Ethnic Migration in Japan 1990-2018: Immigration, Repatriation, Consolidation?

• In Event: The Politics of Immigration Policy in East Asia

Abstract

What does Japan’s ethnic migration policy mean for Japan’s immigration regime? There are mythic notions of Japan’s ethnic homogeneity that suggest ethnic affinity and solidarity. A 1990 change in Japanese immigration law provides Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) up to the third generation a renewable visa that allows them to live and work in Japan. Some argue this was a government initiated defacto guestworker program to satisfy demands for cheap labor under the guise of a policy to facilitate “ethnic return” migration. Since 1990, some 300,000 Latin American Japanese descendants have emigrated to Japan. However, in the midst the 2008 World Financial crisis, the Japanese government announced the opportunity for paid voluntary repatriation of unemployed Latin American Nikkeijin workers on the condition that they not return to Japan on the same visa and some 20,000 accepted the offer. (Milly, 2014:173), In 2018, the Japanese government launched yet another program to attract Nikkeijin extending to the fourth generation but very much narrowed the criteria to include age parameters, Japanese language proficiency, contact with a relative or employer, and limited to a 5 year stay. Later that year, amidst reports of low birthrate, ageing population, and worker scarcity, the government announced the plan to attract some 500,000 unskilled foreign workers in targeted industries by 2025. This paper argues that ,despite a persistent rhetoric and practice where an “imagined deterritorialized nation state” (Tsuda, 2009:22,23,28) is invoked for political and economic reasons, these policy fluctuations suggest a move towards de-ethnicization (easing access for all immigrants) (Joppke, 2003:432) and opening of Japan’s immigration regime away from the traditional notions of a simultaneous Japanese nationality and citizenship.

Author

• Michael Orlando Sharpe, CUNY-York College