Recent Policy Debates over Care-Work Migration to Japan

• In Event: Care Work Migration to Japan: Comparative Lessons and Domestic Realities

Abstract

Admitting foreign eldercare workers is one among a number of methods proposed for caring for Japan's seniors, who make up over 26% of the population. Despite an active public discussion of new policy proposals for the past year and half, it is still unclear whether this will result in new policies, in what form, and with what prerequisites for workers. These debates embody general themes in the literature on the international migration of health professionals, including the centrality of linguistic and cultural knowledge, the recognition of training completed in other countries, and deskilling. But they also reflect efforts to preserve Japan's current policy direction of encouraging migration by skilled professionals while prohibiting low-skilled workers.

Will foreign care workers be given the option of obtaining skilled professional status and encouraged to put down roots in Japan? Will they become a cadre of unskilled temporary workers, with few protections? Will they become household workers de facto providing in-home care? Current proposals suggest that all of these outcomes are possible in some form, though none is assured. This paper will analyze the policy debates--and any policy results--in terms of the positions of the vested interests involved, national and local, public and private, particularly from the standpoint of how they establish prerequisites of knowledge and skills for entry and how they recognize a professional status or career path for migrant care workers. The experiences of the current system of accepting care workers through the Economic Partnership Agreements are important referents.

Author

• Deborah Milly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University