Multiple modes of transnationalism around Japan: Diversifying Migrant Populations and Policy Paradoxes, public lecture by Akihiro Koido (Hitotsubashi University)

“Multiple modes of transnationalism around Japan: Diversifying Migrant Populations and Policy Paradoxes.”

 Public lecture by 

Akihiro Koido

(Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan) 

Abstract: Japanese “immigration policy” is at a crossroad.  After more than 25 years the debate over reception of “immigrants”,  finally the Japanese government officially announced their acceptance of “foreign workers” for some industries this year. However, actual increase of migration flows to Japan has been increasing for almost 30 years and the foreign population has diversified significantly. In the process, different migrant groups showed distinct dynamics of transnational flows and connections. This presentation tries to elucidate different patterns of development of transnational social fields through legal gates by taking example of Brazilian, Chinese, Pakistan, and other migrants. Each entry gates originated from distinct rationale and produced paradoxical function. By doing so, I hope to contribute to broadening the scope of recent theories of immigrant transnationalism constrained by the experiences of receiving countries in the West.                   

Akihiro Koido is currently serving as professor of sociology at Hitotsbubashi Univesity in Tokyo. His expertise is sociology of migration, comparative migration policies, and global restructuring. He earned BA and MA from the University of Tokyo as well as Ph.D. in Johns Hopkins University. He has been doing research on diverse peripheral labor both in the North and in the South. He started his research by focusing changing nature of the “maquiladora industry” (Mexican export processing industry) in the context of intensifying Japanese-U.S. competition. Later he focused immigrant labor in transforming Japanese industrial structures. After 2003, he concentrated efforts on the analysis of U.S. immigration enforcement and its impacts on production sites as well as local communities while doing research on Japanese immigration policy. Recently, he is organizing a group of Japan-based scholars to conduct comparative analysis of “selective immigration policies” funded by Japan Society for Promotion of Science. Currently he is conducting research on Spanish border control policy and immigrant “integration policy” from comparative perspective while staying as visiting research fellow in Center for Human and Social Sciences, a research institute of Spanish Higher Commission of Scientific Research. He is the editor and author of International Comparison of Migration Policies (2003) from Akashi Books and his recent article includes “Social Movement of Immigrants and transformation of ‘public spheres’ in the U.S. in the recent years” in Funabashi & Jufuku eds. Public Spheres and Deliberative Democracy. (2013, Hosei Univ Press). “Social Movements of Undocumented Immigrants against the Globalism and Social Exclusion in the U.S.” Japan Sociological Review (2014).