Japan has been struggling with 'immigration'-the 'I' word-for three decades (Roberts, this issue). Instead of calling it immigration, bringing in foreigners is packaged as absorbing global talents, as ethnic return, and as international aids. These disguises reflect Japan's deep ambivalence toward immigration. The country is aware that in order to maintain economic power and material affluence, it is necessary to bring in 'foreign people', but it is unwilling to imagine changes to the cherished Japanese ways of life. Immigration is seen as a threat to national identity. However, despite political ambivalence and cultural resistance, immigration has in fact taken place in Japan. By 2016, over two million foreign nationals have lived and worked in Japan, and this does not include the 400,000 people who have naturalized since 1980 (Du 2015). 1

Labelled as the third wave of migration out of post-reform China, the recent emigration of wealthy Chinese has attracted worldwide attention. Although this form of mobility involves primarily the richest 0.1 per cent of the Chinese population, the high profile of the people who move and the amount of wealth implied have made it a sensational social phenomenon. Through interviews, participant observation and media reports, this paper searches for the social meanings of this trend of emigration. Journalists generally attribute the exodus of the rich to a desire to secure their wealth, an aspiration for a different education for their children, or concerns with air pollution and food safety. What this paper argues is that underneath these stated motivations, emigration is in fact a form of class-based consumption, a strategy for class reproduction, and a way to convert economic resources into social status and prestige. "Emigration" ( yimin), a form of mobility that may not entail settling abroad, is a path created by wealthy Chinese striving to be among the global elite.

At the first sight of “(without tenure)” after my name in the Student Handbook’s faculty name list, I felt disbelief and humiliation. Haven’t I been hired on tenure track? Why do they have to put such a distinctive identification in ahandbook for students? No other full-time faculty member had such a qualifier following their name. I went upstairs to the administrative office to see Mr Utsuno1, the administrator in charge of the logistics related to my recruitment. I pointed at the parenthesized note and asked, “Is it necessary to indicate that I am without tenure? It is a bit awkward. ‘Without tenure’ soundslike I am a fixed-term hire, but I am an associate professor on a tenure track.’On tenure track’ is different from ‘without tenure’. Utsuno-san, patient and gentle as always, answered, “So sorry! This is the English translation the Department of Human Resources (jinjibu) uses for the Japanese term ninkitsuki (fixed-term hire). Probably it is not so appropriate.”Pausing for a while, he nodded, “You are right. Your employment condition is an administrative matter. We don’t need to include it in the brochure for students.”.

This chapter considers the case of Chinese students currently studying in Tokyo to shed light on the mechanisms that have created diverse outcomes of international education. The author examines student mobility from a sociological perspective, interpreting student mobility as a migration process that develops in an interaction between individual migrant characteristics and socio-institutional contexts. Based on students' narratives, she finds that for the new generation of Chinese students in Japan, labor market conditions and the support from as well as the duty toward the family are particularly important factors that shape students' mobility.

Since the late-1970s, millions of Chinese have arrived in Japan as students, workers, family members, long-term residents, and undocumented migrant workers. Hundreds of thousands of them have chosen to settle in this country. This paper introduces the major patterns of contemporary migration from China to Japan and describes some characteristics of Chinese migrants, highlighting the transnationality of their socioeconomic practices and settlement orientation. It also discusses the impact of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake on the Chinese community, pointing out that migration decision-making takes into account a complex set of contextual factors. Natural disasters might only be a small part of the causal reasons or a catalyst at best. On the other hand, the shared disaster experience might be an opportunity for migrants to participate in societal building and cultivate a sense of belonging.

The Chinese in Japan show two curious characteristics. First, they object to being called ‘immigrants’. Instead, they embrace the identity ‘New Overseas Chinese’, a label invented and popularized by the Chinese in Japan. Second, they prefer permanent residency over naturalization. Although it is generally considered easier to obtain Japanese citizenship than permanent residency, three times as many Chinese immigrants applied and obtained permanent residency as Japanese citizenships between 2003 and 2007. This chapter argues that both the choice of ‘New Overseas Chinese’ identity and the preference for permanent residency in Japan speaks of the Chinese migrants’ desire to maintain a flexible cross-border living and are in congruence with their transnational outlooks. It shows that such desire and outlooks are shaped by the intersections of the social and cultural contexts of Japan and supported by the expanding transnational economy between Japan and China. On the one hand, Chinese migrants’ identifications and transnational outlooks represent their strategies to overcome their marginality in a society they perceive as resistant to immigration and closed to outsiders. On the other hand, Chinese migrants, especially skilled migrants, typically employ their Chinese cultural and linguistic skills in the Japanese labor market and occupy economic positions that have to do with businesses in China. Moreover, with the expanding global economy, the recent Chinese migrants in Japan have begun to interact with older and well-established global overseas Chinese networks. Their economic roles and practices further strengthen their identity as ‘New Overseas Chinese’.

