Taiwanese multiculturalism and the political appropriation of new immigrants’ languages

ABSTRACT

Since 2019, Taiwan has implemented native language education for ‘new immigrants’ from Southeast Asian countries. This paper argues that the new educational provisions reflect the Taiwanese government’s desire to appropriate new immigrants’ cultures and languages to promote a multicultural vision of Taiwanese identity. It analyses the 12-year national curriculum guidelines and the primary-level teaching materials to elucidate the role of language education in the construction of discourse on new immigrants, exploring how this reflects and reinforces official portrayals of Taiwanese society as ‘multicultural’. The analysis shows how the extension of curricular recognition to immigrants’ languages and their associated cultures is driven by a desire to project a certain vision of mainstream national identity. By showing how, in the Taiwanese context, instruction in their languages in some respects reinforces the marginalisation of immigrant communities, it provides insights that may be applicable elsewhere.

摘要

自2019年起，台湾对来自东南亚国家的“新住民”实施母语教育。本文认为，新的教育规定反映台湾政府期望利用新移民的文化和语言，以促进一种基于多元文化愿景的台湾身份认同。为阐明语言教育在关于新住民的话语建构中的作用，本文分析了台湾十二年国民基本教育课程纲要和小学教材，探讨这一建构如何反映并强化官方对台湾社会“多元文化”的描述。分析表明，将课程认可范围扩展到移民的语言及相关文化，是如何由一种意图投射某种主流国家身份认同愿景的期望所驱动。通过展现台湾背景下使用移民的语言授课何以在某些方面强化了移民社区的边缘化，本文或为洞察其他社会提供见解。

KEYWORDS:

• Taiwan
• minority language
• language-in-education policy
• multiculturalism
• identity politics

关键词:

• 台湾
• 少数族裔语言
• 教育语言政策
• 多元文化主义
• 身份认同政治

Introduction

Since the late 1990s, Taiwan’s formal curriculum has provided Mandarin, English, and native language education, in which (Hoklo) Taiwanese,¹ Hakka,² and Indigenous languages³ are included as elective languages under the provisions for ‘native language’ instruction (MOE 2018). Chen (2006) argues that ‘two-polar positions’ – one towards ‘nativisation’⁴ (bentuhua) and the other towards internationalisation – have shaped this multilingual educational provision, where native language education represents the consequences of nativisation, and English language education, which has gained a prominent position in education policy since the early 2000s, symbolises the official aim of ‘internationalisation’. However, since 2019, language education has been further complicated by the introduction of native language education for ‘new immigrants’ (xinzhumin) from Southeast Asian countries. With this reform, seven Southeast Asian languages (Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Filipino, Burmese, and Cambodian) were officially included in the national curriculum for primary schools for the first time. This reform challenges Chen’s framework since these languages are both ‘foreign’ and ‘native’ at the same time.

This study examines the implications of the new provision for instruction in Southeast Asian languages, setting it in the context of a larger nation-building project based on the ideology of multiculturalism. In recent years, Taiwan has presented itself as a multicultural nation for complex socio-political reasons. Taiwanese multiculturalism is a product of the ongoing politics of identity in Taiwanese society. Under the banner of multiculturalism, there has been a continuing negotiation among various groups with distinctive political interests and aims. Multiculturalism arose as a framework for imagining Taiwanese nationhood during the period of democratisation during the 1990s, when it was centred around ‘four major ethnic groups’: ‘native’ Taiwanese (Hoklo people), Mainlanders, Hakka, and the Indigenous peoples. The rapidly evolving reimagining of Taiwanese identity during this period led Corcuff to describe the island as a ‘laboratory of identities’ (Corcuff 2002, 249). As Corcuff argues, its multi-layered political history, complicated relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and unsettled position in the international order, make Taiwan a particularly fascinating location for analysing identity politics and the process of nation formation.

Taiwan exhibits a form of multiculturalism that differs from its Western counterparts, for reasons related in part to the political, social and economic context of East Asia. Across East Asia, the complex politics of culture tend to be ignored, with local, sub-national or immigrant languages and cultures de-legitimised by a dominant vision of national homogeneity (as in Japan and Korea), or of diversity premised upon ethnic or cultural hierarchy (as in China). This relative absence of discussion about how political ideology influences power dynamics among cultures as well as individuals’ cultural identity has been a key motivation for my research. Cowen argues that comparative education is about ‘reading the global’, with a researcher’s agendas of attention, approach, action, and agglutination shaped by her or his personal experience and moral perspective (Cowen 2017, 13).

As the East Asian society that has gone furthest in embracing a vision of itself as culturally diverse, Taiwan is a rich source of comparative data for researchers interested in the relationship between identity politics and education in other East Asian societies. In addition, Taiwan’s case holds significant implications for the wider field of comparative education since it often tends to be overlooked or excluded from debate due to its peculiar geopolitical situation. If the mission of the comparative education researcher is to ‘reject the temptation of power and re-discover the rightful place of academic comparative education as a critique to the instrumentalisation of knowledge by and for power’ (Manzon 2018, 4), Taiwan’s language education policies, deeply intertwined as they are with Taiwanese identity politics, illustrate how knowledge may be constructed and shaped by the political ideology behind the nation-building project.

