Representing the alternative: demographic change, migrant eldercare workers, and national imagination in Japan

Abstract

When in August 2008 a group of 208 Indonesians undertook handson training in nursing and eldercare in Japan under the provisions of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), their arrival fed directly into debates over the appropriate means to tackle the various projected problems coming with Japan's aging society and declining population. In this light, the EPA scheme, offering an unprecedented possibility for the Indonesian workers to remain in Japan permanently, came to be debated in terms of Japan's stance on immigration and Japanese self-representations as a nation. As such, although numerically insignificant and officially not aimed at supplementing the Japanese labor market, the scheme triggered debates over the future shape of Japanese society, and how, and whether, foreigners could be included in it. Against this background, in this article I consider the relationship between the demographic changes and the way a nation imagines who can or should belong. I suggest that the media representations of the EPA trainees and the debates surrounding the program were expressions of particular ideologies of a Japanese nation trying to position itself vis-à-vis the projected demographic changes and globalizing processes, which brought about a need for a redefinition of certain representations of contemporary Japanese society.

New Frontiers in Japanese Studies

“…The emerging globalisation of care in Japan opens Japanese society to interactions with foreign people that range from casual to intimate encounters, where migrants provide services for maintaining the society, such as in the case of elderly care. While initial interactions have been largely based on imaginations of migrants as 'others' and as strangers to the cultural codes and mores that are embedded in the social relations of Japanese society (Switek 2014), care work provides an understanding of interactions that is not only mediated by language, but also through bodily encounters. Viewing the corporeal and intersubjective dynamics in the context of nursing care opens up unexplored spaces where the depth of interactions goes beyond race, class and gender in building meaningful and mutual understanding, as exhibited in the caring relationships between Filipino care workers and Japanese elderly.…”

Enhancing older people’s activity and participation with socially assistive robots: a multicentre quasi-experimental study using the ICF framework

“…[8][9][10] As one of the most rapidly ageing economies, Japan is currently faced with a shortage of care workers and relatively low intakes of migrant workers. [11][12] By 2025, there will be a shortfall of 370,000 nurses and care workers in Japan. [13] Robotic-aided care is seen as not only promising but as almost inevitable.…”