Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the ways in which male Vietnamese migrants in contemporary Japan labor to negotiate their sexualities and masculinities during and after migration, and thereby contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of labor migrants' lived experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Despite Japan's reputation as a country with low-to-no immigration, the number of labor migrants in the country has been rapidly increasing within the last decade. While migrants' economic and labor practices in contemporary Japan have constituted a relatively wide spectrum of both academic and non-academic interests, the sexual and gender dimensions of migration have attracted less attention. In other words: many studies tend to look into facets that are easily observed and measured, but not aspects that are subjectively and deeply felt in migrants' everyday lives such as sexualities and gender identities.

This paper aims to provide a more nuanced picture of the experiences of labor migrants in Japan by investigating the ways in which they negotiate their sexualities and gender identities throughout the course of migration. Drawing on life-history interviews with Vietnamese male migrants in Japan and returned migrants in Vietnam, the paper seeks to identify multi-level social structures and institutions in both host and home societies that condition migrants' negotiations of sexual and masculine practices and identities. Such negotiations are indeed a kind of additional labor curtailed by a political economy of migration, in which notions of sexualities and genders, as well as hierarchies of race and class could have significant influences. The paper also takes into account the experiences of returned migrants and shows how migration to Japan could be utilized as a strategy to cultivate capitals and increase migrants' social positions and employability in the home country. By paying attention to the sexual, gendered and temporal dimensions of migration, this paper suggests a more comprehensive approach to the understandings of labor migrants' experiences, the (trans)formation of migrants' identities and senses of belonging, as well as the effects that migration could have in both host and home countries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the question of capital and labor mobilities between a cross-border skilled labor market between Japan and Vietnam. The study addresses the role of the government in this market, and how does Japanese private actor begin to establish the cross-border labor market.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the recent introduction of the new foreign labor policy, the Japanese government is still reluctant to implement an official migration or immigration policy. To fulfill the labor need, the Japanese companies seek their necessary skilled labor from abroad. This paper studies the Japanese capital mobilities and the cross-border labor market between Japan and Vietnam. Aotagai, referred as 'purchase when the field is still green' is a known strategy in new graduate recruitment, and the Japanese firms apply it in the cross-border labor market. Particularly for Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), securing their recruitment channels is prerequisite for their skilled workforce supply. Despite the country's unwillingness to implement an official migration or immigration policy, the government actually assists in the establishment of the skilled cross-border labor market, and this study examines the activities of the government and the private actor by analyzing both capital and labor mobilities. This paper addresses following research questions: How do Japanese private actors establish the cross-border labor market? To what extent the Japanese government involve in the establishment of cross-border market between two countries? To answer these research questions, this paper focuses on the cross-border labor market of engineering and IT sectors between Japan and Vietnam. The latter country attracts business interest from other Asian countries, and this was observed as a form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The study applies qualitative methods, and the fieldwork was conducted both in Japan and in Vietnam. This research has main two findings; the Japanese official development aid (ODA) contributes to establish a basis of cross-border labor market. Secondly, under the severe competition with other Asian firms, the Japanese business establishes a cross-border labor market with the use of basis funded by the government, and the firms approach to the skilled foreign candidates at the early stage, secure and form the skilled labor in the cross-border labor market. Based on these findings, the paper argues that the Japanese business exercises a main role in the establishment of the cross-border labor market, but it was not feasible without the government capital mobility.