Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society

by Mike Douglass, Glenda S. Roberts

Overview

The global age of migration is fast becoming a permanent feature of Japanese life, impacting the country’s economic, social, and political landscape. The twelve essays collected here bring together the most up-to-date, original research on foreign workers and households from a variety of perspectives. Throughout, three key questions are addressed: Does the recent wave of migration constitute a new multicultural age that challenges Japan’s identity as a homogenous society? How do foreign workers confront the many difficulties of living in Japan? How is Japanese society both resisting and accommodating the growing presence of foreign workers in its communities? Japan and Global Migration is a much-needed and timely contribution to the literature on Japan and cultural difference and required reading for anyone concerned with the future of Japanese society.

Contributors: Mike Douglass, John Lie, Takashi Machimura, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Katherine Tegtmeyer Pak, David Pollack, Glenda S. Roberts, Katsuko Terasawa, Michael Weiner, Keiko Yamanaka, Keizo Yamawaki.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824827427
Publisher:	University of Hawaii Press, The
Publication date:	03/31/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Glenda S. Roberts is professor and director of international studies at Waseda University (Japan).

Table of Contents

	List of figures	vii
	List of tables	viii
	Contributors	x
	Acknowledgments	xii
	Preface to the paperback edition	xiii
Part I	Global and historical perspectives on migration to Japan
1	Japan in a global age of migration	3
2	Foreign workers in Japan: a historical perspective	38
3	Japan in the age of migration	52
4	The discourse of Japaneseness	70
5	The singularities of international migration of women to Japan: past, present and future	91
Part II	Livelihood and living in Japanese workplaces and communities
6	"I will go home, but when?": labor migration and circular diaspora formation by Japanese Brazilians in Japan	123
7	Aliens, gangsters and myth in Kon Satoshi's World Apartment Horror	153
8	Local settlement patterns of foreign workers in Greater Tokyo: growing diversity and its consequences	176
9	Identities of multiethnic people in Japan	196
Part III	Government policies and community responses
10	Labor law, civil law, immigration law and the reality of migrants and their children	219
11	Foreigners are local citizens, too: local governments respond to international migration in Japan	244
12	NGO support for migrant labor in Japan	275
	Index	301