Political economy of labour immigration in East Asia: Commonalities and varieties

This paper comparatively analyses the political economy of labour immigration in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as new immigration countries in East Asia. It argues that the logic of their political economy of developmentalism, productivist welfare regime, and social contract of shared growth explains why all three democracies have a dual labour immigration regime, which encourages the immigration of highly qualified foreign labour and strictly controls the inflow of low- and medium-qualified foreign workers. This leads overall to low immigration movements and limited expansion of foreign residents. To reveal these commonalities of labour immigration regimes in East Asia, we discuss the three new East Asian immigration countries and their political economy in comparison to Italy and Spain as two new democratic immigration countries in South Europe. The paper also discusses the variations between political economies and resulting differences in labour immigration patterns among the three new East Asian immigration countries. This comparative analysis shows more pronounced similarities between Japan and South Korea and stronger peculiarities in the case of Taiwan. It can explain why Japan, despite having by far the fastest and most advanced demographic aging process among the three countries, had proportionally the lowest inflow of foreign labour. Still, based on this analysis, we expect a significant increase in labour immigration in Japan and in contrast to this a slowdown in labour inflows in South Korea in the coming years. Finally, it also explains why labour immigration regime in Taiwan is more responsive to the national labour market situation.