이주노동자문제와 동아시아 다층 거버넌스: 연성법 관점에 기반한 분석과 함의

It is widely asserted that East Asia should promote regional cooperation to effectively improve the problem of region-wide movement of migrant workers. This study focuses on the formulation and practice of soft law instruments and discusses how the regional multilevel governance has been operated in spite of the absence of hard law cooperation system. A close observation of the soft law instruments at the international, national, and local level provides following arguments. First, the regional offices of acknowledged international organizations have played a significant role in formulating and disseminating policy norms, standards, knowledge, and models. Second, Japan and Korea, principal receiving countries in the region, have taken a passive posture in the feedback of their practices of soft law. Third, different policy directions have emerged between the international initiatives and the national level practices. While the former mainly focuses on the realization of ‘Decent Work’ and ‘labor right’, the latter tend to stress the importance of ‘multicultural’ community-based support programme at the local level, which provide both opportunities and obstacles to improve the complex problem of foreign migrate workers.