Comparative Perspectives on Developments in Labor Immigration Policies in Japan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis aimed to explore and to get insights into Japan ́s “restrictive” labor immigration policy and to look at future prospects of acceptance of foreign workers. In this study, two comparative analyses were conducted; (1) a longitudinal case study on Japan ́s immigration policy over time, in order to understand the development and characteristics of Japan ́s policies; and (2) a comparative case study across countries (Canada, Australia and Singapore) to contrast policy elements in those countries with Japan and to further evaluate whether policy elements in the large-immigration countries might be adoptable in the case of Japan.\n\nThis study is the result of a desk study. Data sources were mainly from governmental documents, secondary literatures and reports from well-regarded international organizations. The collected data was qualitatively analyzed. The push-pull theory together with the human capital theory were mainly employed to analyze both migration decision-making processes from a migrant ́s perspective and migration policy decision-making processes from a policy maker ́s perspective. It was supplemented with the push-pull plus theory and the migration system theory.\n\nThe longitudinal case study showed that Japan has become a more open immigration country than before, opening several migration channels for prospective migrants with all skill-levels. The cross-country case study revealed that diversified migration programs and treatment differentiations based on skill-levels were common features among all those four countries. However, while Canada, Australia and Singapore recently restrict admission requirements for highly skilled workers and benefits and rights of low skilled migrants, Japan has relaxed the admission criteria. Also I discussed that Japan is urged to relax its policies even more to attract foreign migrants since the data shows that Japan has failed to take in as many labor migrants as the government ́s expectation.\n\nIt was also argued that Japan lacks “pull” factors from the migration system perspective. There are considerable cultural and social “push” factors in the Japanese society, such as barrier of language, cultural differences, and social acceptance. The government ́s attitude that views foreign labor migrants only as a temporary work force, not as a member of the society, deterred them from facilitation of a national integration policy which seems to have significant negative consequences on retaining foreign workers. As one of the possible future alternatives, I have suggested that use of a labor market test might function as a legitimate reason to approve recruitment of foreign migrants against the concerns regarding weakening social and cultural cohesion. Another suggested alternative was an implementation of a Canadian and Australian style of regional migration program by giving the local municipalities authority to arrange their own migration programs. It might help to resolve the severe labor shortage and the economic stagnation in the local communities, and importantly it might also encourage better social inclusion of foreign migrants to their local communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".