Privileged, Highly Skilled and Unproblematic? White Europeans in Japan as Migrants
Privileged, Highly Skilled and Unproblematic? White Europeans in Japan as Migrants
复制标题
享有特权、技术精湛且没有问题？
DOI：
10.1163/9789004529526_004
复制
发表时间：
2022
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Debnar Milos
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Debnar Milos
尽管外国居民的数量稳步上升，但日本仍然倾向于被视为一个文化单一的国家，没有移民的历史或当代存在。自20世纪90年代以来，所谓的“新移民”不断涌入，这与上述观点相矛盾，学者们多次提出，日本事实上已经成为“移民国家”，因为日本越来越多地为“外国国民提供进入的多种法律的渠道以及永久定居的法律的途径和制度框架”（Liu‐Farrer 2020：8）。通过从2019年4月开始实施新的签证计划，日本政府还正式允许相当数量的低技能工人进入选定的经济部门，媒体也开始将日本描述为一个移民国家。尽管如此，日本政府仍然否认出台了任何移民政策，官员们不惜一切代价避免使用“（im）migration”（移民）一词（Roberts，2018）。但是，日本政府确实承认，它一直在以不同的名义接受外国人（gaikokujin）。正如格伦达·罗伯茨（Glenda Roberts）在对政府文件的分析中所指出的那样，虽然这种论述仍然没有提及低技能移民对日本的贡献，但外国人作为高技能工人、有才华的学生和游客，被公认为对日本经济和社会的贡献者（2018：91）。罗伯茨提请注意日本的流动性命名政策，特别是避免使用（im）migration（imin）一词，以及这种政治与现实之间的差异。本章进一步发展这一论点，重点放在经常被忽视的类型的移民谁被视为代表的外籍人士类别在流行的话语和学术，并将其与这些移民的现实。因此，本章探讨了“我们谈论移民的词汇是一个关键的政治问题”（克兰斯顿，2017：1）的方式，并通过问题化“区分人们的标签，如'外籍'，'移民'或'移民'”（克兰斯顿，2017：10）来进行关键的外籍研究。
Despite steadily rising numbers of foreign residents, Japan still tends to be presented as a culturally homogenous country without a history or contemporary presence of immigration. The increasing influx of so-called ‘newcomer’migrants since the 1990s contradicts such views, and it has been repeatedly argued by scholars that Japan de facto became “an immigrant country” by increasingly providing “foreign nationals multiple legal channels to enter and legal paths and institutional frameworks to permanent settlement”(Liu‐Farrer 2020: 8). By introducing a new visa scheme from April 2019, the Japanese government has also officially allowed considerable numbers of essentially low-skilled workers into selected sectors of the economy, which the media have also started to describe as Japan becoming a country of (im) migration. In spite of that, the Japanese government continues to deny introducing any immigration policy, and officials avoid the word ‘(im) migration’at all costs (Roberts, 2018).However, the Japanese government does acknowledge that it has been accepting foreigners (gaikokujin) under different guises. As Glenda Roberts demonstrates in her analysis of government documents, while this discourse still avoids any mention of the contribution of low-skilled migration to Japan, foreigners are acknowledged contributors to Japan’s economy and society as high-skilled workers, talented students, and tourists (2018: 91). Roberts draws attention to the naming policies of mobility—in particular, avoidance of the word (im) migration (imin)—in Japan, and the discrepancy between such politics and reality. This chapter further develops this argument by focusing on the often overlooked type of migrant who is seen as representative of an expatriate category in both popular discourse and scholarship, and juxtaposes this with the realities of such migrants. Thus the chapter examines ways in which “the lexicon through which we talk about migration is a key political issue”(Cranston, 2017: 1), and engages in critical expat studies by problematizing “labels that work to differentiate people, such as ‘expatriate’,‘migrant’, or ‘refugee’”(Cranston, 2017: 10).