The Future Is Foreign

Women and Immigrants in Corporate Japan

Japan is at the forefront of global population decline. The Future Is Foreign investigates how elite Japanese firms are responding to this unprecedented challenge. Hilary Holbrow argues that labor shortages push Japanese firms to hire more immigrants and women, and to ease excessive demands on all workers. At the same time, not all employees benefit equally.

Japanese women's enduring overrepresentation in low-status clerical roles reinforces gender biases that hold all women back. In contrast, the small but growing presence of white-collar Asian immigrant workers weakens the ethnic prejudices of their Japanese colleagues. Despite Japan's reputation for xenophobia, white-collar immigrant men disproportionally reap the dividends of Japan's shrinking population.

The Future Is Foreign sheds new light on the processes that perpetuate inequality in Japanese firms, and in organizations worldwide. While managers and policymakers often assume that increasing women and minorities' representation in leadership will erode prejudice, Holbrow reveals that the people we see when we "look down" the organizational hierarchy are more important to the social construction of bias than are the people we see when we "look up."

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