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Paper short abstract:

This qualitative study examines how images of cosmopolitanism and their association with whiteness in Japan shape white migrants' employment experiences. Despite the influx of (white) migrants, ambivalence towards whiteness is lasting. The presentation assesses migrants' and society's role in this.

Paper long abstract:

Japan used to be restrictive in terms of labour migration. In the past decade, however, the country has rapidly opened its labour market for 'skilled' migrants and has attracted foreign graduates from a diversifying range of countries, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. One group among them are young Europeans with or without Japanese language skills who hope to establish life and career in the country's economic center Tokyo. Using qualitative data of mostly white Europeans within the first few years of corporate employment, this paper critically examines how images of cosmopolitanism and skills shape these migrants' work experiences and as a consequence their social embeddedness in Japan. The young Europeans are aware of the lasting association of whiteness with accomplishment cosmopolitansim. Some of them strive to differentiate themselves from these images by 'turning Japanese'. Yet, their efforts often lead to alienation whereas others feel forced to rely on their foreignness in order to succeed on the job and navigate life in Japan. These observations call for the deconstruction of what it means to be white - as a migrant on a definite working visa in Tokyo but also in the larger context of gradually diversifying contemporary Japan.

The presentation critically analyses how amidst the heightened presence of white people as students, tourists, labor migrants and permanent residents in Japan, the way the young European labor migrants are received and perceived by the labor market and society at large is intrinsically connected to the ambivalent meaning of whiteness in contemporary Japanese society. The migrants themselves are not passive either but constitute critical actors in both the perpetuation and contestation of the peculiar role whiteness assumes. Drawing on the concept of 'cosmopolitan whiteness' (Saraswati 2010), the discussion attempts to offer some answers to the puzzle of the lasting power of orientalist and racialized images at a time when Japan has finally been acknowledged to be a country of immigration (Liu-Farrer 2020).