States of Admission

Japan's Foreign Labor Politics in Regional Comparison

States of Admission presents the first comprehensive, comparative account of how Japan opened to foreign labor – and why this process took such a convoluted path.

Japan's labor migration policy resists easy explanation. Although Japan pioneered foreign labor admission in East Asia in the early 1990s, it relied on side-door channels for select migrants. It was not until 2018 that Japan moved toward the direct admission pathways used in Taiwan and South Korea, even while retaining its original schemes.

Konrad Kalicki argues that shifting perceptions of state security, channeled by executive politics, explain this trajectory. Pulled in opposing directions by security concerns and bureaucratic rivalry, Japan initially embraced a compromise approach. Centralization of policymaking and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's leadership eventually led to reform that brought the country into regional alignment.

Kalicki's findings challenge the conventional assumption that ethnonationalism explains much of Japan's labor migration policy, showing instead that it results from state actors balancing structural constraints, societal demands, and autonomous interests. Eye-opening and persuasive, States of Admission offers new insights into the politics of foreign labor admission in Japan and other industrialized democracies.

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