Abstract
The unprecedented amount of human moves across national borders increases burden on local governments in managing migrants. But performance of local governments varies differently across countries and cities/localities in policy type and policy competence. In contrast to the Western cases, the Japanese case demonstrates that local governments are pressed to implement integration policies even without legal nor financial bases. As is well known, the Japanese type of multiculturalism ‘Tabunka kyosei’ (multicultural coexistence) is so weak to secure substantial citizenship of immigrants and minorities without covering structural inequality. Why do Japanese local governments take a role of de facto responsible actors of integration policies? Why do they fail to develop integration policies well? To address these questions, it is useful to categorise Japanese cities/localities into four types: (1) middle-sized cities with concentrated foreign population such as Kawasaki and Hamamatsu, (2) large-sized cities with dispersed foreign population such as Tokyo and Osaka, (3) rural localities where foreign workers are often introduced through the technical internship scheme, (4) middle-sized and large-sized cities with fewer foreign population like Sapporo and Fukuoka. These types of cities/localities are motivated to develop or undevelop integration policies, led by different reasons such as kinds of foreign residents and pursuit of international city brand. Some local governments started to introduce new services such as interpretation services for non-Japanese speakers and educational assistance for foreign children in collaboration with NGO/NPOs. But their policies are still insufficient mainly due to lack of national integration policy framework. This Japanese case embodies one character of neoliberal governance and policymaking, with neglecting immigrant rights. To guarantee substantial citizenship of immigrants, it is crucial to overcome the ethno-racial understanding of nation and residents in the local level as well as in the national level.
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Notes
- 1.
The multilayered membership of contemporary citizenship is represented by the theoretical model called the Hammar=Koido=Tarumoto Model (HKT Model) (Tarumoto 2005).
- 2.
Taiwanese and Chinese were counted in the same category before 2012. Japan did not maintain any diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since its foundation after World War II. Japan had formally broken the relations with Taiwan when normalising its diplomatic relations with the PRC. Similarly, migrants from South Korea and North Korea were in the same category before 2012 for Japan did not recognise the North Korean state. Then, they were broken down into two categories after 2012, after political tensions with North Korea had increased public antipathy.
- 3.
In June 2016, Japan has 1718 municipalities (MIAC 2016).
- 4.
The Nationality Act provides that Japanese nationality is acquired along the paternal line of jus sanguinis.
- 5.
The technical internship training scheme was created in 1993. The technical internship training scheme and the training scheme had been operated in parallel before the training scheme was abolished in 2010 because of a lot of criticism on its human rights infringement and its misuse beyond the formal purpose. Technical intern trainees are accepted by individual companies directly or by supervising organisations to deliver them to companies.
- 6.
Foreign residents could not join the national pension scheme because of the ‘nationality clause’ before 1981. Even after the clause was abolished in 1981, those who were 35 years old or more then could not meet all the requirements of the scheme. In the report of Kawasaki City below, 31.8 per cent of the respondents did not join any pension scheme.
- 7.
Tabunka kyosei can be translated as ‘multicultural living together’ as well.
- 8.
The term ‘3D jobs’ means dirty, dangerous and demanding jobs, or dirty, dangerous and demeaning jobs.
- 9.
It should be noted that Granovetter (1985) was primarily interested in the embeddedness of economic transactions within non-economic social networks of actors in the context of market economy.
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Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this chapter was delivered at the Migrinter Workshop: Migrations and New Local Governance, MSHS, University of Poitiers, France, 10–11 December 2015. I greatly appreciated the useful comments from the participants. Also, I am grateful to Dr. Thomas Lacroix, Dr. Andrea Carl’a and Ms. Amandine Desille for enabling me to complete this chapter. Professor Chikako Kashiwazaki kindly gave me material to write up the chapter. Professor Takuya Shima gave me an idea of translation of a legal term. The research for this article was aided by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (Grant Number 26380661, from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, to Hideki Tarumoto).
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Tarumoto, H. (2018). The Limits of Local Citizenship Policies in Japan. In: Lacroix, T., Desille, A. (eds) International Migrations and Local Governance. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65996-1_11
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