Life Guide
Hearing Workers V: Tearing Off Discriminatory Labels, the Struggles and Rooting of Migrant Workers and New Immigrants
KYLE5d agoEdited
Riding the sea breeze and the tides of the era, in 1980s Taiwan, a group of laborers left their homes for the livelihoods of distant families, quietly filling the gaps at the bottom of this island. To this day, the combined number of these foreign laborers and new immigrants exceeds one million; migrant workers alone have surpassed 810,000, equivalent to one out of every 30 people in Taiwan being their face. They folded their youth into sweltering factories, swaying ocean-going fishing boats, or by the sickbeds of long-term care patients locked away in employers' homes. However, the shackles of the early guest worker system and high brokerage fees relegated these people, who prop up Taiwan's grassroots infrastructure, to "transients" struggling to move and even lacking basic legal protection. When survival and private space were compressed, the black and white checkerboard of Taipei Main Station's lobby, parks, and street corners became their havens in this strange city, where they could find warmth and emotional belonging.
Meanwhile, women who made Taiwan their home through international marriage were labeled with the discriminatory term "foreign brides" by society in their early years, silently shouldering the heavy domestic burdens of entire families in corners where language was a barrier. But they did not get lost in the fog of a foreign land. Starting in 1995, through the strokes of literacy classes, they gradually formed a mutual support network, regaining their voice and loudly declaring themselves "new residents" of this land. The resilience of this bloodline continues to the hundreds of thousands of second-generation immigrants today; from the confusion of hiding their mother tongue in childhood to avoid social prejudice, to the identity struggles of being suddenly viewed as economic assets after policy shifts in adulthood, they have stumbled along a long road of self-discovery, eventually growing into solid bridges that span cultural divides.
These foreign laborers, once considered "strangers," have made contributions and given back to society with countless drops of sweat and time. As the long river of time flows, for migrant workers who will eventually return home with lingering attachments after their contracts expire, this island is a profound imprint of their youth supporting distant homes; for new residents willing to deeply root themselves on this land, time and interaction will eventually smooth over prejudices and scars, allowing the foreign land to gradually become a true hometown.
(Text: Zhu Yin)
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