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Reviewed by:
  • Labour Migration from China to Japan: International Students, Transnational Migrants by Gracia Liu-Farrer, and: Deviance and Inequality in Japan: Japanese Youth and Foreign Migrants by Robert Stuart Yoder
  • Apichai W. Shipper (bio)
Labour Migration from China to Japan: International Students, Transnational Migrants. By Gracia Liu-Farrer. Routledge, London, 2011. xii, 195 pages. $135.00, cloth; $125.00, E-book.
Deviance and Inequality in Japan: Japanese Youth and Foreign Migrants. By Robert Stuart Yoder. Policy Press, Bristol, 2012. xv, 203 pages. $110.00.

As tension between Japan and China heightens over the territorial disputes of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, Gracia Liu-Farrer reminds us that another important relationship is currently taking place between the two countries: the rising number of Chinese migrant workers in Japan. Since 2008, the Chinese have surpassed the Koreans as the largest (over 800,000 individuals) immigrant community in Japan. With the demographic shift involving foreign migrants and Japanese youth, Robert Stuart Yoder notes that Japanese society has witnessed greater inequality, conflict, and deviance. Meanwhile, political elites attempt to maintain harmony and conformity in society through social controls. In their timely books, Liu-Farrer and Yoder have separately made fine contributions to the study of migration, youth, international education, transnationalism, and inequality in Japan.

Most notable about these two authors is that neither views the sample population of her/his study as a homogeneous group. Liu-Farrer provides a nuanced picture of Chinese immigration in Japan while Yoder does the same for Japanese youth and foreign migrants. Liu-Farrer distinguishes Chinese student migrants by the region of their origin in China (e.g., Fujian, Shanghai, Liaoning, Heilongjiang), destination in Japan (e.g., rural areas, urban centers), type of school (e.g., language school, vocational school, private university, public university), and the extent of their social network resources (e.g., open, enclosed). She then writes:

While most Chinese students chose language schools in Tokyo and other big cities for more job opportunities and relatively higher wages, many Fujian immigrants, due to lack of alternative sources for information, were led by snakeheads [brokers/human smugglers from Fujian] to schools located in areas where odd jobs were hard to find and wages were low.

(p. 56)

She attributes this lack of alternative sources of information to the scarcity of professional or skilled coethnic predecessors around these students.

Similarly, Yoder offers a nuanced overview of Japanese youth and foreign migrants by providing a class-based analysis of these two “subordinate [End Page 452] subculture groups.” He notes that members of these groups tend to be objects of control. Those from the working class, in particular, are more likely to participate in deviant behavior that threatens the status quo. Among foreign migrants, Yoder sees class and occupational hierarchy. He keenly observes: “Foreign migrants are employed in particular occupations. . . . [E]ach foreign migrant group occupies a certain niche within Japanese society, employed in occupations that fit a particular demand [and] associate with nationality” (p. 68). From this analysis, he then categorizes foreign migrants based on their ascribed minority status: former colonies (Chinese and Koreans), special recognition (Nikkeijin, Vietnamese), female entertainers (Filipinas and Thais), male laborers (Bangladeshis, Burmese, Indonesians, Iranians, Malaysians, Pakistanis), and Western migrants (U.S., Australians, Britons, and Canadians). They are distinguished also by their visa status, which determines the work they can perform and limits the duration of their work contracts (with unequal work status, benefits, and pay).

Although both authors focus on the underprivileged groups of Japanese society, they differ greatly in their methodological approach and worldview of the underprivileged and their potential. Based on three years of ethnographic research (including participant observation, in-depth interviews, an independent survey, and documentary research) in the greater Tokyo area, Shanghai, and Fujian, Liu-Farrer convincingly demonstrates that international education is an important channel to global migration and that Chinese students increasingly play an important role in the global economy, for they offer cultural and linguistic skills necessary for developing transnational businesses. She explains that in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s when student visas were readily available because the Japanese government was lax in controlling student migration, many Chinese (particularly from Shanghai and...

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