11 * 14 APRIL 2001
KOBE, JAPAN
Immigration to Japan
The period since the end of World War II has seen the longest periods of industrial growth in history. It has also seen the creation of three great industrial blocs: the USA, the European Union, and Japan. Of these, the growth of the Japanese economy has been the most spectacular. At the present time, Japan's GDP per caput, USD 32,000 (1996), is higher than that of the US (USD 27,000) or that of Germany (USD 29,000), the richest of the EU states. However, Japan's remarkable economic growth has been produced in a radically different way from that of the US and Europe. In both the US and Europe, the enormous economic expansion has required massive levels of immigration. In Japan it has been achieved without immigration. In all three regions there has been a conflict between economic goals that required immigration and social policies which demand restrictions on immigration.
* By CERI PEACH
The international symposium 'Immigration to Japan, the EU, and the USA and the Japanese Abroad', held in Kobe, Japan from 11-14 April 2001 has been a tremendous success. Fifty-one persons of various disciplinary backgrounds were in attendance and speakers from nine countries presented twenty-three papers - of which one-fifth were delivered by young researchers. The symposium was divided into three themes, one for each of the days of the meeting.
The focus of Theme One was on establishing the facts about international migration. The issue was conceptualized in terms of a conflict between economic goals (requiring labour immigration) and social goals (aiming to restrict it) in the respective regions. In Europe and the USA, the economic demands have triumphed over the social; in Japan, the social requirements have triumphed over the economic. There were considerable problems of definition (foreign-born, foreign citizenship, ethnic minority, labour migrants, clandestine immigrants, asylum seekers, etc); however, in the USA, the foreign born account for nearly 10 per cent of the population, in the European Union for just under 5 per cent, while in Japan, foreigners account for 1.2 per cent of the population (and a substantial part of the foreigner population is, in fact, Japanese-born). Japan's ability to restrict immigration was due primarily to three factors: (1) squeezing labour out of the primary sector into the secondary sector; (2) technological innovations of automation and just-time technology; (3) exporting capital and manufacturing capacity to overseas countries instead of importing labour. Doubt was expressed as to whether such policies could continue in the face of UN projections of the increasing dependency ratios of all OECD countries as populations aged.
Theme Two examined the Japanese overseas. Papers covered the Japanese in the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, and Peru. Distinctions were drawn between old established countries of settlement and recent countries of sojournment. In the latter countries (especially the UK and Germany), further distinctions were drawn between the company migrants, generally on a three to five year secondment, and individual migrants who were settling on a long-term basis. Several points emerged here about the very high levels of segregation of the Japanese in Asian and European countries. Company people, in particular, existed in a Japanese expatriate bubble inserted into those countries with life being contained almost entirely within it. The bubble effect was most strongly evident in other Asian countries and existed on a declining continuum through Germany and Britain to the USA and Canada. Notable contrasts emerged between the attitudes of single women migrants and those of company men and their families. Women were driven by the desire to escape the social pressures of Japanese society (expectation to marry by the age of thirty) and by the lack of promotion or underuse of their skills in their companies.
Theme three addressed the issue of foreign settlement in Japan. Problems of data and definition were examined. Data problems include the fact that much of the Korean population, which has been settled in Japan since the forced migration of the late 1930s and 1940s, is still classified as 'foreign' after several generations, while much of the Brazilian and Peruvian population is ethnically Japanese (Nikkei). However, many of the Nikkei population turn out to be fake Nikkei who have arrived on falsified papers. There were interesting accounts of the way in which migrant trafficking was organized.
It was agreed that two separate volumes will be published with revised and extended papers. One of these will be in Japanese and edited by Professors Nobuhiko Iwasaki and Kiyomitsu Yui, both of Kobe University. The second volume will be in English and edited by Dr Roger Goodman, Professor Ceri Peach, Dr Ayumi Tanaka (all of Oxford University), and Professor Paul White (Sheffield University). *
Professor Ceri Peach is affiliated to the School of Geography at Oxford University.
E-mail:ceri.peach@geography.ox.ac.uk