Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their varied lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex?

Housing more than half of the global population, Asia is a region characterised by increasingly diverse forms of migration and mobility. Offering a wide-ranging overview of the field of Asian migrations, this new handbook therefore seeks to examine and evaluate the flows of movement within Asia, as well as into and out of the continent. Through in-depth analysis of both empirical and theoretical developments in the field, it includes key examples and trends such as British colonialism, Chinese diaspora, labour migration, the movement of women, and recent student migration.

Organised into thematic parts, the topics cover:

The historical context to migration in Asia
Modern Asian migration pathways and characteristics
The reconceptualising of migration through Asian experiences
Contemporary challenges and controversies in Asian migration practice and policy
Contributing to the retheorising of the subject area of international migration from non-western experience, the Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations will be useful to students and scholars of migration, Asian development and Asian Studies in general.

In FY 2021, the main research goals were literature review, researching policy regarding international education, and collecting published statistical and interview data among international students in Japan and Germany.
Through the collaboration with Professor Karen Shire, our German counterpart at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the team, with the assistance of 5 research assistants, managed to collect over 120 in-depth interviews with international students in Japan and in Germany. At the same time, we collected policy documents and statistics of international students in Germany. The team set up the qualitative data base for interviews using MaxQDA.
Because of the travel restriction due to COVID, we were not able to do field research overseas. Instead, the field work, combined with an international conference, took place in July, 2022.
The PI analyzed the data from the interviews with Chinese students, and presented the results at the International Conference on International Student Mobility in Fulda, Germany, titled: "The difficulties of an easier path: Chinese students’ educational experiences and school-to-work transition in Germany and Japan."
The presentation discusses Chinese students’ motivations and experiences of studying abroad in Germany and Japan and points out that the process of international education involves different stakeholders whose logics for student mobility might be conflicting. This presentation presents the concept of “socially constructed necessity” to describe the motivations observed among individual students.

Through the project’s prior three years, we understood the development of Chinese Buddhism, on the one hand, in western countries, such as Canada and the US, as the center of Chinese cultural activities. On the other hand, Chinese Buddhism has been reestablishing historical links with original Buddhism sites in Asia to gain authenticity as a part of a state effort to make Chinese Buddhism a global one.<BR>To examine the phenomena, Ashiwa surveyed the presence of Chinese Buddhism in sacred historical sites of Buddhism in India, including Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Rajgir, and Nalanda. She found that Chinese attempts that started in the early 2000s to gain a presence in these sites by investing in renovations, were not working well. These efforts had created tension with local communities, and the institutional presence of Chinese Buddhism was not that visible, even though Chinese tourism has been increasing.<BR>Ashiwa participated in the Global Study Consortium in Leipzig University to discuss issues of ideoscape--the project's organizing concept. Additionally, she conducted fieldwork at Asian Buddhist temples in Leipzig and meet with Dr. Philipp Clart, a scholar of Chinese Buddhism. Interviews at the Buddhist temples in Leipzig made us realize that Buddhist activities in former socialist countries such as Leipzig have strong links with the Buddhism of social and communist countries in Asia, such as China, Vietnam, and Burma that started in the socialist era through the mobilities of people and cultural policies of international cultural exchange among socialist countries

本研究は、日本とドイツにおける高学歴の外国人労働者の雇用と職業経験を比較する。インタビュー調査とアンケート調査を通じて、両国において外国人労働者が企業への就職を希望する際、制度的・文化的な壁に直面することを示した。ドイツでは具体的な技術を求める雇用主の要求が外国人労働者の就職には不利に動く。日本では採用過程で文化的要件が外国人の競争力を弱める。結果として、ドイツと日本の両国において外国人労働者は参入基準が低い部門や中小企業に雇用することになる。これは自国民労働者と外国人労働者の間に労働市場が分離していることを示し、外国人材をより受け入れるためには雇用制度を変える必要性があることを示唆する。

本研究は日本政府が高度人材を歓迎する政策を創設しているが、日本企業は外国人材を留めておくことができないことについて研究した。発見は、以下になる。１、日本企業内で人材を育成する日本企業の仕組みは、多くの外国人従業員が視野に入れているネオリベラルグローバル労働市場とは合致していない。また、日本企業の仕組みは、現代の価値体系である男女平等や多様性と矛盾している。２、日本企業に問題があるにもかかわらず、日本は外国人にとって魅力的な目的地である。なぜなら、機会に加え、文化的魅力が存在するからである。外国人労働者は日本企業を離れるかもしれないが、彼らは必ずしも日本を離れているわけではないのである。

Housing more than half of the global population, Asia is a region characterised by increasingly diverse forms of migration and mobility. Offering a wide-ranging overview of the field of Asian migrations, this new handbook therefore seeks to examine and evaluate the flows of movement within Asia, as well as into and out of the continent. Through in-depth analysis of both empirical and theoretical developments in the field, it includes key examples and trends such as British colonialism, Chinese diaspora, labour migration, the movement of women, and recent student migration. Organised into thematic parts, the topics cover: The historical context to migration in Asia Modern Asian migration pathways and characteristics The reconceptualising of migration through Asian experiences Contemporary challenges and controversies in Asian migration practice and policy Contributing to the retheorising of the subject area of international migration from non-western experience, the Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations will be useful to students and scholars of migration, Asian development and Asian Studies in general.

