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Japan and the UK are long-established countries of immigration which although having different histories both share experience as colonial powers which have shaped their somewhat hostile attitudes towards migration alongside a need for migrant labour and negative public attitudes towards migrants. This paper sets the context to the Special Issue of the same name. It examines the migration and diversification histories and scholarships of Japan and the UK identifying common themes as well as divergences noting the ongoing diversifications of populations in both countries albeit on different scales. It then examines the key features which shape processes underpinning the emergence of superdiversity: super-mobility, and the scale, speed and spread of diversification, arguing the need to think about such processes outside of UK and Europe and considering the ways in which shifting scholarly gaze of superdiversity researchers to Japan can address some of the critiques of its Western-centric bias. The paper then outlines four main themes in superdiversity research setting out how they are addressed in this special issue before describing the key contributions of the ten papers which form the content of the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan and the UK appear to have few commonalities in terms of their history of and approach to migration law and policy. However, strong similarities in their contemporary approaches can be detected. Migration sits at the very top of the national political agendas and both have undertaken successive, major policy reforms over the past decade. Both have governments publicly committed to policies to attract 'highly skilled' migrants, with a restrictive approach towards 'unskilled' migrants. This article draws out the similarities and differences of migration law and policy in Japan and the UK via their respective legislative structures and policy trajectories on highly skilled migration. The article argues that Japan and the UK promote a market-driven model which enables highly skilled migration to be 'sold' to publics believed to be hostile to increased migration. Yet, the rapid changes in policy and revising of applicable rules often prevents the successful recruitment of highly skilled migrants to both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the migration infrastructures and pathways through which migrants move into, through and out of irregular status in Japan and the UK and how these infrastructures uniquely shape their migrant experiences of irregularity at key stages of their migration projects. Our analysis brings together two bodies of migration scholarship, namely critical work on the social and legal production of illegality and the impact of legal violence on the lives of immigrants with precarious legal status, and on the role of migration infrastructures in shaping mobility pathways. Drawing upon in-depth qualitative interviews with irregular and precarious migrants in Japan and the UK collected over a ten-year period, this article develops a three-pronged analysis of the infrastructures of irregularity, focusing on infrastructures of entry, settlement and exit, casting a comparative light on the mechanisms that produce precarious and expendable migrant lives in relation to access to labour and labour conditions, access and quality of housing and law enforcement, and how migrants adapt, cope, resist or eventually are overpowered by them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deploys the lens of the race-migration nexus (Erel et al., Ethnic and Racial Studies 39:1339–1360, 2016) to compare the racialization of migrants in the UK and Japan. It draws on qualitative data on the experiences of Central-East European (CEE) migrants in the two countries to unpack how whiteness is constructed in relation to different histories and patterns of immigration in each national context. While CEE migrants in Japan benefit from being perceived as implicitly white and Western 'foreigners', their whiteness represents a form of enduring exclusion from the ethno-nationalist Japanese society. In the UK, changing political contexts and internal European hierarchies of whiteness contribute to CEE migrants' ambiguous position in an increasingly anti-migrant society. By comparing the mechanisms of racialization in each country through the analytics of visibility and exclusion, the article furthers ongoing debates about the intersections of race and migration. It furthermore extends the comparative analysis of whiteness to a non-Western setting, making a significant contribution to the study of local/global articulations of race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does increasing immigration affect natives' attitudes towards immigrants? A significant volume of research has been conducted in Western contexts to explore this question. However, we know little about whether findings observed in Western societies translate to non-Western contexts. At the same time, there is a paucity of research into whether increasing immigration exerts differential-effects among different groups of individuals. Using Japanese and British longitudinal data, this study firstly compares and contrasts how immigrant-share in an environment affects anti-immigrant sentiment in Japan and Great Britain. Secondly, it explores two potential drivers of heterogeneity in the impact of immigration across individuals: (a) perceived financial situation, and (b) views towards the role government should play in issues of support for the vulnerable. Applying fixed-effects panel data modelling, the results show increasing immigration harms attitudes towards immigrants. Furthermore, these negative effects are stronger for those who perceive their financial situation is worse, and among those who lean further to the left on the role of government. Interestingly, these results are highly similar in Japan and the UK. Thus, these findings support similar mechanisms of the group-threat theory operating among natives in two distinct contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]