Japan and Global Migration brings together current research on foreign workers and households from a variety of different perspectives. This influx has had a substantial impact on Japan's economic, social and political landscape. The book asks three major questions: whether the recent wave of migration constitutes a new multicultural age challenging Japan's identity as homogenous society; how foreign workers confront the many difficulties living in Japan; how Japanese society is both resisting and accommodating the growing presence of foreign workers in their communities. This book contains the most up to date, original data on Japanese migrant culture available. Its inescapable conclusion is that the multicultural age has finally come to Japan; the question is whether foreign workers will be legally and socially assimilated into the fabric of Japanese society or will continue to be treated as temporary entrants with limited civil rights. The book is written with postgraduate students in Asian studies, Japanese studies, political science, sociology, anthropology and migration studies, in mind.
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.
Chinese students are the largest international student population in the world, and Japan attracts more of them than any other country. Since the mid-1980s when China opened the door to let private citizens out and Japan began to let more foreigners in, over 300 thousand Chinese have arrived in Japan as students. Student migrants are the most visible, controversial and active Chinese immigrants in Japan. The majority of them enter Japanâe(tm)s labour market and many have stayed on indefinitely. Based on the authorâe(tm)s original fieldwork data and government statistics, this book gives a comprehensive portrayal of an often neglected group of international migrants in a society that for decades has been considered a non-immigrant country. It introduces Chinese studentsâe(tm) diverse mobility trajectories, analyses their career patterns, describes their transnational living arrangements, and explores the mechanisms that give rise to their identity as 'new overseas Chinese'. This book contributes to our understanding of international migration and international education in an age of globalization. It points out that student migrants are key to the internationalization of Japanese society, and potentially in other countries where immigration is still considered a challenging reality. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Sociology and Labour Studies.
Japan faces multiple challenges in an era of population decline. Problems such as aging and a decreasing working-age population are expected to increase in severity, so tackling these challenges and examining the contributions that immigrants can make to society are vital for Japan's future. What contributions do foreign residents make to Japan, especially in the labor market? How do national and local government policies effect the settlement and permanent residence of foreign nationals? Are issues - such as social mobility and quality of life of foreigners, the fertility of foreign women, and long-term trends in naturalization - important? What support does Japan offer to immigrants? As a 'new' country of immigration, the need to examine such questions is growing. This book takes a geographical perspective in examining the necessity of immigration and how foreign residents are helping to alleviate the problem of population decline in contemporary Japan. *** "Over the last thirty years Japan has become a country of immigration again. While the literature on migration to Japan is growing, reliable data on the issue is still scarce.Yoshitaka Ishikawa's edited volume is a major contribution to filling this void. Overall the papers compiled in the book are a good introduction to the complex and multifaceted realities of newcomer migrants and shed light on some understudied quantitative and qualitative aspects of migration to Japan. --Pacific Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 4, December 2016 (Series: Japanese Society) [Subject: Sociology, Japanese Studies, Asian Studies, Migration Studies, Labor Studies]
Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.
In Help (Not) Wanted, Michael Strausz offers an original and provocative answer to a question that has long perplexed observers of Japan: Why has Japan's immigration policy remained so restrictive, especially in light of economic, demographic, and international political forces that are pushing Japan to admit more immigrants? Drawing upon insights developed during nearly two years of intensive field research in Japan, Strausz ultimately argues that Japan's immigration policy has remained restrictive for two reasons. First, Japan's labor-intensive businesses have failed to defeat anti-immigration forces within the Japanese state, particularly those in the Ministry of Justice and the Japanese Diet. Second, no influential strain of elite thought in postwar Japan exists to support the idea that significant numbers of foreign nationals have a legitimate claim to residency and citizenship. This book is particularly timely at a moment shaped by Brexit, the election of Trump, and the rise of anti-immigrant political parties and nativist rhetoric across the globe.
Faced with an aging workforce, Japanese firms are hiring foreign workers in ever-increasing numbers. In 1990 Japan's government began encouraging the migration of Nikkeijin (overseas Japanese) who are presumed to assimilate more easily than are foreign nationals without a Japanese connection. More than 250,000 Nikkeijin, mainly from Brazil, now work in Japan. The interactions between Nikkeijin and natives, says Joshua Hotaka Roth, play a significant role in the emergence of an increasingly multicultural Japan. He uses the experiences of Japanese Brazilians in Japan to illuminate the racial, cultural, linguistic, and other criteria groups use to distinguish themselves from one another. Roth's analysis is enriched by on-site observations at festivals, in factories, and in community centers, as well as by interviews with workers, managers, employment brokers, and government officials.Considered both "essentially Japanese" and "foreign," nikkeijin benefit from preferential immigration policy, yet face economic and political strictures that marginalize them socially and deny them membership in local communities. Although the literature on immigration tends to blame native blue-collar workers for tense relations with migrants, Roth makes a compelling case for a more complex definition of the relationships among class, nativism, and foreign labor. Brokered Homeland is enlivened by Roth's own experience: in Japan, he came to think of himself as nikkeijin, rather than as Japanese-American.
