Comparative Experiences of Indonesian Migrant Workers under Korea’s EPS and Japan’s TITP

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Indonesian migrant workers; Employment Permit System; Technical Intern Training Program; Strong Structuration Theory; Labor migration governance

Abstract

This paper compares the experiences of Indonesian migrant workers under South Korea’s Employment Permit System (EPS) and Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). Although EPS formally recognizes migrants as employees and TITP classifies them as trainees, both systems restrict mobility and reinforce precarious labor conditions. Drawing on four semi-structured interviews, the study applies Strong Structuration Theory to examine how external structures (laws, recruitment systems) and internal dispositions (expectations, obligations) shape worker agency. Findings show that while EPS reduces recruitment costs through a government-to-government model, bureaucratic barriers and employer consent still limit effective job mobility. TITP, by contrast, involves higher recruitment debt and dependency on supervising organizations, with training goals largely unmet. Across both regimes, workers navigated constraints through endurance, peer support, and selective resistance, but often resorted to compliant silence as a culturally shaped adaptation strategy.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - On Taihyeon
AU  - Kurniawaty Iskandar
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/16
TI  - Comparative Experiences of Indonesian Migrant Workers under Korea’s EPS and Japan’s TITP
BT  - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Strategic and Global Studies 2025 ((ICSGS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 243
EP  - 249
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_15
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-918-6_15
ID  - Taihyeon2025
ER  -