Gracia Liu‐Farrer

International education is an important channel of labor migration. Most commonly, this form of labor migration is considered as “brain drain,” represented by the retention of graduate students in science and engineering in the host labor market. This case study of contemporary Chinese student migration to Japan shows that international students have different credentials, interests, and motivations for migrating abroad, and consequently provide the host society both unskilled and skilled labor

Selecting labour migrants based on skill has become a widely practised migration policy in many countries around the world. Since the late twentieth century, research on ‘skilled’ and ‘highly skilled’ migration has raised important questions about the value and ethics of skill-based labour mobility. More recent research has begun to question the concept of skill and skill categorisation in both government policy and academic research. Taking the view that migrants’ skill is socially constructed,

Chinese students are the largest international student population in the world, and Japan attracts more of them than any other country. Since the mid-1980s when China opened the door to let private citizens out and Japan began to let more foreigners in, over 300 thousand Chinese have arrived in Japan as students. Student migrants are the most visible, controversial and active Chinese immigrants in Japan. The majority of them enter Japan’s labour market and many have stayed on indefinitely. Based

Abstract Labelled as the third wave of migration out of post-reform China, the recent emigration of wealthy Chinese has attracted worldwide attention. Although this form of mobility involves primarily the richest 0.1 per cent of the Chinese population, the high profile of the people who move and the amount of wealth implied have made it a sensational social phenomenon. Through interviews, participant observation and media reports, this paper searches for the social meanings of this trend of emig

Expanding international education and economic globalisation have changed both the make-up of international labour migrants and the patterns of immigrant economic adaptation. Chinese student migrants' employment experiences and economic mobility in Japan suggest that an immigrant occupational niche has emerged among Japanese firms characterised by a set of corporate positions that specifically deal with businesses in China. These firms preferentially recruit Chinese student migrants to fill thes

Abstract This article examines the education‐migration industry that has channelled students from China and Viet Nam into Japan over the past three decades and discusses the conditions for the emergence of such an industry, the major actors and the reasons for their changing roles and practices. It argues that the education‐migration industry in Japan emerged because of the discrepant institutional logics. Japan's reluctance to open the door for labour import, despite its acute labour shortage,

Introduction: Japan and the Educationally Channeled International Labour Migration 1. Fuji Dongying: A Century of Chinese Student Migration to Japan 2. Parting at the Starting Point: Visa Overstaying as a Social Process 3. Labouring to Learn: Student Migrant Life in Japan 4. Careers in Japan's Transnational Economy 5. Global Economies From Below: Migrants' Transnational Entrepreneurship 6. Lives Spanned Across Borders Conclusion: International Students, Transnational Migrants

Faced with demographic as well as economic changes, Germany and Japan have liberalised immigration controls for skilled migrants, set targets for foreign student enrolments in university, and introduced visa categories to enable foreign graduates to enter their labour markets. Yet a relatively modest share of foreign graduates actually receives jobs appropriate to their skill-level and remain in these labour markets. In this article, we focus on organisational recruitment and employment practice

Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their varied lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belong

Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as this book shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are “other” at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingl

This paper provides a sociological analysis of the student visa-overstaying phenomenon among Fujian Chinese immigrants in Japan. Since the mid-1980s, international education has been an important channel of migration from China to Japan. With the rapid increase of Chinese students in Japan, student visa overstaying has also become a major source of undocumented migration. Student visa overstaying is particularly visible among Chinese students from the Southeast coastal province, Fujian. This pap

This article investigates patterns and contexts of heterosexual extramarital practices among Chinese immigrants in Japan, and their social implications. I show that first, both Chinese men and women were engaged in extramarital sexual behavior during migration albeit in different contexts. Secondly, these extramarital sexual practices imply that international migration is both an economic strategy and a sexual strategy. Even economically motivated migration has sexual and emotional motivations a

Industrialized countries have increasingly used skill-based selective migration policies to reduce labor and skill shortages. But are these policies effective? This paper uses Japan and the United Kingdom to illustrate how immigration policy and employment, training and labor practices influence labor and skill supply. Until recently, these two countries had different migration policies and labor practices. Yet data shows similar patterns of labor and skill shortage profiles in both countries. T

Japan welcomes highly educated migrants, but do these migrants stay on in Japan? Drawing on a web survey of 600 immigrant employees working in Japan, this paper evaluates different factors influencing migrants’ stay and leave intentions. The results indicate that economic and employment-related reasons have limited impact on migrants’ stay intentions. Nationalities also predict migrants’ varied willingness to stay in Japan, indicating the blurring boundary between economic and cultural logics of