This study explores the role language education plays in Taiwanese identity politics by examining the case of new immigrants’ language education. Although the term ‘new immigrants’ is generally understood as referring to overwhelmingly female spouses from Mainland China and Southeast Asian countries, the Taiwanese government officially defines them as spouses of Taiwanese who are foreigners, stateless, or people from Mainland China, Hong Kong, or Macao (MOI 2015). Statistics from the National Immigration Agency show that there are a total of 554,706 foreign spouses residing in Taiwan, a number slightly higher than the population of Taiwan’s Indigenous tribes (NIA 2019). While 65.82% of them hold Chinese (PRC) nationality or Macau or Hong Kong residency, more than 29.24% are from Southeast Asian countries. Among those with Southeast Asian nationality, Vietnam (108,340) is the most common home country, with Indonesia second (30,385), then Thailand (9,102). As existing data show that almost 90% of new immigrants are women (NIA 2019), the population could be understood as a part of the international phenomenon of ‘feminised migration’ in East and Southeast Asia (Hsia 2018). In the case of Taiwan, although there are no relevant statistical data, existing empirical studies suggest many of them are ethnic Han, who have relied on their ethnic ties and Chinese language skills to meet Taiwanese husbands or to move to Taiwan to enjoy an improved livelihood (Cheng 2014). While multiculturalism is widely assumed to connote inclusivity and tolerance, these immigrants only recently began to be included in the vision of a multicultural Taiwan. Until the early 2000s, new immigrants were mostly ignored in education and cultural policy. Therefore, the inclusion of their languages in the curriculum of public schools signals new official attention to this previously overlooked group.

The aim of this study is to investigate the shifting role of new immigrants in Taiwanese multicultural ideology, and the role language education has played in this. Based on an analysis of official policy discourse manifested in formal curricular guidelines and approved teaching materials, it explores how discourse on new immigrants in the formal curriculum reflects the official imaginary of Taiwanese society as ‘multicultural’.

Research objectives and methodology

The main research objective is to investigate the construction of knowledge regarding new immigrants in the formal school curriculum and its implication for Taiwan’s multicultural nationhood. It is guided by the following research questions:

1. What political agenda concerning identity formation informs arrangements for incorporating instruction in new immigrants’ languages in the formal school curriculum?

2. How do the teaching materials for new immigrants’ languages interpret these languages and the cultural and social experiences of new immigrants?

3. How are new immigrants portrayed in the teaching materials?

In order to investigate the official discourse on new immigrants and their languages and cultures in the curriculum guidelines, the study adopted the framework of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Based on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, CDA understands that the production and interpretation of any given text tend to entail and reflect deeply embedded social values, beliefs, and norms (Fairclough 2001, 20). With the aim of investigating the official interpretation of new immigrants and the role language instruction plays in mobilising the national ideology, I treat the national curriculum guidelines for Grades 1–12 and primary-level teaching materials as both carriers of the MOE agenda and as resources for teachers and schools.

In the school year 2019–2020, both native languages and new immigrants’ languages were provided by primary schools as elective subjects under the ‘native language’ programme, comprising one class session (50 min) every week. Every public primary school is obligated to find a teacher and secure the resources for the native language course if there are more than five students wishing to take the language as their elective. Therefore, depending on the districts’ demography, the languages schools offer vary widely. For instance, cities known for their large population of new immigrant residents, such as New Taipei City and Taoyuan City, have more primary schools offering instruction in new immigrants’ languages. Based on my personal interactions with local teachers and head teachers at primary schools in New Taipei City, it seems that the majority of the students taking the new immigrants’ language courses are second-generation children of new immigrants.

The expected approach to language teaching is manifested in two types of primary documents: the curriculum guidelines and teacher’s manuals. While the guidelines provide a framework to guide the teaching of all subjects from year one to year twelve, the teacher’s manuals provide a specific curriculum design with instructions on what to teach (vocabulary, phrases, attitudes, learning contents, cultural knowledge), when to teach (the schedule for each lesson), and how to teach (learning games, activities, teaching methods). The manuals, together with the textbooks, are produced by an editing committee assigned by the New Taipei City government. The editing committee is composed of principals and retired teachers from various public schools in New Taipei City. New immigrants are not officially members of the committee, but they served as consultants, helping develop the teaching materials by providing their knowledge of Southeast Asian cultures and societies. The committee put together 18 volumes of textbooks along with teacher’s manuals for all seven new immigrant languages, following the curriculum guidelines. The manuals’ purpose of guiding local teachers’ practice makes them interesting sources for an investigation of the practical implications of the design of official curricular and officially-approved textbooks for shaping interpretations of multiculturalism in schools.

This study focuses only on the primary level, as the new immigrants’ languages are not grouped with ‘native languages’ from the secondary level but are classified as ‘foreign languages’. This transition suggests that as students’ cognitive thinking skills develop with age, new immigrants’ language education shifts its focus to the functional role of the languages as tools of communication with foreigners. However, the aim of this paper is not to examine the positioning of new immigrants’ languages as foreign languages but to elucidate the official imagination of new immigrants in relation to Taiwan’s multicultural national ideology. Therefore, I focus on the primary level to investigate the implications of instruction in new immigrant languages for the construction of a sense of multicultural Taiwanese nationhood.

I first explore how national political agendas are projected through the new immigrant languages curriculum (Q1). This involves considering how the academic goals, prescribed content, and recommended methods reflect MOE priorities for Taiwanese education and for the island’s broader development. I then explore how official intentions embodied in the guidelines are interpreted or elaborated in the teaching materials (Q2). The analysis focuses on how new immigrant languages are expected to be used, with whom, where, and for what purposes, as well as on the representation of related heritage cultures. Lastly, with reference to previous literature on the lived experience of new immigrants in Taiwan, the study examines how new immigrants are represented in the implemented curriculum (Q3).

