Transnationalization of a Recruitment Regime: Skilled Migration to Japan

Abstract

Japan, facing a demographic decline and challenges by companies and universities to internationalize, has opened its doors to skilled migration. Focussing initially on a two‐step student migration model, Japanese companies are now recruiting young graduates from overseas universities, mainly in Asia. We argue that, with the help of brokers, the domestic recruitment regime (a set of particular employment practices) has been transnationalized. Based on interviews with stakeholders and discussing international recruitment fairs as the site of engagement, we present first evidence that the activities of brokers have the potential to change attitudes towards employability among overseas universities and their students. We also find that this development compromises the original diversity objectives of Japanese employers and point to a lack of rules of engagement for brokers operating across national borders.

Welcoming The Opportunities: Deciphering Contemporary Mobility of Indonesian Professionals to Japan

“…As both highly educated and highly skilled professionals, these people do not emphasize the financial security from working in Japan at the first place. It resonates with previous studies on skilled migration to Japan (e.g., Conrad & Meyer-Ohle, 2019;Hof, 2018Hof, , 2019Liu-Farrer, 2009 that argue that skilled migration practices cannot simply be attributed to economic factors; that they involve complex motivations and rationalities as well as the various channels that facilitate this process. For some professionals, migration to Japan is seen as part of their work-life pathways (Hof, 2018) and even used as a practice of middle-class reproduction (Hof, 2019).…”

Where is our way? A collaborative autoethnography of overseas‐educated Chinese female PhDs' academic career decision journey

“…Thus, the employment rate of international students seems miserable since about half of them have been unable to obtain a position. Therefore, the job‐hunting process for international students in Japan can be challenging even though many international graduate students were constructed as highly skilled professionals (Conrad & Meyer‐Ohle, 2019b) and boundary spanners (Conrad & Meyer‐Ohle, 2019a). In the case of Chinese students, despite their linguistic and cultural similarities, they also encountered numerous constraints during this process (Inoue, 2018; Jin, 2020).…”

Migration Patterns in East and Southeast Asia: Causes and Consequences

“…Since the early 1990s in Korea, programs to recruit unskilled labor have been established with various countries in the region such as the Industrial and Technical Training Program (ITTP) for trainees and the Employment Permit Programs for workers (Kim 2008, Seol & Skrentny 2009. In Japan, extending the scope of foreign worker recruitment to face the challenges of its aging population, the government not only continued the country's de facto foreign guest worker program (Conrad & Meyer-Ohle 2019, Komine 2018, the Technical Intern Training Program that started in 1993, but also adopted flexible new visa categories to bring in foreign workers at various levels of skill, with or without family members (Deguchi 2018). Although most migrant workers in the region move and find employment through these programs, almost all the programs are temporary labor migration programs that permit limited duration of stay in the host country (Fong et al 2020).…”