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Guest worker programs entail an intrinsic tension between control over workers' mobility and workers' agency. By drawing on the qualitative data from Chinese construction workers in Japan's Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), I illuminate the dialectical nature of the tension between control and agency. My findings suggest that labor recruiters and employers implement labor control, but their practices have the opposite effect of pressing workers to abscond or to do irregular jobs. Staying in the program is not an outcome of effective control, but a response to circumstances wherein revisions to Japan's immigration policy bring rewards while China's surveillance policies incur potential punishments. The control-agency dialectic suggests that the regulative focus should be shifted from workers to employers and recruiters. Incorporating approaches of spatiotemporality and relationality, I analyze how workers sustain relations with various actors through three interconnected temporal stages, and how the relational dynamics shape workers' varied mobility choices. Two features of the construction industry shape workers' circumstances and occasionally facilitate their mobility: the stratification of the labor force according to legal status and the subcontract system. The paper thus highlights the need to contextualise labor agency in changing state policies, relations with co-ethnics, and industry-specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how material-based and identity-based concerns influence views on immigration in Japan. Our analysis, based on in-depth interviews with 28 local residents and public and policy opinion leaders conducted in 2015 in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, found widespread opposition to immigration with the exception of the immigration of care workers. General opposition to immigration stemmed from identity-based concerns, while openness to and support for the immigration of care workers was related to material-based concerns. Our findings suggest that while the identities approach to understanding anti-immigration sentiment has explanatory power in Japan, material-based concerns can, when sufficiently strong, override identity-based concerns in a phenomenon we call 'pragmatic divergence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States increasingly engage with diasporas. While diasporic ties are often sought in the name of shared culture or ancestry, such ties are selective and variable in reality, shaped by specific geopolitical contexts. In this paper, I examine why states engage with various diaspora communities differently by looking at the case of Japan. The Japanese state has recently rekindled its interest in cultivating ties with later-generation Japanese descendants abroad, collectively known as Nikkeijin. Its policies target Latin America, focusing less on Nikkeijin in other regions, including those who 'return' to Japan. The selective diaspora engagement, I argue, is embedded in the duality of diaspora as both insiders and outsiders. I analyse how such a diasporic population –Nikkeijin– came about out of Japan's century-long diaspora engagement through emigration, diaspora conventions, and return-migration, and why it matters to Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates Japan's multicultural policy, introduced as an extension of the internationalisation scheme under the banner of tabunka kyōsei (multicultural coexistence). I first review the framework of tabunka kyōsei as it is expressed in the policy documents, highlighting its apolitical ideas of coexistence, and then explore its local reception, impact and practice, drawing from the narratives of people involved in multicultural programmes. The delivery of Japanese language classes by volunteers in the Aichi Prefecture is used as a case study. The participants' accounts reveal that the multicultural policy is evaluated by the public as poor, and its intent is questioned. For volunteers, the framework has had both positive and negative impacts on the work they perform. Their practices, although limited and localised, demonstrate independent engagement with the local authorities and expose the current multicultural framework as both ambiguous and ambivalent in its concern for the social and political rights of migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Expanding international education and economic globalisation have changed both the make-up of international labour migrants and the patterns of immigrant economic adaptation. Chinese student migrants' employment experiences and economic mobility in Japan suggest that an immigrant occupational niche has emerged among Japanese firms characterised by a set of corporate positions that specifically deal with businesses in China. These firms preferentially recruit Chinese student migrants to fill these positions. This paper discusses the mechanisms that shape such an immigrant occupational niche and the opportunities and constraints presented to Chinese students in Japan. It discusses the paradoxical effects the existence of an occupational niche has on Chinese students, and argues that it provides a pathway for immigrants to enter a previously inaccessible labour market. However, the existence of an immigrant occupational niche itself is a product of prevailing institutional, structural and cultural barriers in the host society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of Migration Studies, understandings of national attachment and nationalism are often located at the individual and collective boundaries of difference between migrant groups and a host, national Other. Such studies deny the extent to which the existence of differences within migrant groups may reflect the cultural complexity and specificity of particular nationalisms. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Brazilian nationals living in Japan, this paper explores these differences through the lenses of personhood, national ideology and social relationships. Through their engagement with the Brazilian ideals of 'person' and 'individual', I demonstrate the extent to which such people embody a nationally constituted 'double code' of being open and yet closed to the values, relations and substances of Other Brazilians. By considering the significance of calor humano (human warmth) and saudades (yearning, homesickness) in people's lives in Japan, this article sheds fresh light on the links that exist between ideals of personhood, national ideology and contemporary processes of movement and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of Latin American immigrants in Japan to date have focused on Nikkei (of Japanese ancestry) from Brazil and Peru, considering their accommodation to Japanese society as a group with ethnic ties to Japan. In the last few years, however, Latin Americans of diverse backgrounds from countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Colombia have also migrated and settled in urban areas throughout Japan. These immigrants find few avenues to organise themselves or to integrate with the population at large. The Ministry of Justice handles the legislation and enforcement of immigration laws but provides limited social services and information. A handful of non-government associations operate for the benefit of all immigrants but their reach and scope are limited due to lack of human and economic resources. Social discrimination and an increasingly tight labour market complicate this situation. In this paper, I discuss the formal and informal networks that Latin American immigrants develop to overcome these obstacles to accommodate to their host society. I argue that the social and cultural negotiations that facilitate the functioning of these networks contribute to the creation of a pan-national Latin/o American culture in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more governments implement skill-based migration policies, understanding how policymakers, employers