Globalizing Japan as Destination for the Young and Skilled: A Place to Settle Down or One Stop on the Career Ladder?

• In Event: Negotiating Hopes of Middle Class Migrants: Migration Flows to and from Japan

Abstract

With Japan opening up and trying to globalize from within, working visa for the skilled is more easily granted and statistics illustrate rising numbers of foreign professionals. This paper focusses on the recent phenomenon of the ‘mobile skilled’ professionals of non-Asian background in Japan, suggesting that their first and foremost reason to come is not the career. Still, these foreigners make the efforts to find jobs that have meaning to them. Over time, they are increasingly found to consider and negotiate the impacts their place of living and role in the company has on their eventual career progression.
The study is located within mobility and migration studies and is based on qualitative fieldwork in Tokyo. Including informants of different cultural, national, ethnic and industry background allows the study to identify the diversity among these group of foreigners but also to reveal some common trends concerning future plans and career considerations. Using lifestyle migration and cosmopolitanism as theoretical framework, the paper argues that a journey that starts out from cultural interest is gradually transforming into a lifestyle shaped by more serious career and mobility considerations. While this phenomenon has found some recognition among scholars specialized on mobile professionals in ‘Western’ countries, evidence from those in Japan offers new insights for mobility studies and has important implications for the firms where these mobile people are employed.

Author

• Helena Hof, Waseda University