Spend time in New York City and, soon enough, you will encounter some of the Japanese nationals who live and work there—young English students, office workers, painters, and hairstylists. New York City, one of the world’s most vibrant and creative cities, is also home to one of the largest overseas Japanese populations in the world. Among them are artists and designers who produce cutting-edge work in fields such as design, fashion, music, and art. Part of the so-called “creative class” and a growing segment of the neoliberal economy, they are usually middle-class and college-educated. They move to New York for anywhere from a few years to several decades in the hope of realizing dreams and aspirations unavailable to them in Japan. Yet the creative careers they desire are competitive, and many end up working illegally in precarious, low paying jobs. Though they often migrate without fixed plans for return, nearly all eventually do, and their migrant trajectories are punctuated by visits home. Japanese New York offers an intimate, ethnographic portrait of these Japanese creative migrants living and working in NYC. At its heart is a universal question—how do adults reinvent their lives? In the absence of any material or social need, what makes it worthwhile for people to abandon middle-class comfort and home for an unfamiliar and insecure life? Author Olga Sooudi explores these questions in four different venues patronized by New York’s Japanese: a grocery store and restaurant, where hopeful migrants work part-time as they pursue their ambitions; a fashion designer’s atelier and an art gallery, both sites of migrant aspirations. As Sooudi’s migrant artists toil and network, biding time until they “make it” in their chosen industries, their optimism is complicated by the material and social limitations of their lives. The story of Japanese migrants in NYC is both a story about Japan and a way of examining Japan from beyond its borders. The Japanese presence abroad, a dynamic process involving the moving, settling, and return to Japan of people and their cultural products, is still underexplored. Sooudi’s work will help fill this lacuna and will contribute to international migration studies, to the study of contemporary Japanese culture and society, and to the study of Japanese youth, while shedding light on what it means to be a creative migrant worker in the global city today.
This book introduces Japan’s current policy initiatives directed at eldercare and international labor migration, and, wherever appropriate,it adds a comparative perspective from Germany. The book shows how eldercare is currently being organized and discusses integration policies for foreigners. It studies the policy-making process behind the system, and contextualizes the migration avenue within the strong roots of Japan’s eldercare in local communities and the non-preparedness of the nation to grant local citizenship to international newcomers. Through applying an approach of multi-level policy making, putting a strong focus on the local level and introducing new approaches, this book is of interest to policy makers and scholars in aging, migration, health care, and contemporary Japan.
Offers an in-depth ethnography of paradigm shifts in the lifestyles and values of youth in post-growth Japan. Urban Migrants in Rural Japan provides a fresh perspective on theoretical notions of rurality and emerging modes of working and living in post-growth Japan. By exploring narratives and trajectories of individuals who relocate from urban to rural areas and seek new modes of working and living, this multisited ethnography reveals the changing role of rurality, from postwar notions of a stagnant backwater to contemporary sites of experimentation. The individual cases presented in the book vividly illustrate changing lifestyles and perceptions of work. What emerges from Urban Migrants in Rural Japan is the emotionally fraught quest of many individuals for a personally fulfilling lifestyle and the conflicting neoliberal constraints many settlers face. In fact, flexibility often coincides with precarity and self-exploitation. Susanne Klien shows how mobility serves as a strategic mechanism for neophytes in rural Japan who hedge their bets; gain time; and seek assurance, inspiration, and courage to do (or further postpone doing) what they ultimately feel makes sense to them. “This book is a valuable contribution to knowledge about diversifying rural Japan and evokes reflection about the future of post-growth Japan. Klien’s study benefits from assiduous and long-term field research and insightful analysis. She excels at locating the specifics of the study in theoretical observations and concepts, thereby setting the work into a larger consideration of Japan’s paradigm shifts in lifestyle and values.” — Nancy Rosenberger, author of Gambling with Virtue: Japanese Women and the Search for Self in a Changing Nation
