The Education for Immigrant Children: A Comparative Policy Analysis of Japan and South Korea

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Politics and Policy Discourses for Education Justice in East Asia

Proposal

1. Objectives
With globalization of capital and population movements, migrant labors have led to the settlement of foreigners in many parts of the world. The wave of globalization has also brought ethnic diversity to two Eastern Asian countries, Japan and South Korea. These two nations have historically maintained relatively homogeneous societies with only one official language. However, in the recent years, the numbers of foreign nationals who have settled in the two countries have been increasing. Consequently, their school-aged children have been steadily increasing. While there are extent studies on immigrant children’s educational experiences, little has been done for systematic evaluations of countries’ national policies. This study aims to compare education policies for immigrant children in Japan and South Korea. It focuses primarily on primary and lower secondary education and explores similarities and differences in educational policy-making in these two nations.

2. Theoretical Framework
Previous studies identified that a crucial factor influencing the adaptation of immigrants as well as their children’s educational performance is the social context of receiving countries (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Positive societal attitudes and welcoming policies towards immigrants generate faster socioeconomic mobility and better integrated immigrant communities (Portes and MacLeod, 1996).
Against this backdrop, this study focuses on the government’s obligation to ensure the right to education for immigrant children, based on the framework developed by Tomaš Evski (2001). That framework defines the right to education in terms of four dimensions, namely how governments must make education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. Its application in the present study is intended to address the full range of policy responses to educational equity.
Availability: Do policies ensure education available to all children?
Accessibility: Do policies secure access to education for all children at compulsory school age?
Acceptability: Do policies ensure education is performed in an understandable manner for all children in terms of the language of instruction?
Adaptability: Do policies ensure the education system remains adaptable to individual needs?

3. Methods, Research Design, or Modes of Inquiry
Since the purpose of this study is to analyze and compare educational policies for immigrant children in Japan and South Korea, it employs a qualitative method. The study looks at laws, policies, government proposals, existing programs, evaluations, related research reports as well as relevant statistics. The guiding research questions are:
1. Are there any laws or policies affecting immigrant children in public education?
2. Are there any documented effects and/or existing evaluations of these laws and policies?

4. Results / Discussion
The study, based on document analysis of Japan and South Korean government policies for immigrant children, examines overall tendencies in regard to the four dimensions of the right to education for immigrant children: availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability. The results indicate that while South Korea takes proactive approaches to embracing multicultural discourse by officially setting goals to accommodate immigrant students’ linguistic and cultural diversity, Japan lags far behind in this domain (See Table 1).

Table 1 Four dimensions of the right to education
Availability Accessibility Acceptability Adaptability
Japan 〇 × × ×
S Korea 〇 〇 〇 〇

Until the mid-2000s, immigration policies in Japan and South Korea were almost identical, and policies in both nations protected against the perceived threats posed by immigration to ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Since then, however, South Korea has seen a significant shift in policy, and its government has moved toward a more liberal approach to immigration and multiculturalism. For instance, in recent years it has enacted several important laws such as the "Multicultural Families Support Act," which ensures immigrant children’s educational rights. Currently, several government ministries and agencies in the government are simultaneously implementing educational reforms and programs for immigrant children.
On the other hand, talk about multiculturalism and education for immigrant children has been all but absent in Japanese public discourse. In terms of Enski’s four dimensions, only availability -- the most basic condition to guarantee education to immigrant children -- appears to be generally adequate. Immigrant students in Japan can attend public schools and receive free education. However, under Japanese law, the foreign parents have no obligation to send their children to schools, nor do these schools have a duty to provide education to foreign children. The other three dimensions – accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability -- are evaluated as either uneven or non-existing.
As described above, the two nations are at the very different stages in immigrant children’s educational policy. The study, however, found one similarity in both nations’ policies: multiculturalism in policy making in Japan and Korea seems to have a strong tendency toward assimilationism. For South Korea, while the current policies assume government responsibility for ensuring quality education for immigrant children, they also characterize immigrants’ cultural differences as a problem that must be solved through language and culture learning. For Japan, the government’s interest in immigrant children’s education is limited to providing them with Japanese language education, with no mention of mother-tongue education – an approach which is far from embracing multiculturalism.

5. Significance and relevance to the field of Comparative and Intercultural Education
This study summarizes how Japan and South Korea are dealing with an important but sometimes overlooked aspect of the growing ethnic and cultural diversity in their societies. With fast-growing international communities in both countries, a debate on reforming and improving education policies for immigrants is imperative. Unfortunately, the study reveals that Japan is neglecting the basic welfare of its foreign-born children as a consequence of policies that fail to provide sufficient support to non-Japanese residents, therefore denying these children an appropriate education. With immigrants expected to make up an ever-greater percentage of Japan’s population in the near future, the results of this study have practical applications that can be shared with Japanese policymakers. It concludes that Japan should observe and analyze the successes and challenges of various multicultural policies and measures implemented by South Korea.

Author

• Ai Takeuchi, Kyoai Gakuen University