Bio Pei-Chia Lan is a world-renowned expert in the fields of sociology of gender, work, migration, and globalization. She serves as Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University and earned her PhD at Northwestern University in the United States (2000). Her PhD dissertation was published in book form as "Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan” (2006) which was awarded the Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association. Dr. Lan also earned her undergraduate and MA degrees at National Taiwan University and has received fellowships for research at the University of California at Berkeley, the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden in the Netherlands, New York University, and most recently Harvard University. She serves on the editorial boards of four academic journals.   Summary Professor Pei-Chia Lan of National Taiwan University spoke with EAI on her research titled “Negotiating Care Culture and Ethnic Difference: Recruitment and Training of Migrant Care Workers in Taiwan and Japan”, which discusses how cultural and political rhetoric shape the way migrant care workers from Southeast Asia are perceived in different East Asian communities. Professor Lan outlines the contrasting dichotomies in Japan and Taiwan shaping migrant care worker immigration schemes. Under the Taiwanese “Guest Worker” program, migrant care workers are placed within the household and act as familial surrogates. Yet, they are treated as disposable labor, lacking the protection of Taiwan’s labor standard laws and remaining ineligible for permanent residency.On the other hand, migrant care workers brought in under Japan’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) program are treated as a “professional others,” required to undergo a rigorous certification process and pass an exam. While these migrant care workers receive comparable salaries and working conditions with their Japanese equivalents, ethnic differences and Japanese cultural emphasis prevents migrants from playing the true role of a professional worker. Professor Lan recommends that legal reforms be made in Taiwan to cover migrant care workers under labor standard laws and recognize them as professionals, whereas Japan should relax its barriers to entry and make efforts to reduce cultural and ethnic biases. Professor Lan concludes that outsourcing labor does not reduce the quality of care and that multi-cultural exposure can expand on traditional cultural interactions, and highlights several lessons that Korea may draw on in the design of its own immigration and care worker policy.