Research Focus
This project is part of an interdisciplinary research project that examines the formation and operation of the Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan (PI: Jinn-Yuh Shu at National Taiwan University). Taking a transnational perspective, the project examines how the mobility of professional and labor migrants across national borders has constituted a crucial foundation for the development of Taiwan’s high-tech industries. In this subproject, the focus is on three themes: (1) return and circular migration between Taiwan and Silicon Valley; (2) the migration trajectories and local adaptation of foreign engineers; and (3) the employment and working conditions of blue-collar migrant workers, mostly from the Philippines.
Drawing on interviews with labor brokers, employers, and migrant workers in Taiwan’s electronics-related supply chains, Dr. Lan examines how firms navigate a central contradiction of global value chains: maintaining a low-cost, flexible migrant workforce to respond quickly to global market fluctuations while demonstrating compliance with increasingly stringent international labor standards, especially the pressure from international buyers and U.S. customs authorities to implement zero-recruitment-fee policies and other labor protections.
Transnational audit governance operates as an emerging field of private labor regulation in which multinational corporations, third-party auditors, state agencies, suppliers, brokers, and migrant workers possess unequal capacities to negotiate the redistribution of costs, risks, and responsibilities. The research explores how the global norm of “ethical recruitment” and its opposite, “forced labor,” are translated into local organizational practices that are transforming Taiwan’s migrant labor regime while also generating friction, resistance, and unintended consequences.
