contractual
labor migrants in the region. Among other things, sojourning increases the
probability of transnational engagement with kin and associates in the
homeland. Virtually every labor migrant sends home remittances on a
regular basis, which can be inferred from the fact that households that
receive remittances spend these primarily on subsistence as well as educa-
tion and other needs (Tabuga, 2007; Ang et al., 2009).
Although labor migrants in East Asia cannot become permanent set-
tlers, a situation that ensures regular and sustained transnational engage-
ment, such engagement is not necessarily simple and straightforward. On
the contrary, prolonged and legal (as one can transfer from one contract to
another without a mandatory return to the homeland) but impermanent
stay may produce a particular instability in the sojourner’s existence.
Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, for instance, experience and get
2
For a comparable discussion of the transnational mobility of cabaret dancers in Switzer-
land, cf. Dahinden (2010).
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 159
3
In the case of unauthorized migrants, departing the country of employment to visit the
homeland entails a very high risk that they may not be readmitted; this situation forestalls
modularity. But other aspects of transnationalism remain, particularly remittances and
telephony.
160 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
4
For a similar practice among Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong, cf. McKay
(2010:335).
DIFFERENTIATING TRANSNATIONALISM IN EAST ASIA 161
derstanding and conflicts (Suzuki, 2005; McKay, 2010). Amid the reconsti-
tution of cross-border kin ties, which may or may not always be successful,
the transnational configuration and maintenance of migrant workers’ fami-
lies is one of several contemporary transborder strategies and arrangements
of social reproduction. In this regard, amid the changing context in Japan,
women migrants may undergo several changes in social status and roles,
such as from being an entertainer to a marriage migrant, who then becomes
a paid caregiver in an institution for the elderly (Ogawa, 2010; cf. Suzuki,
2007).
That sojourning provides the basis for sustained and substantial
transnational engagement results in behavior of labor migrants that puts
them diametrically opposite those of immigrants, especially in the US, in
whose case engaging in transnationalism is an option that they may or may
not take. In fact, transnationalism among immigrants in the US is not
pervasive at all (Waldinger, 2008). Many immigrants may feel a sense of
belonging to the kin group and the national homeland, but their ways of
being do not lead to substantial engagement in transnational social fields.
As Levitt and Jaworsky (2007:131) have noted, “surveys conducted by
Portes and his colleagues (Guarnizo et al., 2003; Portes et al., 2002) found
that habitual transnational activism was fairly low, and that only 10 percent
to 15 percent of the Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Mexicans [sic; Colombi-
ans] they studied participated in ‘regular and sustained’ transnational
political and economic activities,” adding to the criticisms against the very
concept of transnational migration. Most of these immigrants “engage in
some kind of cross-border activity,” such as sending remittances, but do so
only “occasionally;” transnational entrepreneurs who form a “distinct class
of immigrants who engage in these [transnational] activities on a regular
basis” account for only five percent of the total (Portes et al., 2002:283–85).
Portes (2011:503) summarizes these findings as follows: “More recent
studies have shown that acculturation, political incorporation and
transnationalism can co-exist and that better established, more legally
secure and more affluent migrants are those most likely to take part in
transnational activities. By the same token, these are the migrants most
eligible to acquire the citizenship of the host nations and most capable of
participating in its civic and political life.”
Scholars studying the US setting have found it expedient to delineate
the “strictly” transnational from what is not, or to distinguish “narrow”
(and constant) versus “broad” (and occasional) transnationalism (Levitt
and Jaworsky, 2007:132; cf. Itzigsohn et al., 1999). One could make analo-
gous distinctions in East Asia, although no comparable studies have been
conducted so far. The point is that in the United States permanent immigra-
tion—even the undocumented can find avenues to legalize their immigra-
162 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
5
In East Asia, sizeable immigrant communities exist, some having had a long history of
settlement, such as the overseas Chinese across Southeast Asia and Koreans in Japan. They
cannot be included in the present discussion due to space constraints, but transnationalism in
the past did exist among these immigrants. Studies that investigate any continuity to the
present of earlier transnational practices can provide a basis for understanding migrant
transnationalism, and its ebb and flow, in the longue durée, currently a major lacuna in the
literature.
164 ASIAN AND PACIFIC MIGRATION JOURNAL
2005). Where the husband does not support the sending of remittances,
wives may run away from their Japanese husbands and families (although
there may be other reasons for such desertions) to become a migrant worker
and be able to remit money to kin in the Philippines—running away thus
becoming a deliberate transnationalizing strategy (Faier, 2008), a bold
assertion of a migrant’s way of belonging to home and homeland.
Conclusion
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