Language-in-education policy: the political background

This section briefly reviews the political debate over language-in-education policy in post-colonial Taiwan to contextualise new immigrants’ language education with respect to ongoing debates on language, education, and nation formation.

Today’s multilingual education policy has developed as a reaction against the monolingual policies of successive colonial Japanese and KMT regimes. Prior to 1945, the colonial authorities suppressed local languages and sought to enforce the use of Japanese both in public and, increasingly, in the private domain (Tsao 1999, 331–332). Even before the KMT leadership decamped to Taiwan in 1949, in retreat following their loss of the Civil War with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the regime imposed the use of Mandarin on the island, banning other languages, including local languages and Japanese. Their language policies, along with various other official regulations, sought to strengthen national cohesion by eradicating Japanese influence and mediating tensions between citizens who had experienced Japanese colonial education and the newly arrived KMT army. The regime’s ultimate goal was to win back Mainland China from the CCP. Under this agenda, the KMT implemented a programme of Chinese Nationalist Education (1945–1967) focused on decolonisation and anti-communist propaganda. The monolingual policy was enforced by regulating language use in public schooling and the media (Dupré 2014, 396).

This sweeping monolingual policy, as well as other authoritarian measures imposed by the KMT, triggered strong anti-regime sentiment among many locals, particularly the Taiwanese elites educated under Japanese rule (Tsao 1999, 340). Combined with other forms of oppression, discrimination and cultural conflict, it contributed to mounting frustration among the local population, leading to an outbreak of rebellion in 1947. This outbreak, known as the 228 Incident, triggered the White Terror, a decade-long campaign of oppression, and eventually led the KMT to impose Martial Law (1949–1987).

By the 1970s and, especially, the 1980s, the KMT faced growing challenges to the legitimacy of its vision of recapturing China, as most countries, including the USA, recognised the CCP regime in Beijing as the official government of China. The KMT itself was meanwhile becoming increasingly diverse and localised, as a generational change took place within the party (Wu 2012). Taiwanese nationalists, joined by other dissatisfied groups, including Hakka and Indigenous activists, feminists, and labour unions, also launched social movements to assert their freedom and rights. Posing a challenge to the KMT’s China-centred nationalist ideology, this movement towards democratisation was intertwined with a campaign for nativisation, a movement for a more localised ideology centred around (Hoklo) Taiwanese interests.

Outside the area of language policy, public education was at the centre of political debate. In 1997, new curricular guidelines promoted an idea of identity conceived as nested ‘concentric circles’ (tongxinyuan), exhorting students to ‘stand on Taiwan, have consideration for China, [and] open their eyes to the world’ (Corcuff 2002, 87). This model signified a new phase in Taiwanese nation-building, placing Taiwan at the centre. However, confronted with strong opposition from traditional Chinese nationalists, the transition to a new curricular model was far from smooth. Newly published textbooks on Taiwan’s own history, society, and geography were considered intolerable by many conservatives. Similarly, the inclusion of native languages (Hoklo, Hakka, and Indigenous languages) in the formal curriculum in the late 1990s met heated criticism.

Some scholars (Hsiau 1997; Wu 2002; Wu 2011) argue that it is perhaps this opposition that prevented the emergence of an explicitly Hoklo-centred ideology, leading instead to emphasis on the multicultural coexistence of various ethnic groups. Hoklo Taiwanese have always been the numerically dominant group, holding more tangible and intangible resources than other groups such as Hakka and Indigenous communities. Attempts to elaborate and articulate a locally-oriented Taiwanese identity have thus involved contestation and rivalry among the Mainlanders, Hoklo, Hakka and Indigenous groups. The limited resources given to native language education have fuelled competition among speakers of different native languages, leading to a new form of oppression: re-marginalisation within multiculturalism.

The political history behind the implementation of native language education implies a focus on the symbolic function of language. Political debates over native language education have tended to be dominated by ideological posturing at the expense of attention to practical, pedagogical issues. The politics of language-in-education in Taiwan is further complicated by increasing attention to the instrumental value of language in the formal curriculum. In common with other East Asian developmental states, Taiwan’s authorities have long seen the purpose of schooling overwhelmingly in terms of promoting economic growth and securing social stability. An overwhelming emphasis on the role of schooling in cultivating human capital has also become increasingly entrenched internationally over recent decades. This hard-nosed focus on the economic returns to education (including language education) can create tensions with policies that emphasise the cultural or symbolic purposes of language learning. Divergent interpretations of the purpose of learning (different) languages are reflected, in the case of Taiwan, in the 2018 announcement of the goal to transform Taiwan into an English-Mandarin bilingual nation by 2030 (Lin 2019). The implications of this for the future direction of language education – and perhaps especially for the curricular space available for teaching languages other than English and Mandarin – are yet to become clear.