The project has produced a co-authored journal article titled&nbsp;Neoliberal humanitarianism: Contradictory policy logics and Syrian refugee experiences in Japan,&nbsp;that has been published in March 2024, in the international journal Migration Studies (Oxford University Press).&nbsp;The abstract is as follows:Since the 2011 beginning of the Syrian uprising, more than 800 Syrians have become registered residents of Japan. Japan is an unusual destination for these refugees due not only to its geographical and cultural distance from the Middle East and lack of Arab diasporic communities, but also to what we call neoliberal humanitarianism: an approach by which states adopt policies and programmes to reduce refugees’ suffering while also regarding refugees as potentially profitable workers responsible for their own economic survival and social integration. In Japan’s case, the driver of neoliberal humanitarianism is its interest in keeping par with G7 peers in ‘doing something’ in the face of a global ‘refugee crisis’ on the one hand, and its lack of political or social will to receive refugees, on the other. The contradictions inherent in these imperatives come to the fore in the ‘Japanese Initiative for the future of Syrian Refugees’ (JISR), which invites Syrian refugees to pursue graduate degrees at Japanese universities. Japan officially presents JISR participants as refugees, but legally regards them as students, provides limited financial support, and encourages them not to apply for asylum. This article investigates JISR as a case study of neoliberal humanitarianism and examines its contradictory logics and consequences, from the perspective of refugees’ experiences. Qualitative analysis of twenty-one original interviews shows that, though Syrians often choose Japan in search of stability after years of precarity in countries on Syria’s borders, neoliberal humanitarianism in this unusual destination generates a new chapter of uncertainty and disappointment.

This project aims to understand the phenomenon of Chinese students coming to Japan after finishing their undergraduate education in the United States. The researcher Interviewed Chinese students, faculty members, and career placement officers at Indiana University at Bloomington, University of Chicago, and Northwestern University.The main findings are :- It is difficult to stay in the US. There are institutional hurdles for Chinese students entering the American labor market because of the additional legal procedures in hiring international students.- Chinese students are seen as self-isolating and, at the same time, feel socially and culturally isolated in the United States, wary of racism.- Many parents send their children to the US so they will obtain better education credentials to compete in China's labor market, not staying there.- Coming to Japan is a lifestyle choice. The Chinese labor market has been very competitive, and the working conditions have deteriorated. The stability of corporate Japan looks comparatively attractive.&nbsp;- Japanese English media education at the graduate level lowers the threshold for entry into Japanese graduate schools, especially the elite&nbsp; programs- the attraction of Japanese popular culture

This research&nbsp;aims to understand why and how international students choose a particular country, and to study a specific academic subject in a specific university. Our efforts&nbsp;focused on reviewing the literature of international student mobilities and collecting qualitative interview data among international students. With the help of a research assistant, we have collected over 20 interviews with Chinese students who chose to study in either Japan or Germany, majoring in either humanities/social sciences or STEM. These interviews reveal the determinants for students’ decision-making, and especially the important roles the institutional channels and educational intermediaries have played in channeling students into specific regions or countries. We have also learned that, in China, it is often the children who were more concerned about the economic costs of studying abroad.&nbsp; &nbsp; The main publication, mosty based on literature review, is:Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2022. “International Students as Transnational Migrants,” in F. Collins and B.S. Yeoh (eds)&nbsp;Handbook of Transnationalism, Chapter 19.&nbsp;Edward Elgar Publishing: 294–309&nbsp;

This project focused on Nepalese immigrant restauranteurs and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their business operations, living arrangements, and the plight of their employees. In total, we collected 30 in-depth interviews with Nepalese restaurant owners (15) and Nepalese cooks (15) who worked in these restaurants in Tokyo between August 2020 and March 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Immigrant restaurants are precarious during normal times because they have more legal constraints and less access to the host society’s institutional resources. For services and supports most rely on personal, and especially co-ethnic, networks. These networks both help and exploit the co-ethnics. The prolonged COVID pandemic since early 2020 has devastated the restaurant industry around the world and has put even more strain on businesses run by immigrants, exposing the structural vulnerability of such businesses and people depending on them for livelihood. Our research indicates the structural vulnerability and ethnic burden these restaurant owners and workers face as well as their strategies to deal with the hardship brought by the pandemic.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Because of the Pandemic, the researcher is not able to conduct fieldwork in the US as planned. As a result, the main research activities revolved around literature review and the preparation for a new project. International student mobilities have experienced important changes in recent years.&nbsp;In order to have a more systematic understanding of the relationship between education and career mobilities, this researcher decides to first investigate why international students choose to go to particular countries, are enrolled in specific schools, and select different majors. In the fall,&nbsp;the researcher submitted a Kaken-B proposal titled "Determinants and Processes of International Education Mobility: a Comparative&nbsp;Study of Japan and Germany".