and migrants evaluate and interpret skills is of great importance. Based on a study of Taiwanese white-collar migrant workers in Japan, this article treats skills as socially constructed and offers an opportunity to investigate how skill is experienced across borders. This article makes contribution to skilled migration research by investigating the social contexts in which skills are categorised, evaluated, and developed, and how such experiences feed into migration decisions and adaptation outcomes. To many Taiwanese college-educated migrants, coming to work in Japan is a first step in being recognized as 'global talent'. The initial successful migration outcome fails, however, to retain these new arrivals to corporate Japan. Taiwanese migrant professionals usually do not aspire to develop the firm-specific skills and in-house careers that Japanese-style training regimes offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with demographic as well as economic changes, Germany and Japan have liberalised immigration controls for skilled migrants, set targets for foreign student enrolments in university, and introduced visa categories to enable foreign graduates to enter their labour markets. Yet a relatively modest share of foreign graduates actually receives jobs appropriate to their skill-level and remain in these labour markets. In this article, we focus on organisational recruitment and employment practices, especially those related to skill formation and the structuring of careers, as factors affecting the remain rates of foreign graduates. Our analysis shows that while obtaining the same educational credentials as native students, foreign graduates are disadvantaged because the employment systems of the host countries operate according to the logic of national labour markets, entailing institutionally and culturally specific skill expectations as well as formation processes. Consequently, foreign graduates either fail to enter the market, or are placed in lower or niche categories in a differentiated labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Japan has long been perceived as a country with restrictive immigration policies, it has been rapidly widening its immigration gates through various policy reforms in the past decade. The most prominent policy shift in Japan took place in 2018 when the government decided to officially open its labour market to migrants who work in 14 occupational sectors, including agriculture, elder care and construction, which used to be considered 'unskilled' and 'semi-skilled' in previous migration schemes. This study analyses how the major shifts in Japan's migration policies have been introduced through the redefinition of 'skills' and 'skilled migrants'. In doing so, it integrates the scholarly debates on immigration policymaking in Japan and the literature on the conceptualisation of skills. By reviewing the development of skilled migration policies and some impactful discourses driven by global, national and regional forces, this study argues that the ambiguous nature of 'skills' and the multi-level merits as outcomes have facilitated the major policy transformation in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the manner in which labour market flexibilisation is linked to the incorporation of Brazilian immigrants and their prospects for upward mobility in Japan. Although earlier studies have documented these relationships in North America and Europe, little is known about the socio-economic circumstances and recent changes in institutional settings in several Asian countries that currently accept a large number of immigrants. The results of this study indicate that the human and social capital of Brazilian immigrants has played a minor role in helping them to obtain standard employment. The highly regulated labour market in Japan has hindered the efforts of Brazilian immigrants to gain access to ‘good’ jobs with stable employment prospects, regardless of the degree of human and social capital that is possessed by individual immigrants. In addition, the recent increase in labour market flexibility has rendered it exponentially more difficult for Brazilian immigrants to enter the core employment sector. These institutional conditions for Brazilian immigrants have shaped the mechanisms of their integration and thereby prevented them from achieving upward mobility in Japanese society. These findings also reflect a lack of public debate and institutional support for the integration of immigrants into the wider Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a critical engagement with multiculturalism and pluralisation in Japan. While recent efforts to introduce multicultural policies such as ‘domestic internationalisation’ policies and the textbook reform movement are encouraging, I suggest that they are limited as they fail to address notions of exclusivity—those founded on the ideology of nihonjinron—that shape Japanese identity. Moreover, mere recognition of minority populations works to entrench rather than undermine ethno-cultural hierarchies. That is, if official engagements with the ethno-cultural ‘Other’ simply reinscribe notions of exclusivity, exceptionality and even superiority, the hierarchalised distinctions drawn between inside/outside and ‘Japanese’/foreigner will continue to persist and minority populations will be relegated permanently to a second-class citizenry. Therefore, this contribution turns to the recently opened Kyushu National Museum as a means of addressing multiculturalism and pluralisation in Japan. Themed ‘Ocean Ways, Asian Paths’, the Kyushu National Museum is actually a transnational museum as it focuses not on artefacts specific to Japanese identity, but instead on the variegated ways in which Japan is inextricably connected with and indebted to its Asian neighbours. Thus, by exhibiting the miscegenated character of Japan's national origins, the Kyushu National Museum stands as a concrete example whereby notions of exclusivity are refashioned into a more accommodating, and perhaps ethical, engagement with alterity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines whether support for multiculturalism is compatible with an ethno-national identity in Japan. Multiculturalism discourses have centred on the issue of how to treat cultural diversity within a society. In Japan, the concept of multiculturalism has become popular over the past decade. However, some researchers think that the Japanese maintain their privileged position by essentialising cultural differences in the name of multiculturalism. My study therefore investigates the relationship between ethno-national identity, the endorsement of multiculturalism and supportive attitudes toward the equal rights of ethnic minorities by employing Japanese data from an international public-opinion survey. It was found that ethno-national identity has positive effects on the endorsement of multiculturalism, while having negative effects on the endorsement of equal rights between ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities. This means that the Japanese do not regard multiculturalism as antithetical to the maintenance of ethnic homogeneity within a 'nation'; rather, the endorsement of multiculturalism stems from belief in the uniqueness of 'Japaneseness'. The theoretical and political implications of this study's results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With few exceptions, criminal entrepreneurship has been excluded from the broader scholarly and political debates over immigrant business. Drawing on the case of illicit drug markets in Japan, I argue that entrepreneurship has increased during the 1990s, though not to the extent claimed in the public debate over immigrant criminality. Immigrant entrepreneurship patterns in the illicit drug trade appear to be shaped by the resources of different migrant groups and, more importantly, by interrelated and shifting opportunity structures found in Japan's formal, informal and criminal domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]