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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]