New immigrants in Taiwanese society

Taiwan’s formal school curriculum only began to offer instruction in new immigrant languages in 2019. Until the early 2000s, new immigrants were entirely absent from the imaginary of ‘multicultural Taiwan’. Wang argues that this is because the transnational bonds of Southeast Asian immigrants were regarded as obstacles to the vision of Taiwanese multiculturalism – or as foreign intrusions (Wang 2005). As explained earlier, when multiculturalism was first established as a new national ideology, the authorities envisaged the four ethnic groups, with their shared historical memory of colonial oppression, as the citizens of this multicultural society. Furthermore, the elaboration of a multicultural vision of Taiwaneseness was the result of a compromise between Chinese nationalists and (Hoklo) Taiwanese nationalists, both of whom conceived ethnicity as the basis of national identity. Accordingly, new immigrants were expected to gain acceptance by abandoning their cultures and assimilating into Taiwanese society.

They were also problematic from the aspect of reproduction. Southeast Asian spouses were often represented as ‘inferior others’ who would bring down the ‘quality’ of Taiwan’s future citizens (Hsia 2018). Such a neo-eugenicist narrative intersected with ethnic bias based on classism, problematising such ‘mixed’ marriages as a materialistic contract between ‘a poorly educated woman from a third world country’ and ‘a Taiwanese man without morals’, particularly in the public media (Hsia 2018). Analysing international marriages between Taiwanese husbands and Southeast Asian wives as a case of feminised migration, Hsia argues that this type of international marriage is a result of globalised capitalism, which reinforces hierarchical relationships among countries. Such ‘commercialised’ marriage grew as women in peripheralised countries began to seek marriage with men from ‘core countries’ to secure a better quality of life and some men (especially those of lower social status) in ‘core countries’, in which patriarchal social norms still exist, began to face difficulties finding wives. For the Southeast Asian spouses, roles as wives, daughters-in-law, and mothers have provided an avenue for admission into Taiwanese society, but typically at the cost of conforming to the very patriarchal norms that, in practice, many ‘native’ Taiwanese women increasingly reject. Meanwhile, introducing the metaphor of a tug-of-war, Cheng addresses the conflict new immigrants face between their transnational reality and the exclusionary concept of national belonging that remains embedded in the Taiwanese social structure (Cheng 2013). Cheng’s study illustrates that new immigrants’ identity choices are limited by what remains, at the grassroots level, an essentialist discourse on culture and ethnicity, as well as entrenched patriarchy.

The official narrative began to shift in a more inclusive, tolerant direction in the mid-to-late-2010s, when political and economic interest in Southeast Asia grew under the Tsai administration (from 2016). As the cross-strait relationship deteriorated, the Tsai administration began to turn to Southeast Asian countries in search of diplomatic and economic support to balance dependence on Mainland China. This was particularly notable in the launch of a ‘New Southbound policy’ in 2016, an economic investment drive towards Southeast Asian countries, which also targeted the second generation of Southeast Asian immigrants. As a consequence, immigrants’ cultural ties with Southeast Asia began to be deemed a multicultural asset for the Taiwanese future (Lan 2019). During the 2016 election campaign, new immigrants were celebrated as mothers of future Taiwanese citizens who could contribute to transforming Taiwan’s future with their multicultural capital (Cheng, Momesso, and Fell 2019). While new immigrants’ reproductive role is persistently emphasised as a means of integration, the discourse on their cultural background has largely transitioned from threat to resource for the Taiwanese future (Lan 2019).

Despite the shift towards a more inclusive narrative, scholars have criticised the official discourse on new immigrants for symbolically appropriating their cultural ties to serve Taiwan’s national interests. Cheng and Fell argue that the political approach toward new immigrants focuses predominantly on their instrumental value for Taiwanese multiculturalism rather than their cultural and political rights (Cheng and Fell 2014, 96). Similarly, by reviewing the state’s support for new immigrants’ NGO activities, Hsia points out that the state and private corporations only tolerate ‘traditional’ representation of new immigrants based on their countries of origin (Hsia 2009). This underlines that Taiwan’s tolerance of multiculturalism has often been limited to showcasing distinctive cultures while stopping short of genuine integration. Hsia’s research, combined with the arguments of other scholars (Cheng, Momesso, and Fell 2019; Lan 2019), suggests that the Taiwanese ideology of multiculturalism imagines partitioned cultures with clear boundaries.

Limits of Taiwanese multiculturalism

The potentially essentialist, oppressive function of multiculturalism has been analysed by various scholars in the West (May 2011; McLaren 1995; Steinberg and Kincheloe 2001). In the realm of academia, multiculturalism is criticised as a form of cultural relativism adopting an essentialist, ahistorical perspective toward social identity when it stresses recognition and celebration of differences among various collective groups (McLaren 1995, 98). Critics argue that this view of culture fails to capture the fluid, fluctuating and multi-layered nature of identity and that a related essentialisation and romanticisation of minorities leads to policies that compartmentalise and entrap oppressed individuals (May and Sleeter 2010, 5). In response to this criticism, theorists insist on the need to realise how multicultural rhetoric may be used to legitimate certain forms of hegemony, and therefore to pay due attention to the ways in which particular interpretations of multiculturalism may in some respects reflect or reinforce the asymmetrical power structure within society (May 2009).

Whereas such work draws primarily on the experiences of Western societies, particularly in North America, the Taiwanese case displays a somewhat different form of multiculturalism. Liu and Lin have criticised the ‘empty rhetoric’ of multiculturalism in Taiwan (Liu and Lin 2011, 167). Writing in 2011, they expressed concern over the lack of consensus among various stakeholders, including politicians, governmental bodies, social activists, public media, and academics, over what ‘multiculturalism’ actually means. They accused some politicians of invoking multiculturalism as an economic strategy, while some social activists refer to it as a normative discourse for their political agenda. For some policymakers, it signifies a national ideology with national boundaries, and to others, it means a transnational concept, which is built on a concept of global citizenship. Manipulation by various social actors has led to a fragmented vision of multiculturalism, without careful interrogation of the power structure beneath the concept.

