Abstract
Based on the empirical analysis of migrant women employed in the catering sector, this paper examines the gendered and racialised division in the Korean labour market. Given limited labour protection and the flexibilisation of the migrant workforce in the labour market, South Korea has been able to reduce possible economic and social costs and, at the same time, enjoy the benefits of the significant economic contribution of migrant workers. By looking at gender relations and racial discrimination in the catering sector, and inconsistent government policies, this paper underlines that migrant women are marginalised in the labour market owing to their ‘multiple vulnerability’ as women, migrants and undocumented workers.
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Notes
All the names of migrant workers in this study are pseudonyms. See Appendix for the list of interview participants.
King [15] illustrates the sexual exploitation of black women in slavery as a historical example of ‘multiple jeopardy’. Black women workers not only suffered the same tough physical labour and violence as their male counterparts, but were also subject to sexual exploitations such as rape. Moreover, black women workers were faced with burdens of reproductive labour such as ‘breeding new slaves’ to maintain cost effectiveness in a slave economy [24].
Regardless of the demand for migrant labour in labour-scare industries, until 2004 the Korean government had strictly prohibited low-skilled migrant workers from entering the country for the purpose of employment. In the form of the Industrial and Technical Training Programmes (ITTP), for 14 years Korea had utilised the migrant labour force to fulfil serious labour shortages in the manufacturing and service industries. While migrant trainees constituted an indispensable labour force for essential industries in Korea, they were not recognised as ‘workers’—owing to their legal status as ‘trainees’—and were denied all rights as workers. The unrealistic government policy on migrant workers had failed to control the continuous flow of migrant workers and resulted in a great number of undocumented workers in Korea. However, since January 2007 the ITTP has officially abandoned its distorted function of utilising foreign trainees as the supplementary labour force and now only addresses the foreign ‘trainees’ who are employed by overseas-invested Korean companies and enter Korea for the purpose of a short-term industrial skills training.
Certainly, the underlying principle of the EPS on the protection of the domestic labour market is not unique to Korea. Most countries that import migrant workers stipulate similar conditions to protect native workers.
The specified period of the vacancy notice has been reduced over time, and the government has recently relaxed the rule so that the companies can apply for the employment permit after three days of the job advertisement.
In 2007 the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee selected fourteen sending countries for the EPS: the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan.
These occupations include jobs in restaurants, business support, repair work in garages, social welfare service, cleaning, nursing, childcare and domestic work.
Ethnic Koreans are concentrated in north-eastern China. Sixty-three per cent of them live in five counties of Jilin Province, 27% in Heilongjiang Province and 10% in Liaoning Province. The five counties constitute the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, which was established in 1952 [21].
For example, undocumented workers are more vulnerable to unfair dismissal and unpaid or overdue wages and are often deployed to perform dangerous and demanding tasks in the workplace.
For further discussion on migrant ‘entertainers’ in Korea, see Lee [16].
These figures are derived at the Korea won-per-dollar exchange rate (1,000 KRW) in 2005 when the fieldwork was conducted.
Article 14 of the Labour Standard Act defines a ‘worker’ as ‘a person engaged in whatever occupation offering work to a business or workplace for the purpose of earning wages’.
The National Pension is however based on the principle of reciprocity. Thus, it is only applied to migrant workers from countries that apply it to migrant workers in their own countries. The pension is not applied to workers from Vietnam, and workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand are provided with a lump sum payment when they leave.
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Shin, J.J. The Gendered and Racialised Division in the Korean Labour Market: The Case of Migrant Workers in the Catering Sector. East Asia 26, 93–111 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-009-9069-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-009-9069-0