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David CHIAVACCI, Jinkō Mondai to Imin: Nihon no Jinkō - Kaisō Kōzoku wa Dō Kawaru ka (Population Problems and Immigration: How Is Japan’s Population and Social Structure Changing?), Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 245–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa033
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This publication can hardly be any timelier. In April 2019, the Japanese government enacted the most comprehensive reform of its immigration policy since the comprehensive revision of its Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law and the enlargement of trainee programmes in the early 1990s. It remains to be seen what impact this reform will have on immigration. Still, it includes an official acknowledgement that Japan also needs non-highly qualified foreign workers and the establishment of an immigration agency, representing a transformation of the fundamentals of immigration policy and giving it a new institutional basis. Hence, this reform is potentially the most powerful immigration policy change of the whole postwar era and could transform Japan in the mid-term from a country that passively accepted immigration since the late 1980s into one that pro-actively accepts it as necessary element to secure its future.
Demographic changes and the resulting labour shortage in recent years are important contextual factors for this potentially historic turning point in Japan’s postwar development. These topics are addressed in the first section of the volume, which consists of three chapters. The volume editor, Korekawa Yū, analyses the relationship between demographic development and immigration in Japan, showing that Japan has become an immigration country in parallel with its demographic development. While recent immigration has not stopped Japan’s population decline, foreign workers have started to play an important and structural role in certain labour sectors. It is to be expected that the ethnic mix of Japan will become even more diverse in the future. Gilles Spielvogel and Michela Meghnagi discuss demographic change and immigration in the European Union from 2005 to 2015 and project future development trends up to 2030. In anticipation of increasingly fast population ageing in coming decades, the authors argue that immigration can have a moderating effect but that full replacement immigration will be very unlikely. Shafel Gu and Eric Fong study the international migration patterns in East Asia and compare these to other world regions. This is especially important for understanding Japan’s current immigration and its future development, as Japan is often compared in migration research with Western advanced industrial societies but is embedded in and impacted by the East Asian migration region. By analysing United Nations data on international migrant stock, the authors show that East Asia has become the largest contributor to migration movements worldwide and that an increasing share of female migrants leads to a feminisation of international migration in the region.