Nonetheless, there seems to be an emerging consensus among scholars of Taiwanese politics that Taiwanese multiculturalism in recent years has increasingly embodied a pan-ethnic, post-national vision (Corcuff 2002; Tanoue 2012; Wu 2012). In other words, the idea of multiculturalism, which envisages the integration of various ethnic groups, signifies the shift from blood-based nationhood to commitment-based nationhood. Wu Rwei-Ren goes further and argues that the development of Taiwan’s nationalism is shifting towards a notion of civic nationalism increasingly intertwined with the idea of global citizenship (Wu 2012). Under this form of nationalism, Taiwanese citizens’ status is based on their political actions and commitments while their public interests are linked with international interests, founded on universal values of human rights.

However, a review of previous literature analysing official discourse on new immigrants suggests a more complex reality. Lan’s study, showing how the government attempts to appropriate new immigrants’ transnational ties to bolster consciousness of Taiwanese nationhood at home and recognition of its status overseas, raises questions concerning the selective nature of Taiwanese nationhood (Lan 2019). Moves towards the provision of new immigrant languages in the formal curriculum suggest that the politicisation of new immigrants has now entered the realm of language-in-education policy making. But what form has this politicisation taken, and what does it imply about the development of Taiwanese multiculturalism? How do new immigrants fit into the post-national vision of Taiwanese multiculturalism? This study aims to answer these questions by scrutinising the formal curricular discourse and relevant teaching materials.

Curricular discourse on new immigrants

National agenda embedded in the curricular guidelines

The curricular guidelines for new immigrants’ language instruction imply that the official intention behind the teaching of new immigrants’ languages is two-fold: (1) to establish an inclusive society in ‘Multicultural Taiwan’, where various Southeast Asian languages are spoken by ethnically and culturally diverse citizens, and (2) to enhance Taiwan’s external development and cooperation with ASEAN countries.

The guidelines describe new immigrants as important members of the ‘multilingual, multi-ethnic, and multicultural society of Taiwan’ (MOE 2018, 1). This narrative implies that the MOE conceives of them as Taiwanese citizens and understands promoting the teaching of their languages as conducive to establishing a multicultural society where linguistic diversity is one facet of a cultural diversity that encompasses influences from Southeast Asia. Education in new immigrant languages is expected to enrich students’ cultural experience, as well as to enhance understanding of different cultures and promote a ‘mutually beneficial’ society in Taiwan (MOE 2018, 1). The MOE, at least judging by its curricular guidelines, seems eager to promote an image of a tolerant, immigrant-friendly administration by placing new immigrant languages under the subject of ‘native languages’ along with Hoklo, Hakka, and Indigenous languages. The fact that the new immigrant languages are referred to as ‘native languages of new immigrants’ instead of ‘Southeast Asian languages’ suggests official acknowledgement of the symbolic value these languages possess for reinforcing a sense of multicultural nationhood.

At the same time, the guidelines emphasise the instrumental function of new immigrant languages for promoting Taiwan’s competitiveness in the global market, reflecting a discourse that is even more prominent with respect to English language education. The guidelines interpret the cultures and languages of new immigrants as useful educational resources for developing international cooperation. Regarding them as conducive to nurturing students with a better understanding of Southeast Asian countries, the MOE stresses the role of new immigrant languages in enhancing Taiwan’s trade and cooperation with ASEAN countries. The guidelines stipulate basic skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing as essential to reaching the educational aims of the course, which envisage cultivating students’ ‘skill to interact with people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds’ (MOE 2018, 5). The guidelines thus emphasise the diplomatic and economic instrumentality of new immigrant languages as well as their value in reinforcing a multicultural nation-building agenda.

Languages and cultures of new immigrants in the teacher’s manuals

As mentioned earlier in this paper, the teacher’s manuals are designed to guide local teachers by providing specific pedagogical instructions in accordance with the curricular guidelines. In order to fully grasp the construction of discourse concerning new immigrants in these manuals, it is important not only to understand the official agenda as stated in curricular guidelines but also to take account of the guidance provided in officially approved teaching materials.

To guide the process of teaching material development the guidelines identify nine types of ‘competencies’ (suyang) students are expected to cultivate (Table 1). These include abilities and attitudes such as literacy, critical thinking, media literacy, communication skills, participatory attitudes, moral practices, civic consciousness and multicultural and international understanding. Besides the competencies, the guidelines set ‘cross-cultural ability’, learning attitude, and basic literacy as three related skills for the students to acquire, with ‘cross-cultural ability’ defined as ‘a skill to interact with people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds’ (MOE 2018, 5).

Table 1. Contents of the competencies in new immigrants’ language curriculum.

