Japanese Language Schools as Alternative Routes to the Labor Market in Japan

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 17. Schools and Education

Abstract

We argue that Japanese language schools in Japan are classified into high-level and low-level schools and that this difference forms two routes for immigrants to the labor market. Officially, international students enter the schools to prepare for entrance examinations of higher educational institutions such as four-year universities. However, many students are said to do part-time jobs to earn money. We argue that this homogeneous image of the schools is empirically incorrect. We collected data on Japanese language schools from a website of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, classified the schools into the two types, and analyzed differences between them. The followings are our major findings. First, East Asian students (other Asian students) tend to enter high-level schools (low-level schools). Second, graduates from high-level schools (low-level schools) tend to get enrolled in four-year universities and over (lower-level educational institutions). Combining these findings with a robust finding that education is strongly associated with occupations, we conjecture that there are two routes for immigrants to the labor market via Japanese language schools. On the first route, East Asian students enter high-level schools, get enrolled in four-year universities, and enter the core of the labor market. On the second route, other Asian students enter low-level schools, get enrolled in lower-level educational institutions, and enter the periphery of the labor market. Thus our study is the first step to untangle the complex relationship between ethnicity of international students, types of Japanese language schools, and segments of the labor market.

Authors

• Yoshimichi Sato, Tohoku University

• Zeyu Lyu, Tohoku University