Temporary labour migration, social movements and neoliberal transformation in South Korea

Abstract

This research began with three grounded questions: ‘what had brought migrant workers to South Korea?’; ‘why does the government restrict the migrant worker’s free choice of job?’ and ‘why do the workers and pro-migrant activists protest?’ Karl Polanyi’s concepts and their contemporary interpretations suggest theoretical guidelines. First, the political economy of international labour migration has to be analysed in the context of the transformation of the mode of production management on a global scale, which involves fictitious commodification and entails disembeddedness. Second, the rationales of temporary labour migration policy have to be understood as a part of an employer-oriented political project and in the context of neoliberal social transformation into a market society. Third, the migrant protests are expressions of protective countermovement. Immigration- and labour market-data indicate an influx of migrant workers in the 1990s coincided with a labour market restructuring process. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a hierarchical subcontract system was established between transnational corporations and small and medium enterprises. The government institutionalised ‘flexibilisation’ of the labour market. The consequences were intensified pressures on wages and working conditions of non-unionised workers, pricaritised jobs and deteriorated living conditions. Temporary labour migration was an essential element of the labour market restructuring. The policy was driven by employers’ demand for non-regular and low-wage workforces and operated by such governing mechanisms as restricted job-choice, deportations, restricted entitlement to social security, paternalistic ‘assistance’ discourse, and exclusionary nationalist politics. Under extremely poor working and living conditions, migrant workers grew resistances from individual expressions of grievance to collective protests against the governing mechanisms. The migrant movements, however, saw a downturn after a formalisation of temporary labour migration policy in 2004. Migrant protests in 2012 suggest a potential resurrection of resistances against the policy and neoliberal commodification of labour and migration.