Competencies	Specific contents
Physical and mental wellness and self-advancement	Understand the languages and cultures of new immigrants and be willing to learn their languages
Logical thinking and problem-solving	Understand how their cultures condition new immigrants’ handling of their daily affairs
Planning, execution, innovation, and adaptation	Ability to use the language of new immigrants in different situations, so as to enrich the cultural experience and enhance flexibility and adaptability
Semiotics and expression	Possess basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in the languages, and be able to conduct a simple conversation
Information and technology literacy and media literacy	Ability to use various technologies, information and media to learn the languages and cultures of new immigrants
Artistic appreciation and aesthetic literacy	Willingness to experience the art of living and appreciation for the cultural artistry of new immigrants
Moral praxis and citizenship	Understand the lifestyles of new immigrants and become aware of the problems new immigrants face
Interpersonal relationships and teamwork	Willingness to build friendships with people of different cultural backgrounds
Cultural and global understanding	Understand the cultural characteristics of new immigrants, enhance cultural richness and cultivate an international perspective

Note: Adapted from: Curriculum Guidelines of 12- Year Basic Education: New Immigrants’ Languages by Ministry of Education, 2018. Copyright 2018 by MOE. Translated by Haruna Kasai.

In line with the stated need to strengthen students’ communication skills and participatory attitudes, the manual emphasises the instrumental value of the languages for interacting with classmates and family members. The manuals promote the usage of the target language in classroom instruction and encourage new immigrant students to speak their languages at home. At the same time, language acquisition is promoted as a means of expanding students’ international perspectives and enabling them to better interact with people from Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, communication skills are conceptualised as necessary for building healthy interpersonal relationships, as a prerequisite for both social participation in multicultural Taiwan and forging closer connections with Southeast Asian countries.

Although the teachers’ manuals stipulate language acquisition as the predominant focus of the lesson, there are occasional short descriptions of the socio-cultural context of the relevant Southeast Asian country for teachers to share with students depending on the progress of the lessons. Vocabulary related to the school campus, stationery for classroom use, school uniforms, traditional food, and interaction with families and relatives are listed as topics for the first and second-grade lessons, and each time cultural practices are introduced, the manuals urge the teachers to discuss the differences and similarities between the target country and Taiwan. For instance, the very first chapter of the first-grade manuals features a short text about students’ uniforms, which is followed by a reminder to draw comparisons with the case of Taiwan. The manual guides teachers to contrast and compare them with Taiwan to cultivate an understanding of cultural differences between ‘our country’ (woguo) – Taiwan – and new immigrants’ native countries. The intention here is to strengthen students’ ‘international perspective’, cultivate their ‘multicultural and international understanding’ and nurture ‘cross-cultural ability’. However, the recommended approach implies a dichotomy between Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries, with new immigrants’ cultures portrayed as inherently ‘foreign’. By contrast, in other sections of the manuals, new immigrants are recognised as citizens of Taiwan. For instance, the manual highlights the need to nurture students who ‘understand the lifestyle of new immigrants and are aware of the problems new immigrants face’ (MOE 2018, 3) as a means of enhancing their civic awareness. However, despite the explicit acknowledgement of new immigrants’ often difficult everyday experiences in Taiwanese society, the manuals give little attention to the multi-layered, cross-border quality of their experience. The only ‘experiences’ of new immigrants referenced in the manuals relate to their ‘native’ cultural characteristics and traits, such as traditional clothing and sports. The government’s aspiration to portray cultural diversity within Taiwan overrides attention to the actual experiences of new immigrants and their children, implicitly compartmentalising and stereotyping them based on their country of origin. In other words, while the guidelines and the manuals assume the second-generation Southeast Asian immigrants to be the majority of the students taking the courses, they disregard the fact that many of these children have been born and raised in Taiwan.

Overall, the national agenda of strengthening public awareness of Taiwan’s multi-ethnic society and securing human resources capable of building meaningful relationships with ASEAN countries has become the cornerstone of curriculum implementation. New immigrants’ languages and cultural experiences are seen as multicultural assets for Taiwan to advance its economic interests in Southeast Asian countries, building educational resources for this purpose by cultivating various ‘competencies’ and meeting educational goals. As a result, the formal curriculum ends up emphasising new immigrants’ language acquisition as a medium of communication at home and in school and portrays Southeast Asian languages and cultures somewhat contradictorily as both inherently foreign and symbolic of Taiwanese multiculturalism.

New immigrants imagined in the formal curriculum

From the above analysis of the official interpretation of languages and cultural experiences of new immigrants, a particular image of new immigrants emerges. They are Taiwan residents, who speak one of the Southeast Asian languages at home and have first-hand experience and knowledge about their ‘native country’. They represent the ‘diverse Taiwanese citizens’, and at the same time, are perceived as a cultural-linguistic Other.

The guidelines compartmentalise new immigrants into essentialised, romanticised cultural stereotypes, erasing or denying diversity within the societies of Southeast Asia. In the process of appropriating their languages and cultures for cultivating students’ ‘international understanding’, the guidelines emphasise the essentialist, exotic, distinct national image of their ‘native country’.

Testimony by one Malay immigrant teacher exemplifies this point. In further research related to this study, fieldwork was conducted to engage with the local immigrant teachers. A Malay teacher, who participated in the case study, pointed out the biased portrayal of Malaysia’s demography in the textbooks. She explained that although Malaysia is a multicultural society, composed of Malayan Malaysians, Chinese Malaysians, Indian Malaysians, and various Indigenous tribes, the teaching materials for Malay instruction only highlight Malayan Malaysians and Indian Malaysians while disregarding the Chinese Malaysians and the Indigenous Malaysians.

