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A Confucian Case for Equal Membership for Foreign Domestic Workers[Note 1. The earlier versions of this paper were presented in ...]
Author(s) -
Kim Sungmoon
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12539
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , politics , argument (complex analysis) , value (mathematics) , normative , economic justice , core (optical fiber) , democracy , sociology , liberal democracy , positive economics , political science , law , economics , mathematics , biochemistry , chemistry , materials science , composite material , statistics , geometry
Daniel A. Bell, a leading Confucian and communitarian political theorist, objects to equal membership to foreign domestic workers ( FDW s) in East Asia on two Confucianism‐inspired normative and practical grounds. Bell's core argument is twofold: first, that liberal‐democratic demand for equal membership, despite its good intention, is likely to backfire, driving the current and potential FDW s into a far worse economic situation and second, that in a Confucian culture what is important is not so much justice but family‐like affective relationships, which, in Bell's view, can be better fostered between employers and FDW s in the absence of equal membership. In this paper, I challenge Bell's two objections from a Confucian perspective by highlighting that the Confucian appreciates the value of equal membership both for intrinsic reasons, finding the unequal citizen status morally demeaning, as well as for instrumental reasons in terms of its contribution to one's moral self‐cultivation.