Expanding international education and economic globalisation have changed both the make-up of international labour migrants and the patterns of immigrant economic adaptation. Chinese student migrants' employment experiences and economic mobility in Japan suggest that an immigrant occupational niche has emerged among Japanese firms characterised by a set of corporate positions that specifically deal with businesses in China. These firms preferentially recruit Chinese student migrants to fill these positions. This paper discusses the mechanisms that shape such an immigrant occupational niche and the opportunities and constraints presented to Chinese students in Japan. It discusses the paradoxical effects the existence of an occupational niche has on Chinese students, and argues that it provides a pathway for immigrants to enter a previously inaccessible labour market. However, the existence of an immigrant occupational niche itself is a product of prevailing institutional, structural and cultural barriers in the host society. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

This article investigates patterns and contexts of heterosexual extramarital practices among Chinese immigrants in Japan, and their social implications. I show that first, both Chinese men and women were engaged in extramarital sexual behavior during migration albeit in different contexts. Secondly, these extramarital sexual practices imply that international migration is both an economic strategy and a sexual strategy. Even economically motivated migration has sexual and emotional motivations and consequences. Thirdly, Chinese immigrants' extramarital sex is culturally specific to the context of migration from China to Japan. Finally, Chinese immigrants' extramarital sexuality shows the competing cultural interpretations of marriages and gender role expectations. Underlying the extramarital sexuality is an assumption of gender equality in sexual subjectivity. Even a seemingly regressive marital arrangement and gendered role assignment in a marriage could be used strategically by Chinese women in their pursuits of sexual and romantic expressions. © The Author(s), 2010.

International education is an important channel of labor migration. Most commonly, this form of labor migration is considered as "brain drain," represented by the retention of graduate students in science and engineering in the host labor market. This case study of contemporary Chinese student migration to Japan shows that international students have different credentials, interests, and motivations for migrating abroad, and consequently provide the host society both unskilled and skilled labor power. Moreover, Chinese students' labor market practices as skilled labor migrants show their important roles in the economic globalization. Aside from scientific and engineering skills, Chinese students use their linguistic and cultural competencies to act as intermediaries between their host and home economies. © 2009 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.

This paper provides a sociological analysis of the student visa-overstaying phenomenon among Fujian Chinese immigrants in Japan. Since the mid-1980s, international education has been an important channel of migration from China to Japan. With the rapid increase of Chinese students in Japan, student visa overstaying has also become a major source of undocumented migration. Student visa overstaying is particularly visible among Chinese students from the Southeast coastal province, Fujian. This paper probes into this phenomenon by examining Fujian immigrants' migration network characteristics. It argues that the social capital that facilitates migration and secures the livelihood for immigrants can become a liability prohibiting them from achieving upward mobility in the host society. Fujian immigrant social network closure cultivates and maintains a norm that positively sanctions undocumented immigration and provides resources that make it difficult for Fujian immigrants to maintain legal status. © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.

This study examined sexual satisfaction and its social and behavioral correlates among urbanites aged 20-64 in China, using data from a nationally representative sample of 1,194 women and 1,217 men with a spouse or other long-term sexual partner with whom they had sex during the last year. The results from structural equation models suggest a multiplex set of determinants of sexual satisfaction, including relationship characteristics, sexual knowledge and personal values, physical vitality, and environmental impediments. A large proportion of the effect of these background characteristics was mediated by frequent orgasms, varied sexual practices, and perceived partner affection. In particular, much of the effect of knowledge and beliefs was mediated through variety in sexual practices. While many of the observed patterns were shared among women and men, much of the effect of relationship characteristics was mediated through perceived partner affection for women. Men, in contrast, paid greater attention to his partner's physical attractiveness and to her extramarital sex. A sexual transition is well underway in urban China, even if more rapidly for men than for women. While knowledge and values are arguably more important in this transitional period, many antecedents of sexual well-being drawn from the literature on sexual behavior in developed Western countries are also applicable to urban China. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

This article is a sociological ethnography of a Chinese immigrant social dance subculture in Japan. It examines the logic of immigrants' leisure participation from a social psychological perspective. Traditional immigrant community studies, focusing on immigrants' social and economic adaptation and ethnic minority's political mobilization, emphasize the collective identity building and group solidarity in immigrant ethnic subcultures. Without downplaying the theme of collective identity, I argue that the recognition of individual status is an equally important motivation. Social cohesion within an immigrant subculture is achieved because ethnic enclosure allows the removal of a stigmatizing immigrant identity, giving immigrants a chance to display individual status resources.