Immigration integration at the local level: comparison between Japan and Germany.

Among various post-industrial economies, Japan is relatively new to the issues of immigration. Yet the country is rapidly catching up with Europeans, North Americans and others who have long struggled with the difficulties associated with immigration and immigrants. General attitude towards immigrants is adversarial, which is reflected in the restrictive immigration policy. Turning one?s eyes from state level to municipal level, however, administration in the area with higher proportion of foreign residents is keenly aware of the inadequacies of current immigration policy. Such local governments face difficulties that are not shared by other localities: for example, some municipalities find it a serious concern that children whose first language is not Japanese often have difficulties at school, then sometimes quit school, not being able to get jobs, literally dropping out of the social system, but such municipalities are limited in number. Furthermore, the central government maintains the stance that foreign citizens are not obligated to send their children to Japanese schools. Since many considers Japan as not a country of immigration without a question, governmental policies lack a notion that immigrants are also members of the society, assuming that they stay in Japan temporarily. Nevertheless, the number and proportion of foreign residents are increasing steadily, and European experiences clearly show that it is unrealistic to neglect immigrants? problems. This paper aims at analyzing the gap between the state level immigration policy and the difficulties that municipal governments tackle with. My focus is immigration in Japan, but I make comparison with German situation, in order to counter the claim that Japan as a nation state is uniquely homogenous and thus exclusion of immigrants is justified. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]