Beyond model workers: emerging labour bio-politics for decent work in Taiwanese screen industries

In response to the recent turn towards resistance in creative labour studies, this article illustrates how below-the-line workers in Taiwan’s screen production negotiate poor and often dangerous workplace conditions, through the lens of Foucauldian concepts of biopower and bio-politics. The Taiwanese workers are asserting their legal right to a proper working environment and reasonable working hours. They have challenged the control dispositifs embedded in Taiwan’s labour laws, employment contracts, and other normative structures on screen sets. Such resistance involves parrhesia (fearless speech). Crucially, broader reforms in labour laws and regulations have laid the groundwork for a shift in the truth regime governing screen production. Parrhesia contributes to the establishment of new norms.