The Sensitivities of Making an Invisible Community More Visible
At the first sight, the Won Won Shopping Complex looks like any other retail/office building in central parts of Taipei. The concrete two-floor building is devoid of paint, excess decorations, and frankly, any character that would make it stand out among dozens of similar buildings with similar grey/brown hues on a rather nondescript street. The sign for the complex is small and fading, hidden behind little booths selling cheap SIM cards and a seat for the tired, half-napping security guard. For those in a hurry to their destinations, the Won Won Complex do not really deserve a second look, in the same way its neighbors also would not.
But if anyone does care to give the Complex a closer examination, it reveals itself to be a home-away-from-home for the entire Filipino community in northern reaches of Taiwan. Crammed into the rather claustrophobic building are dozens of shops selling phones, fashion items and jewelry. Others offer services ranging from remittances to family members back home, to haircuts in ways the Taiwanese would not know how to do properly, to dishes after dishes of comfort food not found anywhere outside the community. For the residential Filipino, the two-story building offer every living necessity that can be asked for.
It is a world that most Taiwanese, and indeed any non-Southeast Asian community members in Taiwan and beyond would know very little about. The failure of Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese in Taiwan alike to interact with the large Filipino community there has made the Filipino and other Southeast Asian communities, despite its visible presence in elderly care, manufacturing, and construction industries, a complete "other" that remain unintegrated with mainstream Taiwan. Even while Taiwanese gushes about wealthy expats and foreign students, they remain largely silent about the Southeast Asians.
That silence is a shame, not just because Southeast Asians contribute so much to the economic well-being of Taiwan. The fact that they do not come into contact with most Taiwanese on a day-to-day basis, while being the workhorse of the island's service industry, creates a ticking time bomb of potentially explosive social confrontation between the Taiwanese and Southeast Asians in the near future. The complete lack of exposure among most Taiwanese to Southeast Asians, and the accompanying lack of understanding toward Southeast Asian cultures, will eventually spill over into economics as Southeast Asians gain prominence.
Indeed, whether the Taiwanese likes it or not, large numbers of Southeast Asians working and living in Taiwan will gradually change Taiwanese mainstream culture and social norms. Their increasing importance as workers, spouses, and in the future, business owners and marginalized citizens, will make them more demanding of both governmental and normative institutions to cater to their needs. And as their numbers continue to increase from both immigration to fulfill increasing shortage of Taiwanese labor, and offsprings via international marriages, their demands are bound to become more vocal and harder to ignore.
In other words, today's "invisible" community, huddled in factories, nursing homes, and places like the Won Won Complex, will eventually become visible. If the Taiwanese only notice them then, it may be too late to gradually ease into any mechanisms that can smooth over any sources of socioeconomic and cultural conflicts. Instead, any attempts to integrate the Southeast Asian communities into mainstream Taiwanese society should take place preemptively, now, when hostility toward migrants are still relatively weak while relatively small numbers of migrants mean that they are not yet powerful enough to shake social foundations.
Of course, plenty of actors have both the resolve and the incentives to preempt that integration. Governments want to project an image of tolerance in order to attract more workers from abroad, and want to make sure that current batch of workers can be as economically productive as they can be. NGOs, generally in the frontline of battles for more recognition of migrant issues, cobble together however little resources they have to make an insensitive and uncaring general public more aware and sympathetic to the plights of the invisible migrant communities.
Yet, quite frankly, the efforts are not yet enough. The persistence of condescension, where a proud mainstream society selfishly believes that migrants should make the effort to be more Taiwanese, prevents concrete initiatives from having the fullest effect. And knowing the condescension they face, migrants have no choice but to back into their own little communities, isolated from the inadvertent hostility of the society at large. It is not a problem unique to Taiwan, and plenty of migrants, suffering discrimination, remain invisible despite their enormous contributions and potential political power. It's time society reaches out to them actively.
But if anyone does care to give the Complex a closer examination, it reveals itself to be a home-away-from-home for the entire Filipino community in northern reaches of Taiwan. Crammed into the rather claustrophobic building are dozens of shops selling phones, fashion items and jewelry. Others offer services ranging from remittances to family members back home, to haircuts in ways the Taiwanese would not know how to do properly, to dishes after dishes of comfort food not found anywhere outside the community. For the residential Filipino, the two-story building offer every living necessity that can be asked for.
It is a world that most Taiwanese, and indeed any non-Southeast Asian community members in Taiwan and beyond would know very little about. The failure of Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese in Taiwan alike to interact with the large Filipino community there has made the Filipino and other Southeast Asian communities, despite its visible presence in elderly care, manufacturing, and construction industries, a complete "other" that remain unintegrated with mainstream Taiwan. Even while Taiwanese gushes about wealthy expats and foreign students, they remain largely silent about the Southeast Asians.
That silence is a shame, not just because Southeast Asians contribute so much to the economic well-being of Taiwan. The fact that they do not come into contact with most Taiwanese on a day-to-day basis, while being the workhorse of the island's service industry, creates a ticking time bomb of potentially explosive social confrontation between the Taiwanese and Southeast Asians in the near future. The complete lack of exposure among most Taiwanese to Southeast Asians, and the accompanying lack of understanding toward Southeast Asian cultures, will eventually spill over into economics as Southeast Asians gain prominence.
Indeed, whether the Taiwanese likes it or not, large numbers of Southeast Asians working and living in Taiwan will gradually change Taiwanese mainstream culture and social norms. Their increasing importance as workers, spouses, and in the future, business owners and marginalized citizens, will make them more demanding of both governmental and normative institutions to cater to their needs. And as their numbers continue to increase from both immigration to fulfill increasing shortage of Taiwanese labor, and offsprings via international marriages, their demands are bound to become more vocal and harder to ignore.
In other words, today's "invisible" community, huddled in factories, nursing homes, and places like the Won Won Complex, will eventually become visible. If the Taiwanese only notice them then, it may be too late to gradually ease into any mechanisms that can smooth over any sources of socioeconomic and cultural conflicts. Instead, any attempts to integrate the Southeast Asian communities into mainstream Taiwanese society should take place preemptively, now, when hostility toward migrants are still relatively weak while relatively small numbers of migrants mean that they are not yet powerful enough to shake social foundations.
Of course, plenty of actors have both the resolve and the incentives to preempt that integration. Governments want to project an image of tolerance in order to attract more workers from abroad, and want to make sure that current batch of workers can be as economically productive as they can be. NGOs, generally in the frontline of battles for more recognition of migrant issues, cobble together however little resources they have to make an insensitive and uncaring general public more aware and sympathetic to the plights of the invisible migrant communities.
Yet, quite frankly, the efforts are not yet enough. The persistence of condescension, where a proud mainstream society selfishly believes that migrants should make the effort to be more Taiwanese, prevents concrete initiatives from having the fullest effect. And knowing the condescension they face, migrants have no choice but to back into their own little communities, isolated from the inadvertent hostility of the society at large. It is not a problem unique to Taiwan, and plenty of migrants, suffering discrimination, remain invisible despite their enormous contributions and potential political power. It's time society reaches out to them actively.
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