Arguably this partial portrayal of Malaysian society represents one of the consequences of using language education to highlight the peculiarity of Taiwanese nationhood. In constructing Taiwan’s distinctive nationhood in terms of ethnic diversity, the Taiwanese government has appropriated Indigenous peoples in Taiwan to legitimise their claim for Taiwanese multiculturalism (Friedman 2018). In other words, the lack of representation of the Indigenous Malaysians may be due to the effort to emphasise the difference between multiculturalism in Malaysia and Taiwan. On the other hand, the case of the Chinese Malaysians may be intertwined with the political tension between Taiwan and China. Ethnic Han identity has been a sensitive topic in official discourse as it has often been taken to denote ties with China, and is an attribute of Taiwan’s demographic majority. It is precisely this Chinese ethnic dominance and its presumed implications for national identity that the ideology of Taiwanese multiculturalism seeks to challenge. This accounts for the fact that ethnically Chinese new immigrants are entirely absent from the curricular portrayal of this group, despite the fact that they actually constitute a very large proportion of them. Representation of new immigrants instead reflects ethnoculturally essentialist ideas about culture and nationality in the countries of Southeast Asia, with each country portrayed in such a way as to highlight its cultural and linguistic distance from Chinese ethnolinguistic attributes.

Furthermore, the curricular discourse, which interprets new immigrants’ languages as a beneficial communication medium for forging a diplomatic connection with Southeast Asian countries ignores the fact that, in many new immigrant households, usage of Southeast Asian languages has been discouraged by Taiwanese in-laws. As previous studies (Cheng 2013; Wu 2019) illustrate, many new immigrants, who have faced discrimination and marginalisation at the hands of their Taiwanese in-law families due to their ethnic and linguistic background, choose to abandon their ties with Southeast Asia to advance their position within the Taiwanese community. Mandarin and Hoklo have been preferred over Southeast Asian languages since they are much more valuable in educational competition and social and economic mobility.

A Burmese woman, another participant in the field study, expressed her bitter feelings about being regarded as a ‘Chinese’ in Burma and as a ‘Burmese’ in Taiwan. Growing up as an ethnic Han in Burma in the 1980s, she faced anti-Chinese sentiment in the local Burmese society as well as deprivation of opportunities for education following the 1988 uprising. She relied on her ethnic-Han identity to learn Mandarin and move to Taiwan to pursue a better quality of life. In her mind, the Burmese language is useless for the pursuit of mobility since it has ‘no economic or social value’, especially in everyday life in Taiwan. This testimony illustrates a complexity and fluidity of cultural identity that is generally downplayed or ignored in the national discourse on multiculturalism in Taiwan. The curricular discourse, which reduces the instrumental value of new immigrants’ languages to their utility in forging connections with one of the seven Southeast Asian countries, uncritically celebrates a stereotyped vision of their cultural heritage as social capital, ignoring the complexity of many immigrants’ identities.

Therefore, it is not surprising if many second-generation Southeast Asian immigrants do not conceive of Southeast Asian countries as their ‘native’ countries. Even those who try to maintain their cultural heritage have learned to transform their customs to make them more acceptable in Taiwanese society. The Burmese Water Festival held in the ‘Burma Town’ of New Taipei City is one example of this phenomenon. The experience of adjusting to the life of Taiwan while seeking (selectively) to maintain transnational ties is more representative of the experience of new immigrants.

What this implies is that the provision of instruction in new immigrant languages is largely just another symbolic gesture aimed at reinforcing the imaginary of multicultural nationhood by incorporating new immigrants’ languages into the catalogue of Taiwanese linguistic diversity.

The implications of Taiwan’s curricular discourse on new immigrants

As Klerides argues in his study of national identity mobilisation, ‘identities are not essentialist but products of multimodal discourse, inherently mobile and subject to translations and metamorphoses’ (Klerides 2009, 451). Official discourse on cultural minorities tends to reflect the complex power structures of today’s world. By focusing on the case of Taiwanese language education, this study attempts to ‘read the globe’ (Cowen 2017) by illuminating the ‘complex causality’ (Schriewer 2021) that leads to the appropriation of cross-national individuals for national agendas. Construction of discourse relating to new immigrants’ language education is a result of interrelated social and political phenomena, including a deterioration of the cross-strait relationship, hierarchical cross-national economic relationships, and women’s advancement in Taiwan where patriarchal norms and neo-eugenicist attitudes remain relatively entrenched.

Rappleye and Schriewer have pointed out the need for comparative educationalists to explore alternative worldviews buried by dominant historical discourse and deconstruct that discourse by expanding the scope of causality (Rappleye 2019, 7; Schriewer 2021). Cowen also stresses the need to define and redefine ‘the political, sociological, and economic world – notably the international or transnational world – into what is seen and what is not seen; what will be taken as important and what may not even be noticed’ (Cowen 2017, 13–14), calling for efforts to illuminate the complexity of international power structures.

The findings from this study suggest that behind Taiwan’s parallel agendas of promoting multicultural ideology domestically and building international ties with Southeast Asian countries lies a larger nation-building project involving resistance to China. The partial representation of new immigrants, which emphasises their Southeast Asian roots and disregards their ethnic and ancestral ties to China, implies that curricular discourse on new immigrants is constructed primarily with the aim of attenuating the Han Chinese element in Taiwanese nationhood. At the same time, by claiming that Southeast Asian countries are important partners in Taiwan’s economic development, the formal curriculum highlights the instrumental value of connections with this region for reducing Taiwanese economic dependence on China. In fact, the provision of education in new immigrants’ languages is perhaps best understood in relation to the ‘New Southbound policy’, an investment drive aimed at expanding Taiwan’s economic ties to ASEAN.

