誰可以打開國界的門？移民政策的階級主義

Who Can Be Us? Class Selection in Immigration Policy

曾嬿芬(Yen-Fen Tseng)

《台灣社會研究季刊》 61期 (2006/03) Pp. 73-107

https://doi.org/10.29816/TARQSS.200603.0002

摘要

本文討論移民政策的階級篩選，當移民政策建立在以經濟理性（也就是最大化可計算的經濟利益）為正當性的基礎，也就是移民政策制訂者將移民回饋地主國經濟的利弊放在首要目標的時候，就會針對不同階級的移民設計不同的移民管道，階級較高的人比較受到移民政策的歡迎。在當代，階級篩選逐漸地建立在一種我將之稱為「階級主義」的意識型態之上，這種意識型態作為一種偏見，將經濟社會地位高的外國人視為可被接受的移民，低階的外國人則被視為與移入國經濟、社會、文化與政治生活不相容而被排斥在國門之外。
本文第一部份闡述為了使經濟活動更加全球化，許多國家的政策一向賦予技術與商業菁英的短期流動，相當大的自由。但是當代各主要工業先進國，越來越以永久居留權／公民權來吸引這些人員的移入定居，這樣的變遷與工業先進國人口成長衰退與技術人力短缺的結構性變遷有關。本文第二部份討論台灣移民政策的變遷，近來，為了加入全球競逐技術人力的市場，政策制訂者亟思開放管道讓有技術的外國人進入，階級篩選的正當性訴諸「人口素質」的提升，相較於透過婚姻管道移入定居的低階移民降低「人口素質」，鼓勵高階的「優質」移民移入可以提升人口素質。本文最後討論，這樣的階級主義一旦確立，它的正當性甚至凌駕其他牢不可破的考量（比如有關「誰可以成為我們」的國族主義），正當台灣政府以國家安全為理由加強取締大陸偷渡客、在邊境外審查申請移入之大陸籍配偶的同時，政府部門也在研議開放大陸技術人力與投資者來台移民的方案。

關鍵字

移民政策 ； 階級 ； 公民權 ； 居留權

並列摘要

This paper discusses the increasing significance of class selection in immigration policy. It can be observed that when policy makers are more concerned with economic return of potential immigrants to host countries, they are more likely to heavily rely on class background as selection criterion. Contemporary immigration policies gradually lean toward class selection. What makes immigration policy move to weight class background of immigrants more than other social characteristics such as race, ethnicity and nationality? I argue that nation state's policies responding to two globalization processes trigger such change. First, to resolve the contradiction of two circulation regimes, namely the free flow of trade and capital, and the restricted mobility of people, nation state tends to adopts immigration policies that differentiate entry and residing status among foreigners with different class background. Secondly, many states change their naturalization policy to welcome highly-skilled foreigners in order to outperform others in winning the global ”brains” such as IT specialists.
In Taiwan, such immigration policy lean toward foreigners with higher class background is based on a legitimacy building process that heavily involves a differentiation between ”non-economic” immigrants of Southeast and PRC female immigrants through marrying to Taiwanese locals and ”economic” immigrants of high-skilled workers or investors. The non-economic immigrants are regarded as lowering the ”population quality” since their lower class profile. Such preferences over recruiting high-skilled as new members of Taiwan society even suppress some of the long-term nationalist ideologies that work against accepting migrants from PRC.
I argue that an immigration policy that puts too much emphasis on potential immigrants' class background tends to produce classism. In such policy framework, potential immigrants with higher economic profile are considered acceptable as future members despite of their ethnicity and nationality, while immigrants with lower class background are excluded on the basis of their ”incompatibility” in social, cultural, and political sense.

並列關鍵字

immigration policy ； class ； citizenship ； residency right

參考文獻

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