Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
CONVENIENCE STORE chain FamilyMart recently rolled out signs in Bahasa Indonesian, given that it is currently Ramadan. Nevertheless, the signs seem to take a stereotyped view of Indonesians in Taiwan, with the Chinese language reading “Migrant worker-friendly.”
The assumption, then, is that those who read Bahasa Indonesian in Taiwan must all be migrant workers. The Chinese language on the sign may be to explain to Taiwanese citizens what the purpose of the signage is.
Indeed, as of May 2024, there are 284,848 Indonesians employed in Taiwan. Indonesians are by far the largest blue-collar migrant worker group in Taiwan, ahead of Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand. The majority of Indonesians are migrant workers, mostly working to provide for the elderly. Statistics suggest that Taiwan is a popular destination for Indonesian migrant workers.
At the same time, many Indonesians who come to Taiwan are not migrant workers. For example, Taiwan saw 220,000 visitors from Indonesia. The Taiwan Tourism Information Center has stated that Taiwan hopes to attract 500,000 Indonesian visitors in 2025.
Past years have also seen a sharp increase in Indonesian students studying in Taiwan. The number of Indonesian students in Taiwan has increased from 5,074 in 2016, 13,804 in 2020, 16,639 in 2022, and 16,725 in 2023.
Likewise, the number of Indonesians in Taiwan who are not blue-collar migrant workers is on the rise. In 2024, statistics showed just under 6,000 white-collar Indonesian workers in Taiwan. Though this may not appear large, this makes Indonesia the country that has the third-highest number of migrant workers in Taiwan.
According to the Indonesia Economic and Trade Office (IETO), Indonesia’s representative office in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations, the majority of these individuals acquired the qualification of “professional foreign worker” after graduating from a Taiwanese university or through attending graduate school in Taiwan. White-collar Indonesian workers have careers in education, engineering, journalism, translation, and hospitality, among other sectors.
To cater to the growing Indonesian population in Taiwan, in July 2024, Taiwan’s state-run news service, Focus Taiwan, launched an Indonesian version. As such, the rising Indonesian population in Taiwan has led to the roll-out of services for them. In a similar timeframe, the IETO is seeking to encourage white-collar workers to register for the social services they offer.
Though it is a welcome move to see more multilingual signs and services in Taiwan, stereotyped views of Southeast Asians are still pervasive in society. The assumption is that Southeast Asians must all be blue-collar migrant workers. Indeed, the assumption from the sign seems to suggest a view of Muslims as migrant workers.
Taiwan has sometimes denied that racism is a problem in society, returning to tropes about Taiwan being a mostly ethnically homogeneous–though it is to be questioned how that is true, considering that Taiwan’s original inhabitants are Indigenous, given the rising population of “new residents”, as well as that Han groups themselves are quite diverse. Infamously, Presidential Office spokesperson Joanne Ou once claimed in public comments that racism was a western concept that did not exist in Taiwan.
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The racism–and classism–implicit in Taiwanese society has sometimes spilled over more visibly. For example, during COVID-19, migrant workers in factories in Miaoli county were subject to strict confinement measures in dirty and crowded facilities, restrictions that their Taiwanese peers were not subject to. Though this move was criticized by progressive politicians such as Tseng Wen-hsueh, the Miaoli government refused to relent on the measure.
In the 2020 election cycle, KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu also attacked the notion of Filipinos working as English teachers in Taiwan, stating that Taiwanese would never accept the idea of “Marias” being English teachers. Unfortunately, Han is likely right, in that Taiwanese have generally refused to accept the idea of English teachers from non-Western countries who do not fit stereotypes of being Caucasian, even if they are native and/or fluent English teachers.
One notes that the announcements on the Taipei Metro include Japanese and Korean at large stations. The reason for this is the large number of tourists from these countries that visit Taiwan, with around one million visitors from Japan last year, and also around one million visitors from South Korea. The number of Japanese residing in Taiwan is much smaller, at 21,000 individuals, and around 5,000 from South Korea.
By contrast, one notes the lack of announcements in Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, or Tagalog, despite that the residents of these nationalities in Taiwan easily number in the hundreds of thousands, and the tourism from these countries is also increasing. This lack of linguistic awareness reflects classism and racism and proves ironic, when DPP presidential administrations have otherwise expressed interest in strengthening political and economic ties with Southeast Asia by way of the New Southbound Policy. Apart from domestic racism and classism, in spite of such paeans to stronger ties, there is generally little interest, awareness, or reporting on human rights abuses committed by Taiwanese companies in Southeast Asia.