The ambiguous portrayal of new immigrants as both native and foreign to Taiwan illustrates the politicisation of both the symbolic and instrumental aspects of their languages. The political aim of distancing Taiwan from China, both economically and ideologically, shapes the symbolic and instrumental value attached to new immigrants’ languages, and this seems to be the primary motivation for their inclusion in the formal curriculum.

This further challenges Chen’s framework for understanding the development of language-in-education policy in Taiwan, which posits ‘two polar positions’: one pushing towards internationalisation and the other towards nativisation, or ‘de-Chinisation’ (Chen 2006). This analysis suggests that a key role envisaged for instruction in new immigrants’ languages is to symbolically distinguish Taiwan from China, rather than primarily to promote either internationalisation or nativisation. This aspect of language education is thus still highly politicised and symbolically appropriated for nation-building and diplomatic purposes, despite signs of movement towards a more pragmatic public discourse regarding other aspects of native language education in Taiwan (e.g. relating to Hakka, Hoklo or Indigenous languages) (Dupré 2016). While policymakers have become more careful about politicising and appropriating Indigenous languages for nation-building purposes, they seem less hesitant with regard to new immigrants’ languages. This may be due to a lingering social perception of new immigrants as ‘inferior others’ in terms of ethnicity, gender, and class.

As a part of the international phenomenon of feminised migration, new immigrants in Taiwan are also subject to cross-national hierarchical relationships related to globalised capitalism. Feminised migration refers to the worldwide phenomenon whereby women rely on their gendered identity and roles to migrate from a third-world country to a developed country to secure enhanced socioeconomic status. Taiwan’s rapid economic growth up to the 1990s made it an ideal destination for women in Asia who were seeking a better lifestyle. Particularly in Taiwan, where patriarchal social norms continue to prevail, the demand for immigrant women to perform domestic housework increased as Taiwanese women advanced in the economic and political sectors. As a result, many women from Southeast Asia migrated to Taiwan as maids or brides from the 1970s onwards to fulfil traditional gender roles. However, neo-eugenicist discourses in Taiwanese society have problematised and politicised their role as mothers of future Taiwanese citizens, constraining their identity negotiation in everyday life. The new provision of education in new immigrants’ languages is another instance of their politicisation. Their ethnocultural ties with multiple countries make them convenient instruments for the authorities to justify and project a multicultural agenda, but this process can involve simultaneously appropriating and marginalising them and their cultures.

The implicit representation of Southeast Asian immigrants as ethno-linguistically distinct reflects a continuing tendency to see nationality as a matter of neat ethnic stereotypes. It is often argued that Taiwan’s nationalism has shifted from the traditional idea of blood-based nationhood to a more civic form of commitment-based nationhood, as awareness of social diversity has increased (Wu 2012). However, as this analysis suggests, underneath the discourse of Taiwanese multiculturalism there sometimes still lies a continuing view of nationhood as founded on an essentially ethnocultural core. In certain instances, Taiwanese multicultural ideology may therefore reinforce cultural essentialism, confining diverse citizens with multiple, layered identities into neatly-defined and exclusive cultural categories. Moreover, due to its politically correct aura, multicultural ideology may actually veil the imbalanced nature of the power structure in Taiwanese society, where a patriarchal worldview continues to prevail despite claims for women’s advancement. The inclusion of new immigrants’ languages in the formal curriculum thus serves in part to legitimate government claims to be fostering an immigrant-friendly environment, in spite of the limited space that is actually given to new immigrants themselves to negotiate or express their often complex identities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP21J21383.

Notes on contributors

Haruna Kasai

Haruna Kasai is a PhD candidate in Comparative and International Educational Studies at Kyushu University, Japan. She has been awarded a JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists for her ongoing research on the political implications of language education in Taiwan. Her research interests include identity politics, language-in-education policies and practices, politics of language, multiculturalism and multilingualism.

Notes

1 Taiwanese, also known as Hoklo, Minnanese, or Southern Min, is spoken by a majority of Taiwanese citizens who are Han Chinese group originally from Fujian province in Southern China. They arrived in Taiwan as an agricultural labour force during the Dutch colonial era and continued to migrate during Qing rule when Taiwan was viewed as a part of Fujian province (Chen 2006).

2 Hakka is spoken by the ethnic group of the same name, another sub-division of the Han grouping. The group is composed of Han Chinese who are originally from Guangzhou province in China. Hakka migrated to Taiwan during the Dutch colonial and Qing periods with other ethnic Han groups (Chen 2006). However, by comparison with that of the Hoklo, Hakka immigration was considerably smaller in scale.

3 Indigenous languages are languages of Aboriginal peoples in Taiwan with Austronesian linguistic, cultural, and ethnic roots. Although there has been controversy over the terminology, whether to use ‘Aborigines’ or ‘Indigenous’, this paper will use the ‘Indigenous’ (with the capital case I) to refer to their peoples and cultures, as the term is recognised by the Council of Indigenous Peoples and also to distinguish Indigenous (capital case form), which denotes a sense of belonging to ethnic and cultural identity from the idea of indigenous (lowercase form), which connotes nativeness to Taiwanese island.

4 Nativisation refers to a social and political movement in the 1990s, which demanded more locally-oriented nation-building centred around the island of Taiwan, instead of the prior mainland-oriented Chinese nationalism.